Gent Jazz 2010 festival review

Summer’s here in full effect, and as usual it brings along the Gent Jazz festival in the first half of July. Unfortunately I didn’t get to see a lot of gigs this year due to an already busy schedule, but here’s some words after all.

I’m not sure if this was the fourth or fifth time I saw The Cinematic Orchestra, but what I do know is that they never disappoint. When the band got on stage J Swinscoe promised us a selection of tracks from the entire TCO discography, and that is what we got. Most of the tracks started with that recognizable looped sample, when one by one the musicians stepped in. In quite a lot of tracks they kept on building and improvising until it became a real wall of sound. It was not noise however, all the little intricacies and notes were still audible, making for several goosebumps moments. Maybe they took their ad libs and solos a little too far occasionally, but only moments later the groove was back.

Richard Spaven, Heidi Vogel, Stuart McCallum, Tom Chant, Phil France, … they all shone on stage. A question that kept popping in my mind though was why those samples can’t be played by the band? A full size Cinematic Orchestra, wouldn’t that be something? A minor niggle however, I had a marvelous time!

Next up were Kruder & Dorfmeister. 16 years after their debut, the godfathers of triphop (I bet they hate that phrase!) have swapped their spliffs for tuxedo’s and champagne. They’re touring the globe again with a ‘live’ show, backed by an impressive videowall of 12 big ass screens. The gig was split into three parts: past, present and future. The past was basically nothing more than a K&D Remix Megamix™ – great nostalgia for the fans, who were present in great numbers. It felt very scripted though, which is partly unavoidable with all those visuals, but still…
The present part was more like a regular DJ set, with very long housetracks. I didn’t recognize a lot of tunes although I heard that Christian Prommer version of Nights of the Jaguar. The third and final part of the show showed us a glimpse of the G-stone future but to be honest, it sounded like more of those long house tracks from the present. Assisted by MC’s Earl Zinger and Ras MC they reached a few stomping house peaks. The gig had its moments and the big crowd loved it, but subtle or memorable, it was not.

On sunday we had something more exciting to look out for: Soil & “Pimp” Sessions! Like The Cinematic Orchestra, I have seen them a few times now and they never disappoint either. Their totally of the hook death jazz sound still blows away first time spectators and stays fresh for the long time fans. Of particular interest this time was the J.A.M. intermezzo in the middle, where Josei, Akita Goldman and Midorin played some new tracks from their upcoming second album. I heard superfast Brazillian bossa like only Japanese can play it!
And you can say what you want about Shacho, the agitator of the band, but without him most people would just see a bunch of weird freak jazz musicians on stage. Add him to the picture and you get an entertaining show that the audience can relate to and – most importantly – dance to!