A voice (presumably belonging to drummer and bandleader Makaya McCraven) declares this during the brief skit "Yo Yo" that opens PopUp Shop, the fourth and final of the new EPs bundled together on Off The Record whilst the band heat up a roiling free jazz clatter around him: "This is improvised music. Spontaneous composition."
The intro offers an apt description for both this really quite spectacular album and the Chicago-based jazz drummer and bandleader's general MO. Returning to the improvisation-based, pick-and-mix collaging of seminal albums such as In The Moment (2015) and Universal Beings (2017) that made McCraven one of the most consistently inspired and invigorating figures of the ongoing, creatively fertile 21st century jazz regeneration after the (relatively speaking) more composed precision of 2022's In These Times , the startlingly vibrant contents of Off The Record's constituent EPs are built out of judiciously filtered live improvisations recorded at shows and projects in various locations (LA, Berlin, New York, London, etc) between 2015 and 2025.
The four EPs – Techno Logic, The People’s Mixtape, Hidden Out!, and PopUp Shop – are separated more by the different combinations of musicians involved and the settings that birthed their spontaneity-forward contents than any hugely drastic stylistic leaps and shifts. That said, some differences in mood and method do emerge. Possibly the strongest of the EPs overall on a 2-LP collection with no even halfway weak links, Hidden Out! (named after Chicago club Hideout where the source material for the EP was recorded in 2017) leans towards acutely funky pulses and hypnotic repetition, with tracks like "Battleships" unleashing minimalist, trance-inducing rhythm music that brings to mind the dense rhythmic foundation of prime electric Miles Davis, only with the bubbling chaos on the surface stripped down to some spidery guitar licks. If the EP's robustly floating grooves and flashes of shimmering, xylophone-fronted prettiness ("Away") occasionally issue a whiff of the jazz-leaning, rhythmically nimble, uncategorisable multi-music of Tortoise, it kind of figures, as the line-up here includes prominent contributions from the Chicago quintet's guitarist Jeff Parker (a celebrated jazz guitarist in his own right).
Elsewhere, the appropriately titled Techno Logic
EP frontloads moments where the live band's throbbing grooves, sculpted
through McCraven's editorial touches, start to lean towards the
metronomic patterns and intense momentum-building of electronic music.
For evidence, witness the restlessly skittering trance of "Blue Gnu" or
the wild gallop of "Technology", with its enthused voiceover proclaiming
a promise of release through technology over a frantically skittering
pulse that brings to mind cyborgs dabbling in the fiendish yet airborne
complexity of be-bop, whilst sounding completely and intoxicatingly live
and unscripted: totally in the moment.
Perhaps understandably considering McCraven's long and
prestigious career as a drummer, all four EPs emphasise rhythm and
throbbing beats over all other elements. We're not talking of the
lightning-speed, blurry-limbed virtuoso showing-off of conventional jazz
drummers either: although McCraven fires off some impossibly intricate
patterns here, the focus is unfailingly on the infectious vibrancy of
the groove, taking us back to jazz's origins as a dance music through a
distinctly 21st century filter.
It's not that much of a push to describe the general gist of Off The Record
as live improvisations that are firmly rooted in the lexicon of jazz,
but filtered through the aesthetics of crate-digging sampledelica: the
record often sounds like a meticulously assembled beat collage (in the
style of Can, who edited down extensive extemporisations into tightly
condensed snapshots for the benefit of the listener) drawn from vintage
dusty vinyl, but it's all totally new, live and distinctly contemporary:
the opposite of retro, really. "Feel that!", instructs a voiceover at
one point, and it’s impossible not to comply: Off the Record is a magnificent treasure chest built for deep dives and repeat visits.
