After digging the Delikatessen Playlist out of oblivion and writing about it, I thought it might be interesting to see whether I had made any other playlists “back in the old days.” During the (early) 2000s, I listened to a huge amount of music, before my taste partly evolved towards some other musicians and styles of jazz. I thought about it for a while and remembered that around 2007–2009 I had several interesting activities that preceded the launch of Jazzin.rs.
In 2007, my friend Nenad Borović, who was working at the Student Centre in Zagreb at the time, asked me to join the Radio SC project – a non-profit radio station operating within the institution, under the ambitious and creative slogan “Kultura promjene” (Culture of Change), which applied to all of the Centre’s cultural activities in those years. Alongside several interviews I did that year at the N.O. Jazz Festival (with William Parker, Satoko Fujii and Wayne Horvitz) for the festival production, we agreed that I would create weekly jazz playlists where I would have the freedom to be as avant-garde as I wanted. In other words, to stick to my own musical taste, which corresponded with the kind of jazz concerts SC was presenting at the time.
The playlists started in March 2008 and, by a happy coincidence, I opened a blog where I kept track of them, along with information about the albums the tracks came from and their release years. Since I was also writing at the time for the then very popular Serbian website Popboks, I also posted links to those reviews. And then, when the editor rejected my proposal to interview Otomo Yoshihide because it wasn’t commercial enough (no hard feelings – I understand the laws of the market), I thought I could also use the blog to publish texts I couldn’t manage to “sell” to the editorial team but still felt deserved to appear somewhere. Once I already had playlists, reviews, interviews, etc. on the blog, the next natural step was to gather a few like-minded people and launch a jazz website at the end of 2009.
I called the blog “Jazz, Glamour and Discourse,” which was a reference to a chapter in Viktor Pelevin’s book Empire V called “Glamour and Discourse.” By now, I can’t even remember whether there was any deeper meaning to it or whether I simply liked the way it sounded.
Anyway, these days I went through the many playlists I had published and checked how much they correspond with my taste today. Among these musicians are several of my all-time favourites, such as William Parker, Dave Douglas, MMW, Steven Bernstein and others, whom I still listen to with undiminished enthusiasm. But I also noticed that there was a lot of music I no longer remember. Or some that simply faded into the background. There was quite a lot of free jazz, or post-bop with a free flavour, this or that kind of avant-garde music that was pretty loud and frenetic. Or, if it was slower, it often had to have some “unexpected twist” or be “ironic” according to the criteria of conventional musical beauty. I remember listening to music very loudly (which is increasingly rare these days).
I had shows on Radio SC for about a year, although there were quite a few summer and holiday breaks, so you couldn’t really say it was particularly long-lived. I went through the lists and listened to some of the tracks again, then picked around thirty to dig out of oblivion. The Mixcloud link is at the bottom of the post, but before that, let’s revisit each track one by one.
AND NOW, FINALLY, THE PLAYLIST.
Mary Halvorson Trio - Old Nine Two Six Four Two Dies (No.10) (Dragon’s Head, 2008)
The first track from Mary Halvorson’s first album, a guitarist whose style I fell in love with back when she played in Trevor Dunn’s Trio Convulsant and whose albums I still follow with great pleasure today.
Billy Bang - ReflectionS (Vietnam: Reflections, 2005)
I first heard violinist Billy Bang on William Parker’s album Scrapbook, which I still consider a masterpiece. He was a complete revelation to me. Still, later on I never really found enough time to get into his work as a bandleader. Vietnam: Reflections was one of his albums I loved the most, but which I had meanwhile forgotten amid the flood of other music. Nice to be reminded of it.
Kidd Jordan, William Parker, Hamid Drake – Forever (Palm of Soul, 2006)
I was obviously heavily influenced by the Parker-Drake universe, and that was how Kidd Jordan made his way onto my playlist.
Happy Apple - Youth Oriented (Youth Oriented, 2003)
After I fell in love with The Bad Plus, I went through and found all the projects the band members had worked on. This was the band drummer Dave King was playing in at the time.
Michael Dessen Trio - Restless Years (Between Shadow and Space, 2008)
Around those years I started closely following the activities of the Clean Feed label, and this was one of the albums that got under my skin that year – I can tell from the fact that I also wrote a review of the album.
Okkyung Lee - On A Windy Day (Nihm, 2005)
Experimental extravagance, but also something that I feel would intrigue me today if I were hearing it for the first time. I’ll have to return to the album.
Gutbucket - Lift Cover, Pull Cord (Dry Humping the American Dream, 2004)
For several years, Gutbucket were my absolute favourite band, with their combination of punk, jazz, klezmer and who knows what else. It’s hard to single out any track as the “best,” but this album as a whole left me speechless, completely blown away when I first heard it.
Louis Sclavis - Lost on the way (Lost on the Way, 2009)
Louis Sclavis is an interesting musician in every era in which he has played. What I find particularly interesting about him is that I have the impression he was never especially “trending,” to use today’s language. He has simply been consistently and persistently releasing excellent music for decades without too much fuss. Even though he is on ECM, I have never thought of him as a stylist in that direction; he has always been distinctive and authentic.
Ted Reichman - Distortion 1 (Emigre, 2003)
Ted Reichman played in earlier incarnations of The Claudia Quintet, the group led by John Hollenbeck. This was his solo project, which at the time found a home on Zorn’s Tzadik label.
Luis Lopes Humanization 4tet - Long March (For Frida Kahlo) (Humanization 4tet, 2008)
Another musician I discovered by following the Clean Feed catalogue.
The Claudia Quintet - They Point...Glance...Whisper...Then Snicker... (Semi-formal, 2005)
I mentioned John Hollenbeck a moment ago, a drummer and composer whose music I still follow today. Over the past couple of decades, he has turned out to have a remarkably consistent, great career in which every new project represented an interesting evolution in his expression. The Claudia Quintet still sounds as fresh and modern today as it did 20 years ago.
Louis Sclavis – Bakiff (Ellington on the Air, 1992)
Everything I wrote about him above applies here too 😊
Michael Bates – Fellini (Clockwise, 2008)
Released on Dave Douglas’s Greenleaf label, so that was almost certainly how I discovered this musician, whom I later somewhat forgot about. I also wrote a review of the album Clockwise back then, so I conclude that it was one of my favourite albums of that year. Today it sounds good enough to remind myself of it and perhaps play the whole album again.
Bill Frisell – Struggle (History, Mistery, 2008)
Wonderful, wonderful music. Perhaps even Bill Frisell’s best album ever.
Bobby Previte & The New Bump - There Was Something In My Drink (Set the Alarm for Monday, 2008)
There was another excellent album of his, Pan Atlantic, released a year later. Great to be reminded of it.
Dave Douglas Keystone - Married Life (Moonshine, 2007)
An absolutely fantastic line-up and an outstanding album. Dave Douglas is a legend. Over the following decades I didn’t always love all of his albums, but I’m fascinated by his consistency and his choice of musicians for the new bands he puts together.
Steven Bernstein – Naphtali (Diaspora Suite, 2008)
Alongside his work with his main band Sexmob and a number of other projects, Steven Bernstein released a fantastic series of albums on the Tzadik label during the 2000s: Diaspora Blues, Diaspora Soul and Diaspora Suite. The album titles and the fact that he released this series of albums with Zorn point towards a specific interpretation of Jewish musical tradition in a contemporary context, but also through crossovers within certain genre frameworks. The title Suite itself doesn’t suggest the stylistic framework clearly enough, but here all of it sounded in a certain Bitches Brew mode, with an impressive level of psychedelia. Great album.
Francesco Bearzatti Tinissima Quartet – Russia (Suite for Tina Modotti, 2008)
At the time I listened to more American than European jazz, and saxophonist Francesco Bearzatti is exactly the kind of artist I could fall in love with today if I were hearing him for the first time in 2026. He played in Belgrade a long time ago, which is how I became familiar with his work, and later returned to Pančevo with this line-up, while on another occasion he came to the Belgrade Jazz Festival with Giovanni Guidi.
Mostly Other People Do The Killing - Two Boot Jacks (This is our Moosic, 2008)
The most hilarious band of that era, featuring two extraordinarily talented horn players, Peter Evans and Jon Irabagon.
Dennis Gonzalez Jnaana Septet - Portugal (For Linda Sharrock) (The Gift of Discernment, 2008)
Dennis Gonzalez would probably be classified today in some “spiritual jazz” category, except that in his version it isn’t “beautiful ambient music” but also brings a dose of something slightly more dangerous, otherworldly.
Chris Speed - Skipping Really High (Iffy, 2000)
Chris Speed is one of those musicians whose style I have always really loved and who has always sounded different to me from every other saxophonist (or clarinettist) on the scene. I mostly liked him as a sideman, but there was this one album in his discography that I paid particular attention to back in the day.
Vijay Iyer - Comin’ Up (Tragicomic, 2008)
Today Vijay Iyer is a canonical, major name in contemporary jazz, and the album Tragicomic already presented him in the style that is recognisably his today.
Wayne Horvitz - Disingenuous firefight (Forever, 2002)
I first heard of Wayne Horvitz thanks to the fact that he was a member of Zorn’s legendary Naked City line-up. When I went to the N.O. Jazz Festival in Zagreb in 2007, Horvitz performed with a chamber ensemble completely different from anything associated with Zorn’s universe – I hadn’t been keeping up. But I liked it, so I dug around a little to see what he had been releasing during the 2000s.
Todd Sickafoose - Paper Trombones (Tiny Resistors, 2008)
I could somewhat compare this album to what Bill Frisell represented in the jazz world – a combination of Americana and blues with contemporary jazz in an accessible and beautiful context, but with enough of a distinctive authorial stamp.
Ras Moshe Quartet - Far Sight (Transcendence, 2007)
A kind of Coltrane-style jazz from that period.
Bill Frisell - Struggle Part 2 (History, Mistery, 2008)
Bill Frisell on repeat, because why not.
Anderskov Accident - Fibo ludo (Unity of Action, 2006)
The same year they released the album, Danish band Anderskov Accident played in the midnight programme of the Belgrade Jazz Festival. Since I didn’t have enough money to see all the concerts (and I still wasn’t a jazz journalist), I had to choose carefully which concerts to buy tickets for, so I went for this excellent post-neo-fusion-something. I even bought the CD after the concert.
Kamikaze Ground Crew - Diamonds Are Just Glass (The Scenic Route, 1990)
I had completely forgotten about this band. Most likely, I wanted to get hold of and listen to every album Steven Bernstein had ever played on, including this one, where he was still quite young. But let’s say I liked this band in the same way I liked Roy Nathanson’s Sotto Voce, which came much later – vocal jazz with spirit and wit, which manages to sound fun and “ironic” while at the same time being conventionally beautiful.
William Parker - Lights of Lake George (Double Sunrise Over Neptune, 2008)
The grand finale of this playlist, an epic 27-minute track by one of my favourite musicians of all time. “The specially commissioned world premiere of Double Sunrise Over Neptune took place on June 19, 2007, opening night of Vision Festival XII,” according to the official information. And a little more information: “On “Lights of Lake George”, Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay sings the mantra Surya Pranam, and then a Tarana – an improvised composition of Persian devotional syllables”. Spectacular.