Kuba Wójcik - guitar, electronics
Tomasz Licak - tenor and soprano saxophone,
Grzegorz Tarwid - grand piano, synthesizers
Krzysztof Szmańda - drums, percussions
Time Shift
Wydawca: OFFczART (2023)
Autor tekstu: Viačeslavas Gliožeris
Jazz golden era when it was it was music not only creative but also popular among public, when seen form the perspectives of decades, seems to lasted not so long time. Soon after its heyday the rock'n'roll was born but it wasn't Elvis Presley but Woodstock which buried the bright jazz future. And Paris barricades in a very same year of 1968. Rock music became a new world religion, with thousands of yesterday's jazz stars finding themselves jobless, useless and often homeless. Show business, which has been always quite critical to jazz commercial capacities, found rock much more attractive in that sense and turned its back to jazz – for years to come.
Many jazz musicians, trying to find their place in a new world or simply to survive, started to play rock – from jazz artist perspective, that way jazz fusion movement was born. Besides some initial euphoria and huge success of fusion early acts as Chick Corea's Return To Forever or Weather Report, fusion creative limitations and musical “sameness” bring it to decline just a very few years after. Funk-jazz-rock hybrid, essentially represented by Herbie Hancock's Headhunters was even more short-living. For a decades to come jazz fusion as jazz-rock-fusion-latin crossover survived on a marginal scenes as a niche sub-genre. Even such fusion fanatics as jazziest world nation of Japanese gave up and at the edge of the new Millennium lost their long-lasting interest to this music.
Hereupon a new generation of jazz musicians started demonstrating their interest to rock music, already more contemporary one. From early brutal John Zorn's experiments mixing New York downtown free jazz with Japanese avant-rock (on “Naked City”) to later Bill Frisell and Electric Masada works, new, much more eclectic and chaotic form of jazz fusion was born. In a New Millennium it got a new influences from ethnic music and electronics artists as well.
Warsaw-based bass-less quartet Time Shift is are an obvious product of the above mentioned contemporary eclectic fusion wave. The band was founded in 2018 by guitarist/electronics artist Kuba Wójcik, renown by his work in Minim band. On their debut album (“Flash Years”, 2020) besides of “cosmic” aesthetics, recalling progressive rockers of 70s (Hawkwind, Van der Graaf Generator, etc), the influence of contemporary nu jazz (or New Millennium urban hipster jazz) is obvious. Guitar sounds and electronic effects are quite abstract, but mellow and tuneful, with all sound being often on a polished side. Still, there are some true rock guitars moments, rhythm changes on the same song and quite free pieces too.
On their new, second, album “Time Shift” the quartet starts from the similar point but shifts towards more rock-oriented sound. Same way as some other contemporary bands (as rule they all have band's names in rock culture tradition, not named by members' names, as is usual in jazz), Mad Ship plays here quite tuneful electronic rock songs with sax inserts and longish freer sections. Cosmic themes are not dominating anymore, but still presented with characteristic old-school electronics loops and bubbles (“Watchmaker 1 & 2”), even with touch of psychedelia in a moments (“Witching Hour”). Some pieces come right from prog rock of 70s library (“Big Time”). There is enough place for Frippean angular guitars and some post 80s King Crimson's aesthetics too. “Wake Up” is a true rocker, coming from Fripp & Co. stables. Even more conventional songs, as tuneful and mellower “Stream”, radiate chamber rock ballad spirit against more hip jazzier pieces of Mad Ship debut.
Similar music isn't all that rare on nowadays scene, usually more interesting artists come from regions where jazz-rock has some specific traditions and in one or another form has stronger local following. Some better examples are Serbian Hashima and Finnish Black Motor, among others. Usually popular locally, they rarely gain international success (Hashima's second album “The Haywain” has been re-issued on American Odradek label though). Returning back to review's beginning, covering the wider range of musical genres can provide wider audience to the artist, still there is some risk to lose the focus. All in all, it's a listener who decides.
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