- It seems strange, possibly rude, to call a ‘polyrhythmic jazz band’ simple. Yet there is a certain simplicity -a bullish, straightforward, muscularity of sound- in what Coast do. Perhaps purity would be a better word. The Sydneysiders don’t explicitly reference BadBadNotGood here, but for all the rhythmic complexity on display, their new album, Skim, powered by the same solid playing, coalesces along the same clean lines.
This must be what happens when you let the drummer run the band. Paul Derricott is that drummer, leading a quartet comprised of Shannon Stitt on keys, guitarist Peter Koopman and Michael Avgenicos on sax with guest tap-ins from Phillippa Murphy-Haste, Jacob Parks and Kim Lawson adding a bit of clarinet and ‘bone. Derricott’s thoughts on the record fit the above impression: “[for this record] my composing is clearer but less ‘jazzy’”, in fact he goes so far as to say “I shouldn’t really use the j word…” Listening to Skim I can hear its urge to escape jazz and latch on to the more straightforward styles of today: stylistically the band wriggle out of its grasp, ever and again. That’s more and less successful as hybrid sounds mesh and fly apart unexpectedly. It’s as though Derricott and co. are doing battle with their own instincts, swallowing great draughts of more contemporary sound which swills around with all the jazz they've already got down there and vomiting back up some strange solution of the lot. I know that flies in the face of those supposedly ‘clean lines’ I was talking about and I think that cuts to the heart of why this record confuses me.
You’re presented with something quite seamless ...that seamlessly transforms into all sorts of things: hip hop, funk, prog and postrock, even tango. It can be like a montage made of jump cuts, made stranger still because the uncanny hybrid sounds manage to catch me off-guard more often than similar bands that meld even more genres, like Tangents or Bitchin Bajas. Between unashamedly cheesy Alan Parsons Project prog and sinuous FlyLo hip hop suddenly things will flip out into Squarepusher-channeling synth funk and...it can take some getting used to.
Hey though, once I stop clutching my pearls, I find I get more and more out of this record. Whatever reservations I might have had, now I’m just queueing up for the next solo and holding on for dear life as it flies off. Straightforwardly complicated, cleanly complex, Coast and Skim are many things that are still unfolding before me; just don’t call it jazz.
- Chris Cobcroft.