Organic Grooves

This is Aum Fidelity's first non-jazz release. Aum Fidelity has been one of the most important independent jazz labels of recent years and they consistently put out great examples of collective improvisation featuring some of today's foremost creative improvisers, like pianist Matthew Shipp and bassist William Parker. Last year, Parker and drummer Hamid Drake's Piercing the Veil was one of Aum Fidelity's best releases ever; plans for a remix album were highly anticipated. New York electronic duo Organic Grooves was assigned the task of deconstructing the serpentine dumbek and shakuhachi rhythms of ...Veil. These eight tunes are a funky, slightly jazzy and worldly listening experience, by and large, however, these are Organic Grooves' own tunes with little of the original flavour. Of course, there's no law on how much a remix should draw from the source. In this case, though, the original's funk factor was enhanced by its non-conformity to 4/4 time, and its "in the moment" feel. These remixes will isolate four beats of one idea and write a strict 4/4 groove utilising mostly their own sounds and instrumentalists. Fortunately the rhythm bits are well integrated and the songs are sympathetic to their grooves. However, this is not the reconstruction that could have been, given the rich source material.