Listen: Adult Jazz - "Suffer One"

credit by Tash Cutts & Samuel Travis

 

At the tail end of January, British experimental quartet Adult Jazz emerged from a nearly decade long hiatus of sorts to release "Dusk Song". The first proper Adult Jazz release since their Earrings Off! EP released in 2016, "Dusk Song" with its constant swells struck me very much as an prelude not only of things to come but a potential album opener. With the release of "Suffer One" came the announcement Adult Jazz's incredibly patient fans have all been waiting for: Adult Jazz are releasing their follow up to their debut full length Gist Is their full length sophomore record So Sorry So Slow. Despite the lack of an official release for all this time, Adult Jazz have been incredibly forthcoming about all the work behind the scenes over the years writing, recording, and workshopping ideas for what eventually would become this record but also in the interim, members of Adult Jazz have landed on a multitude of different projects: "Other Life" with Makeness, "Cut Me" by Moses Sumney, as well as Offer, Harry Burgess' project with Jack Armitage aka Lil Data.

Enlisting Owen Pallett on string duties, "Suffer One" continues in Adult Jazz's growing trend of seeking collaboration outside of their typical foursome to dazzling effect that contrasts the horns of "Dusk Song". Both in his work in Adult Jazz and his other projects, Burgess' songwriting has gotten much more explicit, their various meanings much more overt on first listening and "Suffer One" relishes in that overt display of intimacy, of pointed, direct lyricism. Aided by Pallett's heart-fluttering violin flourishes, Burgess crafts a lovelorn ballad buoyed simultaneously with visceral elation and heady pensiveness. Burgess effortless balances the rush of thoughts that flood in when seeking/achieving connection with someone else, equally self-assured in the physical but gnawed by a pervasive sense of doubt in the cerebral. The tension of these two conflicting displays reaches a dizzying climax the group punctuates with processed vocals before returning once more to organic push and pull accompanying by Pallett's hard-hitting pizzicato. 

 

Adult Jazz much awaited sophomore album So Sorry So Slow is out April 26th on Spare Thought.

Listen: Harry Burgess - "Disarm"

One of the pitfalls of creating such a cerebral, fully realized project as art pop quartet Adult Jazz is the fact that there's a lot of time and energy put into seemingly every aspect of creating. Since the release of their debut album Gist Is in 2014, Adult Jazz has spent a lot of time facilitating not only their own creations but those of the constellation of their collaborators. They've subsequently released a follow up EP Earrings Off!, two years after their full length debut and while their next release seems to be forthcoming, they've eased the wait by engaging with other projects.

Most recently, Harry Burgess, Adult Jazz's frontman and member of experimental electronic duo Offer, played a solo set late last year, recorded it, and is releasing the results as Live Scraps/Fall of Troy, a cassette release bundled with an essay Burgess wrote about the death of his family dog who inspired the Adult Jazz track "Bonedigger". Unlike Adult Jazz's meticulously layered production or Offer's digital pyrotechnics, Live Scraps offers Burgess in an oft seen light: bare bones and simply offered. One of my favorite qualities of his growing number of projects has always been Harry Burgess' voice so it is essentially a treat to get to witness it this way, unadorned and unmanipulated.

But even as Burgess peels back the layers, his experimentalism still shines though. "Disarm", the first taste of his three song release, might just be Burgess' voice and guitar but it's not your standard fare. Burgess approaches his playing from a place of minimalism, focusing on repetitive two note chords and weaving vocal melodies around the sparse accompaniment. It's a transfixing work of art, utterly engaging in its simplicity and a testament to the strength of Burgess' vocal prowess.

Live Scraps/Fall of Troy is out July 12th on London based label Don't Delay. You can pre-order the digital album or the cassette/essay bundle now.