Music video essay mae­stro Poly­phon­ic is back. What I dig about his videos is that he takes on some of the true warhors­es of mod­ern pop­u­lar music and man­ages to find some­thing new to say. Or at least he presents famil­iar sto­ries in a new and mod­ern way to an audi­ence who may be hear­ing ELO, Queen, or Neil Young for the first time.

His upload explores Dave Brubeck’s ground­break­ing jazz album Time Out. This is an album that reg­u­lar­ly tops best-of lists, gets reis­sued con­stant­ly, and is so ubiq­ui­tous in some cir­cles that it’s hard, like Led Zeppelin’s fourth album, to hear the album with fresh ears.

Poly­phon­ic touch­es on some­thing right at the begin­ning of the video that deserves a full video essay of its own–the State Department’s mis­sion to send Amer­i­can jazz musi­cians around the world as cul­tur­al ambas­sadors. This is a part of his­to­ry that has reced­ed from mem­o­ry, but had a major influ­ence not just on Brubeck, but so many records at that time. Brubeck joined Ben­ny Good­man, Louis Arm­strong, and Dizzy Gille­spie on a musi­cal tour that reached many coun­tries behind the Iron Cur­tain, and were able to cri­tique America’s racist his­to­ry while also pro­mot­ing its musi­cal cul­ture. (PBS made a fine doc­u­men­tary on the mis­sion in 2018.) But for the pur­pos­es of this video essay, and regard­ing Brubeck’s career, it was the polyrhythms and folk music that he heard while trav­el­ing through coun­tries like Turkey (from which he devel­oped “Blue Ron­do a la Turk”) that remained with him on his return.

Time Out was Brubeck’s four­teenth album for Colum­bia Records, but his break­through. Up to that point he and his quar­tet had released a num­ber of live albums record­ed at col­leges (which pro­mot­ed a safe but hip stu­dious kind of jazz) and sev­er­al albums of jazz cov­ers, such as Dave Digs Dis­ney. But Time Out was a ful­ly formed con­cept album of sorts: an explo­ration into time sig­na­tures that jazz hadn’t real­ly touched yet.

As Poly­phon­ic points out, Joe Morel­lo, Brubeck’s drum­mer, was indeed well versed in com­pli­cat­ed time sig­na­tures from his clas­si­cal back­ground as a vio­lin­ist. It was Morel­lo who exper­i­ment­ed with a groove in 5/4 time that became the back­bone of “Take Five.” Brubeck knew a good thing when he heard it and gives Morel­lo one of the best solos of the entire LP.

Best of all, Time Out is one those clas­sic albums because of how it mix­es the exper­i­men­tal with the com­mer­cial, a hard feat in any era, but even more impres­sive in that best of all jazz years, 1959. Brubeck con­tin­ued to explore time sig­na­tures on this album’s sequel Time Fur­ther Out, which is also rec­om­mend­ed.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2019.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play an Enchant­i­ng Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

Louis Arm­strong Plays His­toric Cold War Con­certs in East Berlin & Budapest (1965)

Dave Brubeck’s Sur­prise Duet: A Mag­i­cal Moment at the Moscow Con­ser­va­to­ry (1997)

Watch an Incred­i­ble Per­for­mance of “Take Five” by the Dave Brubeck Quar­tet (1964)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts.

Hear a sec­ond or two of Ver­non Burch’s “Get Up,” and you’re back in 1990; of “Bal­ance and Rehearsal” from the JBL sound-test album Ses­sion, and you’re back in 1999; of Eddie Johns’ “More Spell on You,” and you’re back in 2001. What, you don’t know any of those songs? Per­haps you’re more famil­iar with them in a dif­fer­ent form: chopped up, pitched up or down, and looped over and over again in the songs  “Groove Is in the Heart” by Deee-Lite, “Praise You” by Fat­boy Slim, and “One More Time” by Daft Punk. None of those hits would be con­ceiv­able with­out the clips they incor­po­rate from old­er record­ings, those named here and a vari­ety of oth­ers besides.

Three and a half decades ago, few ordi­nary lis­ten­ers would have under­stood how a song could be con­struct­ed out of oth­er songs; today, most of us know it as the tech­nol­o­gy and art of sam­pling. We tend to asso­ciate it with hip-hop, and indeed, last year we fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture Track­lib’s video on the most icon­ic hip-hop sam­ples of the past half-cen­tu­ry.

But the same chan­nel has also put out the video above, which sim­i­lar­ly breaks down the con­stituent son­ic ingre­di­ents of elec­tron­ic dance hits from “Groove Is in the Heart” onward. If you’ve ever want­ed to know what, exact­ly, went into Snap!‘s “Rhythm Is a Dancer,” Moby’s “Porce­lain,” Skrillex’s “First of the Year,” or James Hype and Miggy Dela Rosa’s “Fer­rari,” this is your chance.

Those over a cer­tain age may rec­og­nize all the titles of the songs includ­ed on the first twen­ty or so years of the video’s time­line, and almost none there­after. But they may well know the bod­ies of work from which they sam­ple, includ­ing those of Aaron Neville, Freeez, Bri­an Wil­son, Gladys Knight & the Pips, and Mel­ba Moore. For the last cou­ple of gen­er­a­tions of lis­ten­ers, seek­ing out the sources of a sam­ple in a favorite song has become a reli­able method of dis­cov­er­ing the music of past eras. By the same token, lis­ten­ers already well-versed in the music of those eras can hear it anew in the tracks to which kids are cur­rent­ly danc­ing, work­ing out, or sim­ply “vib­ing.” What­ev­er your gen­er­a­tion, once you hear how “Get Ready for This” was con­struct­ed, you’ll nev­er expe­ri­ence a bas­ket­ball game quite the same way again.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Brief His­to­ry of Sam­pling: From the Bea­t­les to the Beast­ie Boys

The Most Icon­ic Hip-Hop Sam­ple of Every Year (1973–2023)

Hear the Evo­lu­tion of Elec­tron­ic Music: A Son­ic Jour­ney from 1929 to 2019

How Gior­gio Moroder & Don­na Summer’s “I Feel Love” Cre­at­ed the “Blue­print for All Elec­tron­ic Dance Music Today” (1977)

How the Fairlight CMI Syn­the­siz­er Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Music

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Writ­ing in his 1995 diary about his sem­i­nal ambi­ent album Music for Air­ports, Eno remem­bered his ini­tial thoughts going into it: “I want to make a kind of music that pre­pares you for dying–that doesn’t get all bright and cheer­ful and pre­tend you’re not a lit­tle appre­hen­sive, but which makes you say to your­self, ‘Actu­al­ly, it’s not that big a deal if I die.’”

Cre­at­ed in 1978 from sec­onds-long tape loops from a much longer improv ses­sion with musi­cians includ­ing Robert Wyatt, Music for Air­ports start­ed the idea of slow, med­i­ta­tive music that aban­doned typ­i­cal major and minor scales, brought in melod­ic ambi­gu­i­ty, and began the explo­ration of sounds that were designed to exist some­where in the back­ground, beyond the scope of full atten­tion.

For those who think 50 min­utes is too short and those piano notes too rec­og­niz­able, may we sug­gest this 6‑hour, time-stretched ver­sion of the album, cre­at­ed by YouTube user “Slow Motion TV.” The tonal field is the same, but now the notes are no attack, all decay. It’s gran­u­lar as hell, but you could imag­ine the whole piece unspool­ing unno­ticed in a ter­mi­nal while a flight is delayed for the third time. (Maybe that’s when the accep­tance of death hap­pens, when you’ve giv­en up on ever get­ting home?)

Unlike Music for Films, which fea­tured sev­er­al tracks Eno had giv­en to film­mak­ers like Derek Jar­man, it took some time for Music for Air­ports to be real­ized in its intend­ed loca­tion: being piped in at a ter­mi­nal at La Guardia, New York, some­time in the 1980s. And that was just a one-time thing.

?si=6VMY_yEfZdFDZbp6

The album seemed des­tined for per­son­al use only, but then in 1997 the mod­ern ensem­ble Bang on a Can played it live, trans­lat­ing the ran­dom­ness of out-of-sync tape loops into music nota­tion. Over the years they’ve per­formed it at air­ports in Brus­sels, the Nether­lands and Liv­er­pool, and in 2015 the group brought it to Ter­mi­nal 2 of San Diego Inter­na­tion­al. Writ­ing for KCET, Alex Zaragoza report­ed that “cry­ing babies, echoes of rolling suit­cas­es and board­ing pass­es serv­ing as tick­ets to the con­cert failed to remind any­one that they were, indeed, at one of the busiest air­ports in the coun­try. Even the tell­tale announce­ments were there: Air­port secu­ri­ty is every­one’s respon­si­bil­i­ty. Do not leave bags unat­tend­ed.”

And then in 2018, Lon­don City Air­port played the orig­i­nal album in a day-long loop for the album’s 40th anniver­sary.

As site-spe­cif­ic mul­ti-media art builds pop­u­lar­i­ty in the 21st cen­tu­ry with increas­ing­ly cheap­er and small­er tech­nol­o­gy, we might hope to hear ambi­ent drones, and not clas­sic rock or pop, in more and more land­scapes.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2019.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bri­an Eno’s Ambi­ent Album Music for Air­ports Per­formed by Musi­cians in an Air­port

Decon­struct­ing Bri­an Eno’s Music for Air­ports: Explore the Tape Loops That Make Up His Ground­break­ing Ambi­ent Music

Bri­an Eno’s Advice for Those Who Want to Do Their Best Cre­ative Work: Don’t Get a Job

Behold the Orig­i­nal Deck of Oblique Strate­gies Cards, Hand­writ­ten by Bri­an Eno Him­self

Bri­an Eno Explains the Loss of Human­i­ty in Mod­ern Music

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.