Resavoir
By the end of the 2010s, the idea of starting on a structure of sample-based loop sketches and bringing in live musicians to riff off them had become a vital means of expanding on the possibilities of jazz as both a compositional medium and a form of communicative ensemble performance. Trumpet and keyboard player Will Miller serves as the de facto bandleader on this hybridized project, a take on instrumental hip-hop-fusion beats that’s more hi-fi and hard to pin down than the norm. On Resavoir, the blue-sky cheer of ’80s Japanese city pop and smooth jazz (“Resavoir”) aren’t too far removed from the spiritualism of Alice Coltrane or Pharoah Sanders (“Taking Flight”), and both modes streamline nicely into warped-yet-graceful analog synth explorations (“Plantasy”) and skittery, playful, bright-brass glitch-hop (“Woah”).