The line-up at this year’s Montreal International Jazz Festival (June 28 through July 8) featured a stunning mix of jazz legends (Wayne Shorter, Johnny Griffin), world-music phenoms (Ibrahim Ferrer, Femi Kuti), and mercurial cult heroes (Steve Lacy, Jamaaladeen Tacuma). Hidden among the big-name draws was a contingent of young acts — French artists Laurent de Wilde and Cosmik Connection, London’s Cinematic Orchestra, Norwegian pianist Bugge Wesseltoft — who are in the forefront of a wave of European electronic-jazz fusion that combines classic jazz improvisation and instrumentation with an array of club-ready grooves. Some critics have dubbed this distinctly Euro subgenre new (or nu) jazz, perhaps forgetting that acid-jazzers Groove Collective, downtown NYC regular Graham Haynes, and the Chicago collective Isotope 217 have all made forays into the territory. The growing popularity of this mini-genre, however, is beyond doubt: the electro-jazz shows that I witnessed — the Cinematic Orchestra, Laurent de Wilde, and Cosmik Connection — were packed with young, chic fans who looked more accustomed to sweaty nightclubs than to hushed concert halls.

The most visible artist from this scene is St. Germain, a French producer who scored an international hit with last year’s Tourist (Blue Note). He wasn’t present at this year’s festival, but his countryman de Wilde came through with a performance that evinced a similar slicked-up and smoothed-out sensibility. Using skittering drum ’n’ bass rhythms as his template, de Wilde and his quintet delivered an hour-long set that sounded like a mix between In a Silent Way–era Miles Davis and atmospheric d ’n’ b producer LTJ Bukem. It’s an agreeable match; the spacious chord changes and slow-moving melodies gave the roiling jungle rhythms room to expand and mutate over long periods of time, and de Wilde took advantage of the open harmonic template to drop atonal staccato riffs and thick block chords on a Fender Rhodes.

Although de Wilde’s group have embraced the roller-coaster rush of rollicking drum ’n’ bass — which feels similar to the cliffhanging tension of uptempo swing — they’ve had to sacrifice some harmonic complexity along the way, and the horn players weren’t interesting enough to make up for the missing chord changes. Which is a recurrent problem in the new-jazz scene, a movement that has yet to reconcile the jazz world’s rigorous standards of improv and composition with electronica’s reliance on dance-friendly beats and sonic soundsculpting. In other words, it’s not Danilo Pérez and Dave Douglas up there.

The following night, London’s Cinematic Orchestra approached the electronic-jazz mash-up from an entirely different angle. Where Laurent de Wilde uses jungle rhythms to make his music more dance-friendly, the CO rely on electronic trickery to infuse their music with contemplative grandeur and eerie ambiance. Performing on a small stage built into the basement of a cathedral, they combined a traditional jazz quartet (piano, bass, drums, saxophone) with two knob twiddlers: J. Swinscoe on samples and Patrick Carpenter (from DJ Food) on turntables and other toys. Most of their set sounded like an idyllic and minimalist take on ’60s modal jazz, specifically the moody Afro-blues of John Coltrane circa Africa/Brass. Adding swirling strings, digital blips, and mournful vocals to the minor-key vamps, the group revealed a patient and minimalist sensibility that is, depending on your mood, hypnotic or dull. It all comes off as very earnest, a little too safe, and somewhat fetishistic — like aging ravers trying to re-create their favorite jazz sides. Their set did create a kind of melancholy beauty, but only when the CO decided to break the rules — an abstract duet between the saxophonist and the DJ explored sound for sound’s sake, conjuring up images of asthmatic geese, ghostly thuds in the night, and disintegrating pianos — did they create something greater than the sum of their record collections.

Later in the evening, the French trio (drums, saxophone, and electronics) Cosmik Connection laid out a engaging electro-acoustic vision of punishing drill ’n’ bass, echoing dub rimshots, and subsonic dive bombs. Full of primal punk energy, it was the most convincing dance music that I witnessed from the new-jazz crew, though the jazz element of their sound was relegated to a few minor sax riffs. Which only underscores the difficulty of merging these two disparate worlds.

Issue Date: July 12 - 19, 2001