A couple of weeks ago, on these pages, I contemplated what makes a good and meaningful (jazz) playlist, from the perspective of someone for whom this is neither a particular strength nor an area of specialization. I’ve always been more inclined to complete albums, but I completely understand why radio or DJ playlists can be seductive and fun. But can a playlist of “uncompromising contemporary jazz” be “fun” in the same way as DJ sets of some kind of “dance jazz” or “jazzy” music?
Eleven years ago, my partner Monika and I launched Nova Festival in our town Pančevo (and a few “guest cities”), bringing together artists working in “new music” across different genres. In the first few years, I was particularly happy that we organized concerts by the duo Kaja Draksler and Susana Santos Silva, Waclaw Zimpel with his then-current LAM Trio, Gabbeh with Golnar Shahyar, Mona Matbou Riahi and Manu Mayr, a number of local artists, etc. Whenever there was a festival opening or some promotional event, or whenever we needed some music before the concerts started and after the concert programme had ended, Monika would tell me, “put some music together!” and I would make playlists as best I could.
What I particularly liked here was that I didn’t feel the need to pander too much to “general taste”, since the festival was more or less avant-garde anyway. But I did try to make the music at least minimally melodic and not completely atonal free jazz.
However, on one occasion we organized a promo event in Belgrade as part of a series of events called Delicatessen Monday, at the alternative venue Cultural Centre Grad. Delicatessen Monday was an event featuring a dinner based around a particular kind of cuisine (exotic, vegan, national, etc.), accompanied by a suitable party, which many festivals and organizations around 2016–2017 used as a promotional event for their activities. Nova Festival happily jumped on that bandwagon because Delicatessen Monday was cool by every measure, and we needed promotion among Belgrade’s alternative crowd—that is, the people we were specifically targeting and inviting to come to our festival.
Here I couldn’t get away with ten songs playing before the concert started; I actually needed to spend a little more time working on the playlist. On the other hand, that was also impossible because we were constantly balancing our day jobs with the important organizational aspects of running a festival, so all I could do was frantically throw songs into a folder that same morning and somehow arrange them in a way that made sense for the event ahead.
I still had this playlist saved in a folder, so I dug it out, went through it, and then uploaded it. One of the reasons I’m bringing it back from oblivion is the fact that on blogs and websites like this we are constantly rushing towards the new. We recommend an endless amount of new and current music, make best-of selections of the finest albums released in 2026, and so on. At the same time, we look back at “legendary” historical albums that changed the history of jazz and music in general.
But what about music released, say, in 2012 or 2015? Of course, many of us privately listen to albums released in some random year between 2000 and today. But do we actually recommend those albums, actively write about them? Those who heard them, heard them; we move on, rushing towards newer and newer releases, and who cares about Get The Blessing’s 2015 album “Astronautilus”. For example.
I titled this folder “Delicatessen Playlist” and occasionally played it in the car on various trips, because the list worked quite nicely in that context too, and now I’m bringing it back to life here as well, with a few accompanying comments.
Nine Horses – Money for all (Money for all, 2007)
I suppose my logic was that the playlist had to start with something cool but unobtrusive. Basically, there are never any people around during the first song anyway—it’s usually just the organizing team and a couple of people doing something—but you have to start somewhere. David Sylvian’s band from the 2000s, in which he takes a break from his avant-garde albums, seemed like a good intro.
Get the Blessing – Phaenomena (Astronautilus, 2015)
This is an upbeat track that nicely captures the spirit of British neo-jazz-rock from the period between 2005 and 2015. Short, clear and fun. I often played it in various intro/outro playlists for events. Get the Blessing had played in Serbia, so they were familiar enough to the interested local audience, which made it a win-win situation. They also helped the Serbian band Eyot a lot in their career, which is a separate story for another occasion.
Henry Butler, Steven Bernstein and the Hot 9 - Viper’s
Drag (Viper’s Drag, 2014)
A hilariously fun New Orleans jazz-blues track that opens the album of the same name. Naturally, it was particularly fun for me because I’m a fan of Steven Bernstein, and I love the way he makes tradition modern and exciting while retaining its original spirit.
Mathew Shipp – Space Ship (Nu Bop, 2002)
This was one of the first Matthew Shipp albums I heard, from the period when he had a couple of albums flirting with electronics. From today’s perspective, this strikes me as a poor and forced choice for a playlist, but the album is an interesting extravagance in Shipp’s career. I once asked William Parker about these electro-jazz albums he also played on, but he waved the whole thing away as if it wasn’t really his “thing”—but hey, the producers came up with the idea of doing something unusual.
Fish in Oil - FNR-Y (Drnch, 2013)
Local eclectics Fish in Oil nod slightly towards the ex-Yu aesthetic in (film) music on this track, so there’s an implicit local reference, but this retro “Partisan” approach sounds pretty fun.
Polar Bear – Beartown (Held on the Tips of Fingers, 2005)
Another gem of British neo-jazz-alternative-rock eclecticism from that period. Legendary bass line, followed by ecstatic pathos… a real hit.
Dave Douglas – Just Another Murder (Keystone, 2005)
This album meant a lot to me at the time, and once, when I was pretty broke, I travelled to Zagreb just to see a concert by Douglas’s then-new sextet. Jamie Saft played keyboards on the sextet’s first album, while DJ Olive played some fantastic solos on the turntable. “Just Another Murder” isn’t my favourite song on the album, but it is the most upbeat in this context, which is why I chose it.
Oddjob – Palancio (Klint, 2010)
A band featuring trumpeter Goran Kajfeš, who today is one of my favourite trumpeters and musicians in general. Back then I didn’t know who he was; I simply liked the band. The album consists of covers of themes from Clint Eastwood films and is “fun” by design, with a good beat and seductive melody, so it flowed nicely from the songs I had chosen up to that point.
William Parker - Song of Hope (Raining on the Moon, 2002)
At this point in creating the playlist, I probably thought I needed something vocal as well, but I didn’t want to make too many compromises. Leena Conquest sounds powerful on this track, which is perhaps a shade too long and maybe slightly out of step with the “vibe of the evening”, but I didn’t give a damn. I’d make the same choice again today, just to “break up” the atmosphere a little.
Roy Nathanson – Sunny (Sotto Voce, 2006)
This is a fantastic album by the legendary saxophonist (and here also singer) Roy Nathanson, whom I started listening to thanks to his previous career in The Lounge Lizards. Everyone plays and everyone sings, while Napoleon Maddox is there for the beatbox rhythm. “Sunny” is an obvious choice as a cover of a hugely popular and well-known song, in one of the most entertaining versions I’ve heard. Certainly the one most to my taste.
Eyot – Druids (Similarity, 2014)
I mentioned the local band Eyot a little earlier in the paragraph about Get the Blessing, and also previously in my piece about Serbian jazz. This “post-jazz” track brings the dynamics of the playlist down a little; it sounds measured and repetitive. I suppose my idea was that the ears needed to “rest” after a few more intense pieces.
James Brandon Lewis - Buffalo Braves: Black Ark (Days of FreeMan,
2015)
That year JLB released an album inspired by hip-hop, naturally coloured by his recognizable saxophone in a stripped-down trio format. The track moves at a calmer pace, but is highly effective, with just the right balance of melody and instrumental explication.
The Kandinsky Effect – Petit Loup (Somnambulist, 2015)
Here’s an album I’ve pretty much forgotten about today. I used to play this track on various playlists and at the time it seemed like a good choice. From today’s perspective, it feels a little “off” in terms of how I fitted it in, but it is what it is.
Hazmat Modine - Two Forty Seven (Cicada, 2011)
Here I jump out of the pattern and into “alternative blues”. I don’t follow that scene too closely, but someone recommended the band to me back then and I really loved the whole album. Perhaps mostly because of the creative approach to harmonica, which departs from blues conventions, but also simply because of the excellent, accessible songs with a good, cheerful and slightly humorous atmosphere.
Mulatu Astatke and The Heliocentrics – Addis Black Window (Inspiration Information, Volume 3).
We remember how Mulatu “exploded” after his music appeared on the soundtrack to Jarmusch’s “Broken Flowers”. The entire album is fantastic, the track is great, it works wonderfully on a playlist… everything is as it should be.
Scotty Hard – St. Claire Hospital (Scotty Hard’s Radical Reconstructive Surgery, 2006)
Another electro-jazz extravaganza from the Thirsty Ear label, featuring both Matthew Shipp and John Medeski in a truly unusual combination. This track, however, has quite a good beat, so it still strikes me as a decent choice for the playlist, even though it has its own “edge” and isn’t exactly for everyone’s ears. But as I said, there was no need to “adapt” all the time anyway; the point was also to convey the essence of what Nova Festival represented.
Tom Waits- Talking at the same time (Bad as Me, 2011)
I’ve been a longtime Tom Waits fan, and I found his then-current album “Bad as Me” hugely entertaining—perhaps not among the best of his career, but certainly very lively and relatively accessible to people who aren’t die-hard fans of his music.
Strings & Tympani – Folllow (Hypen, 2016)
Drummer Øyvind Hegg-Lunde and guitarist Stephan Meidell “use improvisation as a tool to create catchy and rythmic music mixing influences from world music, jazz and lo-fi pop”, as the Bandcamp page says. This is a track with a beat, but also a skewed atmosphere that I thought might appeal to fans of Waits’s bolder albums.
Portico Quartet – Spinner (Portico Quartet, 2012)
As you can see from this playlist, I liked the British scene of the time, although in general I wasn’t happy that Portico had moved away from the minimalist repetition of the previous album towards an electronic sound. Whatever the case, I figured it was certainly better for a night-out crowd to hear one of these kinds of tracks.
The Bad Plus – I walk the line (It’s Hard, 2016)
The Bad Plus are absolute masters of entertaining covers with artistic integrity.
Nik Bartsch’s Ronin – Modul 47 (Llyria, 2010)
A brilliant play with tempo that gives an exciting context to minimalist repetition… I’m sure I found a connection here with the previous track, which also has a loose relationship with tempo. I knew no one was going to dance to these two tracks, but the event itself was one where people ate, drank and talked, so perhaps some tone or phrase they heard in the background would intrigue them.
Gettachew Mekuria & The Ex & Friends – Bati (Y’Anbessaw Tezeta, 2012)
For me, this is along the lines of Mulatu Astatke, but for lovers of alternative guitar music. An absolute hit that can work well for people who aren’t interested in “avant-garde jazz”, while at the same time pointing towards a fantastic album that pushes the boundaries of every genre present while remaining accessible and fun.
Plaistow – Mimas (Titan, 2015)
Somewhat in the vein of Ronin, another “repetitive band” whose track here has an uptempo vibe and an unexpected shift in dynamics in the middle. Probably not an ideal choice for this playlist, but still—a great song and a good album.
Thomas De Pourquery – The Perfect Man (Supersonics play Sun Ra, 2014)
I didn’t know about this band until I saw them at the Ljubljana Jazz Festival in 2016, where I was blown away by both the concept and the frontman. Fun and avant-garde in a hilarious combination.
Lucien Dubuis Trio - Hpc1ere (Tovorak, 2005)
This comes from the period when New Yorkers Gutbucket were my favourite band, working along similar punk-rock-jazz lines. A few years later they also recorded an album with Marc Ribot. I don’t remember what happened to them later and they disappeared from my radar, but they have a couple of excellent albums from the 2000s.
Neneh Cherry & The Thing – Accordion (The Cherry
Thing, 2012)
An absolutely brilliant combination of Neneh Cherry and the then all-star trio of Mats Gustafsson, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and Paal Nilssen-Love. From today’s perspective, I really love this final block of tracks.
Miles Davis – Black Satin (On The Corner, 1972)
One of the rare excursions into historical music. But I love this album and think it works wonderfully for any uptempo playlist, even with all its psychedelic moments. Or precisely because of them.
Sao Paulo Underground - Evetch (Beija Flors Velho E Sujo, 2013)
Rob Mazurek at the peak of his Brazilian phase. Short, catchy and effective.
Vijay Iyer Trio – Hood (Break Stuff, 2015)
Listening back now, “Hood” feels to me like an interruption in a fantastic sequence of well-connected tracks. It’s possible that this was precisely the idea—that I simply needed to step out of one rounded whole and into the next, slightly different one. I had heard “Hood” live at a couple of concerts even before the ECM album came out and already loved it then, while I experienced “Break Stuff” as the culmination of his trio expression. In the context of his music, this is another one of his “hits” for me, naturally from the perspective of contemporary creative music.
Menahan Street Band – Karina (Make the Road by Walking, 2008)
Those were the years when Daptone Records was at its peak, primarily thanks to Sharon Jones and Charles Bradley, while on the instrumental side of the spectrum Menahan Street Band was epic. Soul for the new millennium, grounded in mastery of the “old craft”.
Reut Regev R Time – Madeleine Forever (Exploring The Vibe, 2013)
Fantastic New York jazz. Trombonist Reut Regev had been to Serbia a couple of times around those years, which is how I became familiar with her work, and this album of hers is excellent, with a fantastic contribution from guitarist Jean-Paul Bourelly. I’m glad I was reminded of her work; she had slipped from my memory a little, and I’ll check out what’s happening with her, where she is and what she’s doing now.
Eyot – New Passover (Similarity, 2014)
Another piece by Eyot, this time a little more energetic and one that follows nicely from Reut Regev.
Fire! Orchestra – Ritual, part V (Ritual, 2016)
I’ve written about Fire! Orchestra several times and don’t have anything particularly new to add, except that it is Mats Gustafsson’s best band and, on top of that, absolutely fun in its sumptuous combination of alternative rock and avant-garde jazz.
Tin Hat Trio – Daisy Bell (The Sad Machinery of Spring,
2007)
A wonderful, wonderful band, consisting of clarinetist Ben Goldberg, guitarist (banjo, dobro, etc.) Mark Orton, and Carla Kihlstedt (violin, voice, etc.). A crossover for fans of NYC jazz and Tom Waits.
The Lounge Lizards – Bob and Nico (No Pain For Cakes, 1987)
I was thrilled when I discovered The Lounge Lizards and John Lurie’s music, and for a long time this was my favourite album of theirs. Marc Ribot is there too, but Lurie is still the absolute superstar here—or rather, his musical vision is. “Bob and Nico” has an insane “drunk” atmosphere; it sways and lounges, seductive and charming.
Miles Davis – One and One (On The Corner, 1972)
Another Miles track from the same album; perhaps it’s overkill, but I was probably listening to this album a lot around that time. Either way, I still think it’s a great choice!
Oddjob – Hang ’em High (Clint, 2010)
OK, it looks like by this point I’d grown a little tired of combining different kinds of music, so I reached for bands I’d already included earlier on the list. But no harm done. Another great piece.
Medeski, Martin and Wood – Shack (Friday Night in the Universe, 1995)
This was the first MMW album I heard, and initially I wasn’t particularly impressed by Medeski’s sound. Only later did I fall in love with some of their other albums and become a fan. But there was this one piece here called “Shack”, with an utterly fascinating drum solo by Billy Martin over a simple Medeski phrase. I was, and still am, absolutely blown away by that intro and the way the atmosphere rises from it towards the song’s climax. Masterpiece.
Medeski, Martin & Wood - Broken Mirror (Radiolarians III, 2009)
Here the focus is on the beautiful melody, from one of their better albums of that period.
Medeski, Martin & Wood – Mami Gato (End of the World Party (Just in Case), 2004)
OK, three MMW tracks in a row—I was probably already running out of time to finish the playlist and started taking shortcuts. But there was no way I could leave out “Mami Gato”, an absolute MMW hit with a Latin vibe.
Angles 9 – Compartmentalization (Injuries, 2014)
We bring the pace down and return to the realm of acoustic jazz, namely one of the greatest iterations of Martin Küchen’s ensemble.
Marvin Pontiac – Little Fly (The Legendary Marvin Pontiac - Greatest Hits, 1999)
Probably the craziest joke John Lurie ever pulled, creating the fake identity of a blues singer who ended up in a mental institution, or something like that. Naturally, his voice is very easy to recognize, while his talent for a simple blues and alt-pop song with a dose of (un)healthy humour is equally impressive.
Sex mob – Kitchen (Dime Grind Palace, 2003)
A completely twisted melody and an even more twisted solo by Briggan Krauss. This is one of the tracks that made me fall in love with Sex Mob back in the day, trumpeter Steven Bernstein’s longest-running band.
There was no particular reason why I put this song right at the end. Looking at it now, the total running time of the playlist was 3:25. The event itself lasted around 2–3 hours, but I probably added a little “extra” at the end just in case. Even if we had run out of music, the whole thing would simply have started again on repeat and no one would have minded, or even noticed.
Now that you’ve made it all the way to the end with me, there’s nothing left to do but post the link to the playlist on Mixcloud and offer it up for you to hear. Enjoy!
There does seem to be people who listen to older jazz, people who listen to new music… and a hole in listening and conversation about great music from 5-20 years ago.
Thank you Nikola for this collection.