Product Description

Optometry bring together one of the masters of DJ culture with real musicians and the results are staggering. Joining Spooky are Matthew Shipp, William Parker, Joe McPhee, Guillermo E Brown, and more all whom provide the inpiration to bring the Blue Series concept to a new plateau. Limited edition double vinyl.

Review

First hearing of this album stirred memories of George Russell's Electronic Sonata For Souls Loved By Nature (1969): Both feature an acoustic jazz group, piano-driven, set within an electronic context. Here the pianist is Matthew Shipp and instead of Russell's tape composition, DJ Spooky supplies laptop, turntables, treatments, bass, etc. Optometry comes with liner notes and the track titles are... challenging.

The opening "Ibid, desmarches, ibid" delivers traffic sounds out of which a snare-heavy, rolling, tripping rhythm appears, a double bass starts to play a catchy figure, piano chords drive things along. There's an intense, muscular quality to Shipp's playing, a McCoy Tyner-like emphasis.

"Reactive Switching Strategies for the Control of Uninhabited Air" has the bass up in the mix, there's a circular piano figure and clickety percussion; things are accessible, near-catchy; laptop loops may be in play. Again those heavy, dramatic chords with the bass figures pushing patterns through.

In "Variation Cybernetique: Rhythmic Pataphysic (part I)" repeated piano clusters played fast almost recall Philip Glass, reverberating off each eardrum, long violin notes, glass-like percussion, gong. Captivating, beautiful stuff. "Periphique" is a beautiful piece of work: the percussion is all brushes and ride cymbal, there's bowed double bass and Joe McPhee plays trumpet. This penultimate track starts with a feeling of aimlessness, of wandering in a wide-open, darkened landscape where the sky is all too big and we're all too small.

With "It's a mad, mad, mad world", the final track, a confused certainty returns; there are a couple of jokey/ironic vocal samples and some more straightahead playing. This initially surprised me by appearing to belie the music that had gone before it, to represent an unexpected loss of confidence. On further thought it's perhaps understandable in light of "Periphique"s sense of loss/lostness.

All in all, Optometry is a big, serious-sounding piece of work. The overall impression of this reviewer is of an earnest, driven endeavour which finds itself in a place it didn't expect to be. Although Optometry sounds like an essay in possibilities, a sonic prototype which is unlikely to go into production, it bears repeated listening and throws many sonic jewels before our ears.
--BBC Music

Thirsty Ear is leading the way in the cross-pollination between electronic music production and jazz. Their Blue Series seems to have set its goal no lower than to move jazz forward into the 21st Century, and in creating fresh and challenging settings for improvisation and the music's sonic palate, they're succeeding. In 2001 they dropped Spring Heel Jack's dark and abstract Masses, which was a rewarding experiment in the merger of jazz improvisation and electronic textures. Earlier this year they released the excellent Matthew Shipp disc Nu Bop, which shared the general working method of Masses but was more interested in rhythmic tension and the age-old pursuit of getting down. Now DJ Spooky has weighed in with Optometry, a sprawling cityscape of an album that absorbs both the ambient/abstract and the booty-shake, and fuses them with a staggering technique and ambition. --Popmatters