Jeff's Jazz Festival - Day 6

Is the money in there yet? I've got the shakes! Photo courtesy of roland

Well we've officially reached the halfway point for the TD Canada Trust Vancouver International Jazz Festival (how's that for a mouthful? The emcees love that one. Sleek titles are definitely not among corporate sponsorship's benefits) and thus far it's been five days of classic jazz, soul, funk, hip hop, avant garde improv, gale force chaos... a bit of everything. Last night stepped down the intensity a little bit, being only the second night thus far that I wasn't wearing or wishing for earplugs. That's not a bad thing though, and definitely no reason to go do anything stupid like drink a bottle of bleach.

In a bit of a switch, we hit The Ironworks early show at 8pm for a performance by Jim Black's AlasNoAxis. I'd known Jim Black by reputation only up to this point, so I was pretty stoked to check him out in a live setting. For his AlasNoAxis project, Black enlisted Chris Speed on drums and two Icelandic cats, Skuli Sverrisson and Hilmar Jensson on bass and guitar, respectively. Throughout their set the quartet moved fluidly from aggressive post-rock to textural soundcapes to free improv and back again, in a way that at times reminded me very much of Jim Black's fellow NYers, the Cuong Vu Trio. I especially liked watching Black and Sverrisson's rhythmic interaction as they laid down a foundation that seemed to be continually shifting while simultaneously remaining as solid as a car-sized chunk of granite. Over the years, legions of Les Claypool wannabes and fusion wanksters have been trying their damndest to undo all of Anthony Jackson's fabulous work and turn the six-string bass into a bad joke, so it was a special treat to see Sverrisson put one to such perfect use.

After the encore and a bit of hanging out on The Ironworks' great patio, it was time to hustle over to the Commodore to listen to the eclectic sounds of Sackville, Nova Scotia native Buck 65. This guy is usually billed as hip hop, but I'd have serious reservations about putting him into too small of a pigeonhole. Granted, he does work the turntables and his delivery is spoken rather than sung, but Buck 65 comes across as more of an eccentric master storyteller in the tradition of Tom Waits than anything you might see on Rap City (showing my age here... is that show still on the air?). If I was forced to compare him to another hip hop artist I'd have to go with Kool Keith. But keep in mind that it's not in sound, but in individuality, overall experimental spirit, and wacked out sense of humour. With disjointed-but-catchy grooves supported by a keyboard player and a drummer/guitarist, lyrics that were both surreal and disarmingly down-home, and inter-song banter running along the lines of "sperm your wife today" and "touch each others private crotch more often with the help of medicine", Buck 65 kept me happily entertained for the whole show.

After all the music was done and I'd had that type of encounter with resident denizens at the ATM that one can only have during that particular Tuesday night/Wednesday morning every month, I was home and crashed out at the unusually early hour of 1am.