Where Does Jazz End and Noise Begin? A Guide to the Avant-Jazz Spectrum
By the RZRecords crew Let us embark, dear readers, on a journey so fraught with peril that it makes deciding whether to put (soy) milk or cereal in the bowl first seem like a simple binary choice. We are here to answer a question that has plagued philosophers, musicians, and unfortunate neighbors since someone first blew a raspberry into a saxophone: Where, exactly, does Jazz end, and Noise begin? It is the sonic equivalent of an optical illusion. Stare too hard looking for the melody, and you will miss the texture. Lean in too close to the rhythm, and the atonality will bite your nose off. We are traversing the Avant-Jazz Spectrum, a vast, chaotic, and often unapologetically loud landscape where the ghosts of old standards collide with the feedback loops of a broken amplifier. A landscape that has, over the decades, produced distinct and fiercely contested sub-territories: noise jazz , which is jazz that has let noise move in and redecorate; jazz noise , which is noise that...