Spectreview: Various Artists – Sunny Side Up

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Melbourne didn’t really have a jazz scene until this decade, when Hiatus Kaiyote’s worldwide breakthrough in 2012 brought a watchful eye over the city’s output. Since then, Melbourne’s scene has been defined by its earthliness and aural luxuriance, a cross between jazz virtuosity and easy listening that fits right at home in the piecemeal fashion of the burgeoning streaming era. Sunny Side Up, a collection of tracks composed and performed by several prominent members of the Melbourne jazz community (as well as collectives Mandarin Dreams and 30/70), documents how strong the scene has grown as a voice looking towards the future of jazz. As expected, the music is sublime on a purely surface level, soft and smoky and adeptly played, firmly in the playing field of third-wave coffee shops and private romantic encounters. But looking closer, you can start to observe how these songs feel free of jazz’s formidable legacy, how they don’t seem to be influenced by much other than its most recent trends. Hip-hop beats, R&B smoothness, multicultural influence brought on by globalization, plus an undercurrent of maximalism once inspired by IDM and further explored by flourishing Afrofuturists like Flying Lotus: they’re all a part of this city’s newfound musical environment.

Blessedly, there’s less of a focus on virtuosity (a beguiling trend in contemporary jazz that threatens to exclude and alienate) than on musicality and feel, and while there are indeed virtuosic performances speckled throughout the record, these performances mostly buttress the song structures instead of intruding on the overall feel of any particular song. Take Zeitgeist Freedom Energy Exchange’s “Powers 2 (The People),” a pulsing river of flute and polyrhythmic drums in which no instruments seems to take the spotlight or subsume any other, or Silentjay’s “Eternal/Internal Peace” a sunlit, Brazilian-influenced jazz workout in which each player gradually ramps up in intensity and technicality without betraying the implied quiescence of the track’s title. The collection manages to cover a whole lot of ground, encompassing styles as diverse as deep house (Horatio Luna’s brilliant “The Wake-Up”) and cha-cha (Phil Stroud’s “Banksia”, also reminiscent of Kamasi Washington’s latest works). Some tracks, like Dufrense’s wild “Pick Up/Galaxy” jump wildly between styles, from samba to Afrobeat to p-funk. Ultimately, whether this collection is truly representative of the current state of affairs in Melbourne’s jazz scene, its blurring of subgenre makes it at least representative of music consumption today. The talent here is evident, but by focusing on community instead of technical demonstration, Sunny Side Up becomes that much more solid as a definer of a blossoming scene.

Recommended for shaking off anxiety.