A full length track from Miles Okazaki's 2017 album \"Trickster.\" Video and editing by Dimitri Louis. Studio footage from the recording session at Systems Two Recording Studios, Brooklyn, NY. Featuring Miles Okazaki, Craig Taborn, Anthony Tidd, and Sean Rickman.
This composition is basically a long guitar solo. On the album it serves as a kind of meditation between more hectic episodes. The graphic at the bottom right of the screen is a visualization of the harmony, which is only three notes mutating into various shapes. It is a chromatic circle with \"C\" at 12:00.
From the liner notes:
“The Calendar” is a song about celestial movements, and comes from the story of the Egyptian god Thoth, the trickster who beat the Moon in a game of dice. The Moon had 360 days, and Thoth won 1/72 of them. He then added these five days to the original 360 to make a 365 day calendar. The Moon lost some of its light, and was forced to wax and wane. This composition is built with numbers. There is a 19 year repeating cycle of moon phases called the Enneadecaeteris, and in this song the shifting harmonies in the song are all 19 combinations of three notes, moving through three inversions. They mutate regularly over the course of 72 bars, but rhythmic illusions are used to hide some of this clockwork.
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On \"Trickster\":
“a mature work for the ages.” – Pop Matters
“an expression of deep, systemic intrigue” – New York Times
“glorious braids of melody.” – Pitchfork
“a true concept album” – The Wall Street Journal
individual and distinct imagery” – Bandcamp “Best New Jazz”
“a real breakthrough.” – JazzTimes “Editor’s Pick”
“an intellectually hefty album that feels weightless” – Downbeat “Editor’s Pick”
“beguiling new quartet album” – WBGO
“a new reflection of the music’s roots in jazz, funk and blues” – The Los Angeles Times
“autoridad y convicción” – El Intruso
“un disco sorprendente” – All About Jazz Italy
“une musique intense et colorée – Jazz Magazine (France)
“complex and grooving . . . ★★★★“ – Downbeat
“latticework of bouncy rhythms” – Financial Times
“new forms of expression” – JazzScene
“ferocious forward momentum” – Textura
“an eruptive guitarist” – Stereogum
“precision oriented approach” – AllAboutJazz:
“elaborate, internally rhyming forms” – NYC Jazz Record
“both adventurous and accessible” – Improvised
“elaborate layers of sound that intrigue and astound.” – JazzTrail:
“Play it loud . . . you can dance to it!” – Step Tempest
