Anoraknophobe

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With musicians such as Max Brennan, Mike Bandoni, Paul Butler, Homelife, Fila Brazillia, Pondlife & The Goose, Baby Mammoth or (your favorite inexplicably-named nonconformist/eccentric/odd-sod here), we are in uncharted waters - and caught without a verbal paddle and barely enough of a raft to keep our feet above the waves. We're moving beyond triphop, beyond digidub, beyond new-jazz, headz-jazz, future-jazz, or even Ninja Tune's patented funkungfusion'. Nothing is familiar enough to offer a hook on which labels and tags might be hung. You could call it truly "new" music, but the jazz fanatics insist on tracing the lineage of every lick, of every break, of every sample, loop or bar. How did this come to be branded as "jazz," anyway? Must everything be either black or white, Rock n' Roll or Jazz but never both? An album like "Anoraknophobe" is actually neither. But, as music has a hell of a memory, both are quoted. So where does that leave us if not back on the raft, perched like cranes to avoid the rising tide? And where does Funk fit into the picture? It's definitely part of the equation, but in what way? Desperate times call for desperate measures. Just a few years ago, "new complexity techno" was the unfortunate name given to the increasingly intricate rhythmic deviations of Autechre, Bedouin Ascent and their brainy kin; all of whom instantly balked, spurning the well-intentioned tag as though it were a death sentence. What did we learn from the experience? Very little, apparently. So the hunt goes on, the game is once again afoot; the prize, this time, a catch-all term for deviants such as Jung Collective instigator Alan Gubby. It's just not going to happen. The advent of the sampler and the sequencer has complicated music far more than we'd ever realized. The melting-pot effect has robbed us of quick-fix descriptions, now that Latin rhythms, jazz blow-outs, rock guitar and electro bleeps can all be tossed together with a few painless button-stabs. Tossed together well - creatively, invigoratingly, uniquely - as it becomes more difficult to "thrill" listeners with a handbag filled with a few recycled tricks. Gubby's a very clever motherfunker, deft with "bits and pieces" like the warbling Chinese chanteuse (is this just a synth?), purls of harp and sitar which pop up in "Big Mac 4 Baba Ram." He has a well-developed funnybone as well; Isaac Hayes and David Holmes double-team Lalo Schifrin and bitchslap him within an inch of his life on "Trigger Zone," and "Tabla Motown" may be the first lite-jazz raga-cum-Casiotone samba. Further confounding matters. Gubby's Collective features a number of talented live musicians - which now places the Jung ones in the same (even more indescribable) camp as Red Snapper and Spaceways. Any live contributions have been expertly integrated into "Anoraknophobe"; as with the acoustic guitar and sax on "Not Poodle," riffs and trills morphed into and out of synth sounds and vocodered smears of song. Or Gary Dumbarton's idly sliding surf-guitar, folded into the electro-warp n' woof of "Harry's Back Was Turned" along with sudden spurts of drum n' bass. Joe Becket adds quite a tumble of live percussion to "Pepperoni Paparazzi," techno/taiko and batucada rhythms topped with extended Genesis-styled world-drumming fills and trippy Trance kicks. Tasty licks of Rhodes (Mike Bandoni) and enthusiastic scratchwork (Nick Reid) on the hiphop-flavored "Go Round The Sun" vault an already euphoric jam into even rarer regions. Jung Collective certainly have an ear for a striking fusion. In the end, is that what all of this is - fusion? Well, yes. But in a new sense, one unrelated to any connotations left over from the '70s. So fusion it is, at least for now. Something tells me that such a simple word won't play in Peoria, no matter how accurate it might be. Folks want their trypnojazzfunk and psychoelectrobreaks. New complexity fusion? . . . I'm sure the musicians will just love that one! Curse Noah Webster and Matthias Y. Oxford for their lousy taste in music. If only they'd been down with the funk and on the one; maybe they would have left us with a few more useful words.