Hypnagogic jazz

This morning I rode a shuttle with Andy Hamilton of The Wire. I wasn’t quite there yet, else I’d have brought up a serious subject you’d all be very interested in. Instead we mostly discussed the toad in the hotel pond which is quite the discovery of the festival. I mean, he croaks in tongues. He’s just so happy to have conquered a kingdom that I suspect it hasn’t really sunk down yet he’s the only one in it. See the pic above.

Seconds after I had wished Andy that he’d be kind, it suddenly struck me: we should have discussed hypnagogic jazz. Obviously. How close do you get to the theoretical motor behind the ruling trend in contemporary music? I was privileged to get that close, I blew it all. I discussed a toad instead.

For those of you not in the know, a Wire analysis of today’s music has coughed up the undisputable fact that the most exciting stuff these days is hypnagogic. The other catchphrase they have is hauntology. Now religious readers of this blog will prick up their ears. I mean, I have mentioned ghost harmonies here, right? I mentioned how Miles Davis resurrects in select Scandinavians (actually that was something Hamilton didn’t at all enjoy). But maybe I should try to explain the concept first. I think it says that you sleep through your adolescent years and then all the bad taste that you’ve snored over hits you back at the exact point in life when you accidently publish a record of your music. And that’s cool. You better sample Chris de Burgh to be on the safe side.

The fact is, that once reality has been structured by leading journalists, it cannot escape back into the chaos it came from. All music is now doomed to become hypnagogic by the sheer power of the word. And frankly I prefer that to musicians being under the influence. Also this should put a stop to all rumors of jazz being a dead art form. It’s maybe more thoroughly asleep than some other musics, but that, by the authority of The Wire, is now a virtue.