REVIEWS
Spinner.com
August 26th, 2010
8/26/10
By Tad Hendrickson
Kneebody Presents a Democratic Collective's Mix of Jazz and Rock
Jazz is traditionally a music of names and hierarchy. This goes back to great bandleaders like Ellington and Basie, but also applies to many smaller groups today where you get the Vijay Iyer Trio, David S. Ware Quartet, Wayne Shorter Quartet, or even simpler tags like Sonny Rollins or Herbie Hancock. Nonetheless, there have been notable exceptions to this premise of leadership with groups such as the Modern Jazz Quartet, Weather Report, the Bad Plus and Kneebody.
Kneebody is a New York/Los Angeles quintet of thirtysomethings that have been kicking around for 10 years. Featuring keyboardist Adam Benjamin, trumpeter Shane Endsley, electric bassist Kaveh Rastegar, saxophonist Ben Wendel and drummer Nate Wood, the band has always had the same lineup, honing its vision into something that hovers in the worlds of jazz and rock while tossing in other genre elements, as well.
"We are a democratic equally owned-and-operated band with shared ownership and leadership," Endsley points out. "Everyone brings in music and everyone votes on everything. Musically, it's a band because it's always been just the five of us."
The band returns now with its third album, 'You Can Have Your Moment,' which is an excellent new 12-song collection. To rock fans, the new offering invites easy comparisons to Tortoise and other post-rock bands thanks to Kneebody's muscular sound, interest in tricky and sometimes downright complicated songwriting, and a willingness to eschew vocals. At the same time, jazz fans will hear a different set of touchstones. There's an element of jazz fusion (without the wankiness) thanks to electric bass and keys that creates a strong groove. Of course, improvisation is at a premium as well; yet, the band also takes into account some modern acoustic jazz's interest in bold melody and innovative sense of harmony.
"I like this band because we're loud," Endsley says, weighing in on the matter. "If you want to talk a little bit, that's fine, because our sound is going to bury you. Have some fun. At the same time, the audience is tuned in if the music is engaging. I like the old-school concept that people can walk in and say hi to a friend they see, unlike jazz clubs now where you have to sneak in and be quiet on the way to the table and hope that your chair doesn't squeak."
That isn't to say that the group hides behind a wall of sound. Four of the five band members met at the Eastman School of Music and some have gone on to get secondary music degrees. The quintet's ventured into avant-garde and classical with vocalist Theo Bleckman on its last album in 2008, which was the Grammy-nominated (in the Classical Crossover category) 'Twelve Songs by Charles Ives.'
Kneebody have also created a language based on musical cues whereby any musician can play one at any time to change the music's tempo, key or song. Different bands have different strategies for conveying ideas and moving the music and improvisations forward; Kneebody's have gotten complicated and nuanced, making it downright tricky if the quintet ever has to bring in a temporary replacement. According to Endsley, that's the downside of being in a leaderless band – everyone needs to be there for it to work right, which can be complicated with members on two coasts with all of them working on outside the band as well. That being said, no one in the band would change anything.
"We've enjoyed the changes we've gone through," Endsley says with obvious pride. "We've gone out and done different gigs with different people and then come back together. This variety of professional experience makes it feel like our music is really growing and changing over the years. The band sounds and plays a lot differently and a lot better now than starting out a few years ago."
This ongoing sense of friendship serves both the band and the band concept well. It's a chemistry between the members, but it's also something more than that. Drawing inspiration from rock and pop worlds – which some members are very active in – the group's objective is to make its music as enjoyable to listen to by the audience as it is for the members to play.
"For us I think the most important thing is for people to feel pulled in by the music and enjoy it on a personal level," Endsley says. "Our music is what it is, but we want to extend a welcoming hand even if people come in and don't know exactly what is going on. I feel like some people are afraid to listen to jazz because they feel like they have to know what's going on. And if you don't know what's going on, you just don't get it. I hope that we in the jazz world get better at that."
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Spinner.com
New York Times
August 13th, 2010
8/13/10
By Nate Chinen
Kneebody
Cohesion is the truest constant in the music of Kneebody, a band that inhabits the borderland abutted by post-bop, indie-rock and hip-hop, without seeming to give much thought to the borders. The group released an ethereal album of Charles Ives songs last year, earning an unlikely Grammy nomination in the classical crossover field. “You Can Have Your Moment” (Winter & Winter), the follow-up, takes a screeching turn in the direction of groove. At the album’s core is a lean but darkly woozy rhythm section composed of Adam Benjamin on Fender Rhodes piano, Kaveh Rastegar on electric bass and Nate Wood on drums. The trumpeter Shane Endsley and the saxophonist Ben Wendel make up the front line, though not always with respect to melody. Everyone proves himself a resourceful improviser, but over the course of a dozen thoughtful originals — ranging from the sober hum of “The Entrepreneur” to the stuttering lunge of “No Thank You Mr. West” — their clout registers as a cogent whole.
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NY TIMES
All About Jazz
August 8th, 2010
8/07/10
By Troy Collins
Following in the wake of Twelve Songs by Charles Ives, a 2009 collaboration with avant-garde vocalist Theo Bleckmann, You Can Have Your Moment is Kneebody's second album for the enterprising German label Winter & Winter, and the quintet's fourth full-length release since its self-titled 2005 debut on Greenleaf records. Similar to the band's sophomore effort, Low Electrical Worker (Colortone Media, 2007), this heavily amplified session finds the young ensemble delving further into electronic territory, eschewing the partially acoustic instrumentation of previous endeavors for a more plugged-in sound.
Continuing to explore a variety of genres, the five members of Kneebody juxtapose the fractured rhythms and tempos of M-Base funk, the impressionistic palette of chamber-pop, and the cool futurism of post-rock into a cohesive fusion of styles. Syncopated rhythms, shifting time signatures and contrapuntal harmonies underpin the cantilevered foundations of the group's sophisticated writing, bolstered by a straightforward melodic sensibility that values soulfulness over virtuosity.
The kaleidoscopic array of Fender Rhodes patterns that underscore "Call" are indicative of the former—a testament to keyboardist Adam Benjamin's creative talents, honed as a regular member of Dave Douglas' Keystone sextet. The congenial interplay that introduces "High Noon" spotlights the bond between saxophonist Ben Wendell and trumpeter Shane Endsley, whose emotive horns spar and feint with impetuous fervor. Bassist Kaveh Rastegar and drummer Nate Wood infuse labyrinthine forms with graceful aplomb, providing stalwart focus to an array of approaches, from the fractious intervals of the angular "Nerd Mountain" to the rubato ebb-and-flow of the ethereal tone poem "The Entrepreneur."
Brief and to the point, none of the twelve tunes break the seven minute mark, with many half that duration. Individual solos are brief and thematically driven—models of economy and compositional foresight. On "The Blind," the quintet works in opposition to the pithy metric grooves it excels at, patiently developing a heartrending theme that expands to anthemic proportions in under four minutes—a miniature-pop symphony in all but name. From the metallic grind of "Teddy Ruxpin" to the opulent balladry of "Desperation Station," Kneebody has found a viable middle ground between the emotional accessibility of popular music and the cerebral heights of free improvisation. You Can Have Your Moment offers listeners a chance to have their own.
Track listing: Teddy Ruxpin; Held; The Entrepreneur; No Thank You Mr. West; You Have One Unheard Message; The Blind; You Can Have Your Moment; Desperation Station; Nerd Mountain; Call; Unforseen Influences; High Noon.
Personnel: Adam Benjamin: Fender Rhodes, effects; Ben Wendel: saxophone, melodica, effects; Shane Endsley: trumpet, effects; Kaveh Rastegar: electric bass, effects; Nate Wood: drums.
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ALL ABOUT JAZZ
Kneebody Brings Fresh Sound to SF JAZZ
December 18th, 2007
By Aaron Nicholas Arabian
Kneebody
25th Anniversary San Francisco Jazz Festival
Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, California
November 7, 2007
While yesterday's jazz greats had swing, bebop, and hard bop forming the core of their influences, the young improvisers of today have been brought up with a whole spectrum of musical influences, traditions and styles. From electronic music to hip hop to hard rock, the new generation of musicians soaks up everything around it and comes up with many nice surprises. Kneebody, a band of LA-based musicians, is a perfect example of a genre-defying fresh new sound. Performing recently as part of the San Francisco Jazz Festival, the group was featured on a concert program subtitled “New Discoveries.” Although many fans of more straight-ahead, mainstream jazz might have been put off by the aggressive, abrasive, even “noisy” approach of Kneebody, no one could deny that the group has carved out a sound completely its own, taking the improvisational spirit that jazz fans love and mixing it with an arresting, multi-faceted aesthetic at once refreshing and challenging.
After a brief intro, the band went into a pulsing, rhythmic piece focusing more on composition than improvisation. At times the five members seemed to have their own individual rhythmic agendas, with melodies and chords dancing around each other in a manner echoing Steve Reich’s minimalist compositions.
Most of the set was aimed in a similar direction, each tune an unpredictable series of grooves some of which resonated with the dark soundscapes of Radiohead—gloomy and textured but with Kneebody’s signature harmonic and rhythmic complexity. The penultimate tune (for this listener the most exciting number on the program) started with trumpeter Shane Endsley playing a lyrical, fanfare-like passage with Arabic flavors. Picking up a cue in the melody, percussionist Nate Wood began with some cymbal-concentrated drumming, laying down the first in a long series of morphing grooves while the horns followed closely, playing rhythmically tight melodies and creating oxymoronically sweet-sounding dissonances.
“Although many fans of more straight-ahead jazz might have been put off by the abrasive approach of Kneebody, no one could deny that the group has carved out a sound completely its own.”
At times the rhythm section sounded like Metallica trying to play funk, or perhaps The Family Stone attempting metal. Saxophonist Ben Wendel’s solo was frantic yet calculated, incantatory yet interesting, as he stamped out unique phrases that seemed almost intentionally unsatisfying.
It can be extremely difficult to tell how much of a Kneebody performance is improvised and how much is composed. The group is known for using a series of pre-planned musical cues to get from one groove to the next, or to change tempos, to modulate to a different key, or to signal certain members to drop out as well as come in. Such “planned spontaneity” lends itself to a fascinating, albeit sometimes enigmatic, sort of group improvisation that in turn creates the impression of the song practically playing itself. The tune “Coat Rack,” for example, though well-known to listeners of the band's first album, had an extended solo section after the head, unlike the sequence of solos and soloists on the recorded track. Keyboardist Adam Benjamin growled frantically on his distorted Rhodes over a bed of distorted bass and back-beat (occasionally break-beat) drums. When they went back into the head, the tempo was twice as fast and the rhythm a galloping, ping- pongy groove that the whole band contributed to with seemingly nonchalant precision.
At the same time, the Kneebody that so many followers of the LA music scene has grown to love—the group that used to play a weekly gig at a small Santa Monica club called The Vic, employing more of their signature cues more frequently while taking the songs to looser, more stretched-out, free-form realms with exhilarating solos and heady compositions—was less in evidence on this occasion. Perhaps it was the crowd and the nature of the event— a sit-down concert rather than an informal gig at a small local venue—that made the musicians tailor their music to a more general audience, providing easy-to-digest songs exhibiting their sound at the expense of some of the unpredictable energy.
Kneebody was, as always, engaging if not captivating, especially for anyone new to their music. A fan accustomed to their “older” sound may have wanted to catch some riskier, extemporaneous playing from the group and the soloists alike but, as always, the band displayed its distinctive approach to instrumental, improvised music. They captured the spirit of Bird, Monk, Coltrane and Sun Ra but reflected the cutting- edge sounds and styles of a new millennium.
Jazz Convention [Italy]
December 12th, 2007
Jazz Convention
by Diego D'Angelo, December 2007
(The following are excerpts from the original Italian)
"Jazz elettrico? No, oseremmo dire jazz futurista."
"Il suono della band è un mix di influenze radicalmente opposte, da Bjork a Bartok, da Squarepusher a Cannonball Adderley, da Frank Zappa agli Steely Dan, fondando qualcosa di decisamente nuovo. Tra tutti gli strumenti, quello usato in modo particolarmente innovativo - almeno in un disco jazz - è la batteria di Nate Wood, che abbandona lo swing e si produce in un suono secco, con pelli tiratissime un uso di piatti piuttosto parco, e sempre con un suono molto corto.
"D’altra parte, l’insistente uso di Fender Rhodes non può far saltare alla mente i Return To Forever di Chick Corea, e in modo particolare in Mr. Darcy, anche se in brani come Of course è praticamente impossibile non sentire l’influenza del Keith Jarrett dei tempi di Expectations. Assolutamente da segnalare Mahalia, un brano stupendamente rilassato per quanto sempre immerso in sonorità caustiche, che fanno inevitabilmente tornare alla mente certe atmosfere simili del Dave Douglas di dischi come The infinite. Il tutto però naturalmente, più elettrico, più elettronico, più funky, oseremmo dire "più metropolitano": più futurista, appunto."
Jazz Magazine [France]
December 12th, 2007
by Nicolas Bremaud
2007
(this review translated from the French by Kneebody superfans Steven Muller and Gabriel Kyne)
This album gives you seperate samples and tracks by Dr. Beauchef Penguin Dentist. You can remix them as you wish (as long as you don't make money off of them) but I wouldn't recommend it, not only because its not of great interest, but also because the original mix by the drummer Nate Wood, also responsible for recording the songs, is simply perfect and you couldn't do better.
Maybe it's this mix of haughty lyricism and an almost mathematical approach to the songs that make the sound of Kneebody like "West Coast" music. It reminds us of, particularly in Roll, David Binney's compositions, who lived in NY, but grew up on the Pacific coast.
The improvisations are parsimonious, very skilled, but always controlled by tight structures; the rhythms are rather heavy and binary. The extreme saturation of the Fender and the hammering of the drums (Poton, Notwithstanding) veer towards more a disheveled sound, in the likes of Gutbucket (New York) or accoustic Ladyland (London).
Kneebody is grand, yet showing it subtly and elegantly. All these groups are in the middle of meticulously erasing the line between jazz and rock (if not drawing new ones) much more efficiently than the jazz-rock bands of the 70s. Among them, Kneebody holds a strong place.
Kneebody
November 25th, 2007
Reviewed by: Glenn Astarita
A hip friend and music critic recently advised (or demanded) that I check out this very hip and young quintet. Long story short, the band’s latest album will sure be counted among my 2007 top-10 list. Powerful, articulate and teeming with youthful enthusiasm, this album is asymmetrical parts jazz, grunge, jazz-rock and punk. But the predominant component would be progressive-jazz as they stylishly rip through several genres while engineering an inimitable group-focused sound. According to the group’s website, the respective musicians have performed with well-known figures in the jazz, hip-hop and rock spectrum. But like-minded individuals usually generate some magic when aligned.
With a makeup consisting of horns, keys, and the bass-drums element, the band uncannily morphs punchy backbeats with colorific overtones and pesky, soloing spots. They’re a multidimensional unit for sure. And they navigate thru sinuous time signatures with the exactitude of a complex mathematical formula. It’s all energetically executed, where laid-back funk/blues motifs are seamlessly integrated with darting horns choruses, beefy fuzz-bass lines and memorably melodic riffs. At times, trumpeter Shane Endsley and saxophonist Ben Wendel roll of the rhythm section’s variable metrics with a smoothing edge.
They project a panorama of scenarios here, as the quintet also injects a textural approach to these largely, up-tempo and pleasantly, in-your-face and ears pieces. But they tone matters down some on the genteel work titled “Of Course,” then engage difficult rhythmic metrics via the hornists’ circular passages heard on the following number titled “Finlayson.” In other spots, the musicians fuse EFX into their game-plan. And it’s all meaningful and simply adds to the thrust or tonalities of a particular mood or segment. Don’t miss out, folks. This gem is an antidote for those who periodically experience listening fatigue, thanks to a glut of ho-hum recordings emanating from the affordable aspects brought about by the digital age
Dame Dos (Translated From Spanish)
September 13th, 2007
Sergio Piccirilli, El Intruso (link)
9/10 Rating
The imagination is not more than the advantage of which it is had in the memory (Pierre Bonnard)
Not always the things are what they seem. Not always a good synthesis expresses a set of things and, much less, it explains them.
Let us imagine to a girl caressing to a cat. We approached sigilosamente and we asked to him:
- Spider?
- No, cat.
An extreme reduction sometimes leads us to an almost irrational point that returns us to the place in where we were originally.
When I listened to speak for the first time of Kneebody, I interrogated my circumstantial interlocutor of the following way:
- What music does?
- Fusion, responded to me.
At that time the Thousand Davises in Bitches Brew, Chick Korea with Return came to my mind to Forever, John McLaughlin with Mahavishnu Orchestra, Joe Zawinul with Weather Report, Larry Coryell with Eleventh House, Tony Williams with Lifetime and, from that, the rest. Surely about that moment I thought “either all I listened to it, or all I know it”; and I followed my way.
Error.
In the case of Kneebody, the answer (although correct) was not the sufficiently abarcativa thing in description terms.
Although also it is certain that the precariedad of my question, of some form, induced to that. Let us continue giving loose rein to the imagination…
In a train the guard is requesting passages. A passenger begins to look for his ticket frenetically. In his desperation he reviews his pockets, the trunks, portafolio, but he does not find it. The guard smiles, observes moments, until she decides to take pity itself of the passenger. He removes the passage to him from the mouth (in where there was been all along) and follows its way. If we had been witnesses of the happened thing, we could conclude in which the fleeting one was an idiot.
How many times has been called on to us to live a similar or at least comparable situation? How many times in the life we acted as the guard and we followed our way?
Perhaps if we returned and we reviewed the situation with thoroughness, we would find a version different from the facts. It is enough like example to indicate that the young person of the story only had a used passage and she was chewing it so that the guard did not realize. Who was the idiot?
Return to the starting point. Kneebody is a fusion band.
Seguimos our way or we deepened?
Excuse all this perorata but, lately, I have developed to an irreducible analytical voracity and a irrefrenable will to know the principles original the things and to establish analogies of compulsive way. And this began when I changed the traditional breakfast of white coffee and toasted with jam by another one with vodka, gin and brandy. The concrete thing is that now always I see the things of two ways or, to be more precise, I see all double.
Kneebody represents a state posmoderno of the fusion music. It combines instrumental sophistication with virtuous improvisations.
In his conceptual nucleus it does not have you limit after the influences. Of Duke Ellington to Jimi Hendrix. Of Steve Reich to Aphex Twin.
Elements that are familiar but that they do not form an impediment to construct a cohesivo and original speech.
Kneebody is a dense amalgam of sorts and styles with a unified and singular voice. An implicit deal with M-Base funk, post futurist rock, the pop camarística introspection and a bittersweet one.
To find a new band integrated by young composers and eximios executants, always is inspirador.
Without going more far, to me it encourages to me and it impels to learn, to improve, to increase the knowledge…
Definitive: the day that finds in where it studies to be young, I register.
The tecladista Adam Benjamim is a respected composer, educator and improvisador that an ample recognition when integrating itself to the Dave Douglas Keystone Band obtained. The trompetista Shane Endsley is graduated as the Eastman School. In his short but prolífica trajectory, it has touched with John Hollenbeck, Ani Di Franco, Slavic Soul Party, David Binney, Steve Coleman, Tim Berne and Ralph Alessi. The drummer Nate Wood is member of the group of pop rock The Calling. The bear Kaveh Rastegar also is withdrawn of the Eastman School and comprises of the Thruster trio next to Timothy Young and Matt Chamberlain, besides to collaborate with musicians of the stature of Nels Cline, Car it Bozulich and Wayne Horvitz. The saxofonista Ben Wendel has touched with Dave Holland, the Todd Sickafoose' s Blood Orange, Nels Cline and Myra Melford, among others. Hace lacks more?
Low Electrical Worker opens with Poton. There the piano, low and the battery offer a powerful rythmical support so that saxo and the trompeta constructs to delicate textures of resistance, unfolding a speech of strange metric ruthless precision and that establishes a perverse game of seduction with laberínticas and controlled dissonances.
The adjustments in Blue Yellow White construct to polifónicas harmonies and rates in counterpoint, fixing, which seems to be the spine of the aesthetic one of Kneebody.
In the addictive Dr Beauchef Penguin Dentist, delicious groove dresses the harmonic skeleton in clothes hit single.
Flood on 12th Street is an exploratory sonorous block of brief, distant and surrounding outlines. An atmosphere retro characterized by the sound of the Fendher piano distorted Rhodes, in that the single ones neutralize the tendency, so common in the fusion music, to emphasize the technical virtuosity and the note vortex by on the compositivo factor.
Roll allows us to distinguish clear references to the minimalismo. In Notwithstanding they come near with authority to the rock and Of Course is closest to the pop one than we will find in Low Electrical Worker.
In the extensive Finlayson, the base is a generating usina of polirrítmica interaction, while the piano, the trompeta and saxo accentuate and condimentan the structural nucleus. The brief passage of Cupcake Baby goes of the jazz to electronic music. However, the intense misfortune of Looking Back is a combat until death with metrónomo (giggle in the end including). In the melódico drawing of Mahalia, the trompeta and saxo dispute the brush. Finally each one takes hold the own one and that gains the best one. A climatic vals-fusion, deliberately unfinished.
Mr. Darcy is an angular piece, cants and of economic vocabulary.
And the closing, with The Politician, offers a lacking frame of ornamentación, simple and empty (like most of the politicians).
Kneebody incorporates and assimilates, with a manifest balance, the aggressiveness of the rock, melodías of pop a baroque one, the virtuous improvisations that characterize to the jazz and intelligent compositivas structures.
In synthesis: they make fusion but with an explicit innovating vocation, more interested in formulating questions that in obtaining answers.
From time to time he is healthful to put a question mark in those things that for a long time have occurred like safe (Bertrand Russell)
For jazz, next wave could be Kneebody
August 8th, 2007
Richard Scheinin, Mercury News (link)
A century after Buddy Bolden, where does jazz go? After swing, bop, cool, modal, free, fusion, M-base, and a slew of other mini-movements, where now?
Kneebody has been thinking about this. The young electric quintet, four-fifths of which is from L.A., with one member winging in from New York, is something of a rock band with jazz chops and a classical obsession with structure. There are few extended solos; so long, Coltrane. Instead, there's a steady collective improvisation in which the whole musical environment - the key, the tempo, the texture - keeps shifting, often on a dime.
If that sounds brainy, it is. But it's handled with such apparent ease and infused with such thrashing grooves that it should be only a matter of time before Kneebody breaks through to a wider audience. Wednesday night at Stanford University's Campbell Recital Hall, a couple hundred cheering listeners, many of them teenagers attending the Stanford Jazz Workshop's summer camp, couldn't get enough of the group.
Mostly, I think, that was because of Kneebody's focus on rhythm. Drummer Nate Wood can take the weirdest tempo imaginable and make it sound like a tribal-punk call to the mosh pit. He is rhythmically conjoined not only with electric bassist Kaveh Rastegar and keyboardist Adam Benjamin but also with saxophonist Ben Wendel and trumpeter Shane Endsley, whose syncopated melodies, hocketing riffs and quick, concentrated solos fuel the rhythmic boil.
also Kneebody's focus on tunes, some of which last only three or four minutes. Within that time frame, the band moves from compositional signpost to signpost, while the players feed one another musical cues that trigger instantaneous changes of volume, key, orchestration and tempo. It's as if a switch has been pulled, pointing the group toward its next destination.
The concert, part of the Stanford Jazz Festival, included Endsley's "Blue, Yellow, White," which built off a stuttering melody, rocketed up with a quick solo from the trumpeter, landed a moment later in 1975, with Wood bashing out an electric-funk groove on his cymbals (the type Al Foster used to play with Miles Davis), suddenly slowed way down with trumpet and saxophone playing a unison mantra-riff, and kept on morphing.
"Flood on 12th Street," also by Endsley (the New Yorker in the band), had trumpet and saxophone floating, like Miles and Wayne Shorter in '68, through a Radiohead landscape, then turned into a nervous rock-out. Benjamin's "Unforeseen Influences" had a hip-hop coda. His "Roll" was bouncy, droll and detached, with a nifty little melody and chord progression; Wes Anderson should stick it in one of his films.
Awash with electronic effects (everyone except Wood is outfitted with foot pedals, switchboards, assorted gear), the music stayed in flux. For me, an old jazzer, it changed gears too often, skipping from place to place without adequately exploring the intervening territories. I wanted more solos (Endsley's a beautiful trumpeter; fat tone, clean lines), more grit and intensity.
But for this band, the exploration seems to be in the process, the controlled flux, the commitment to change. Maybe it's time for old jazzers to tamp down expectations and go for the ride.
Low Electrical Worker
May 27th, 2007
Troy Collins, All About Jazz (link)
A young quintet on the rise, Kneebody's self-titled 2005 debut on Dave Douglas' then newly formed Greenleaf records was an obvious indicator of its potential. The group’s sophomore follow-up, Low Electrical Worker (released on Colortone Media), is a dense amalgam of genres and styles delivered with a unified voice.
Filled with youthful vigor, Kneebody delivers a sense of palpable enthusiasm throughout these varied tunes. Weaving together an impressive collection of stylistic influences, the quintet knits threads of M-Base funk, post rock futurism, Sabbath-inspired thrash, bittersweet pop and chamber-esque introspection into a singular sonic tapestry.
Each piece runs through an array of perambulations inside modular structures; contrapuntal rhythms, polyphonic harmonies and metric tempo shifts are all part of the Kneebody aesthetic. Never just a means to an end, all these virtuosic trappings are at the service of tuneful, sing-song melodies bolstered by infectious rhythms. Accessibility is Kneebody's secret weapon.
With a distorted Fender Rhodes and fuzz-toned electric bass at its disposal, Kneebody occasionally rocks, hard. While the retro ambience of the Fender Rhodes is currently in vogue, it's nice to hear someone who really understands the intricacies and history of the instrument. Adam Benjamin is such a player. From waves of ring modulated distortion to ethereal vibe-like tonalities, he coaxes an array of otherworldly sounds from the instrument.
Bassist Kaveh Rastegar and drummer Nate Wood are an outstanding rhythm duo, interlocking in polyrhythms with an ease that belies their complexity. Saxophonist Ben Wendell and trumpeter Shane Endsley create a harmonious blend, weaving intricate dual horn counterpoint with ebullience. Always mindful of the tunes' structure, solos are thematically driven and designed to accentuate the tune at hand, not the ego of the soloist.
A heady blend of aggressive rock music conventions, gorgeously baroque pop melodies, virtuosic jazz improvisation and intricate compositional smarts, Kneebody forges headlong into the future. Low Electrical Worker is an ideal balance between popular music and jazz improvisation, fusion in the most perfect sense of the term.
The Future Of Instrumental Music
April 12th, 2007
Denver Westword
Kneebody has had many labels thrown at it, but none seem to fit. That said, the members of the transcontinental quintet (whose new album, Low Electrical Worker, is due next month) haven't exactly gone out of their way to make it easy for folks to pin down their shapeshifting sound. Thanks to a system of musical cues they've developed that allows each player to tweak nearly any element of any given song -- be it volume, orchestration, tempo or key -- the act's arrangements change constantly and zigzag through various vibes and moods. We asked trumpeter Shane Endsley to give Kneebody's chameleon-esque style a name and to explain how he and his bandmates cue-municate with each other.
Westword: Say you're talking with someone who's never heard you guys before. How do you describe exactly what you do?
Shane Endsley: Well, if I have to give a quick answer, the thing that I've been saying is "electro-acoustic instrumental music." I try to avoid the stylistic references. A lot of times, we've been labeled as funk jazz or fusion or post-jazz -- all these different things. But nothing seems to ring well. So I've been saying electro-acoustic instrumental music. And hopefully that covers it.
I was reading about how you use musical cues, which I think you borrowed from Steve Coleman, right?
Yeah, he's one of the guys I played with. He would do a couple of things. He had something that he would play for stopping the band and for changing tempo; there would be little things like that that would happen. That's more of a direct influence. But it's the kind of thing bands have been doing for a long time. Like, every band has its own language of cues for when it's the last time, or when you're going to vamp and all that stuff.
With our stuff, we're just starting to think about it and trying to expand it into this, like, whole system that would encompass any element of the music you would desire to shift at any point if you were thinking as a producer or an arranger-type head. So now we've expanded it so that anybody can cue the music. It doesn't have to all come from one person. And it can change anything, like volume, or the orchestration, or the tempo, the key -- just trying to cover everything. Like if you're on a vamp and want to cue chord changes, can you do that somehow? So there's, like, twenty of them.
I also read that when you guys compose stuff, you don't actually write anything down. So it's all pretty much by memory?
Well, whoever wrote it usually has his sketch, so they can refer to it if we forget parts. But we don't take the time to write lead sheets, usually, or parts, because we don't use them. So usually someone has his little sketchpad, and they're teaching the thing to everybody, one at a time. And then we try to learn each other's part so that hopefully we can switch. As much as we can, we try to get the music more and more modular.
Kneebody at Moody's
October 30th, 2006
Kneebody, an almost infinitely versatile quintet made up of Adam Benjamin (keyboards), Shane Endsley (trumpet), Kaveh Rastegar (bass), Ben Wendel (saxophone) and Nate Wood (drums), stopped by Moody’s Bistro & Lounge in Truckee for two free shows last weekend.
Though unmistakably a Modern Jazz band, the member of the group aren’t quite comfortable with that label.
“When we’re speaking to musicians, we try not to put a category to it because we feel like this isn’t really a category yet. When we talk to non-musicians we say it’s progressive instrumental jazz music. But ‘jazz’ is such a dangerous word at this point. Jazz covers 60 years of music, so ‘jazz’ could mean 100 different things,” Ben Wendel said during a break in between sets at Friday’s show. “But basically it’s a little bit of jazz, a little bit of classical, a little bit of hip-hop... and we put it all in the bag.”
At Moody’s, the band pulled a number of tricks out of its bag including a good deal of improvisation and some very creative solos. But it was the interaction among the players that drew the most appreciation from the University of Nevada, Reno jazz program students in the front row, as well as the patrons sitting at the noisier lounge bar.
As is always the case at Moody’s — which caters to a dinner crowd in the lounge until 9:30 or 10 p.m. — the band picked up the tempo and the volume as the night got older and the crowd loosened up.
“This is a 100-percent democratically-run band. Everybody has their thing, and they’re able to express it within the band, and we all come to a common place together,” Wendel said, adding, “It is more challenging, but in a way it’s better to have five band leaders, because you can go more directions.”
Just getting the band together can be somewhat challenging, for while four of the members live in Los Angeles, trumpet player Shane Endsley hails from New York City. But while living on the opposite coast can make it harder to join the rest of the band for practice sessions, Endsley said that the New York connection also brings another element to Kneebody’s sound.
“When they come out to New York, there is just so much music there; it really is the most concentrated place for especially newer music and adventurous stuff. So when they get there, they’re really amped up and catch a lot of music when they go out. So it influences the rest of the guys too when they come into town. So I think New York does have a pretty big influence, and that kind of balances out the one-to-four ratio in the band.”
The Kneebody shows were part of Moody’s co-owner JJ Morgan’s continuing attempt to build the club into a fixture of the jazz scene in Truckee and Tahoe by bringing in a nationally recognized act each month. And while Kneebody likely won’t be back through town anytime soon, you can hear more of their music online at www.ColorToneMedia.com.
Tahoe World - Paul Raymore
Kneebody Gets Jazzy at Modified
July 27th, 2006
Kneebody no longer toils in the jazz-anonymity abyss reserved for many modern-creative contemporary groups. In 2005, the 10-year-strong spontaneous jazz/rock/funk ensemble released a self-titled debut on pioneering jazz trumpeter Dave Douglas' Greenleaf Music label, and "the response has been wonderful," says bass player Kaveh Rastegar. The album, he says, "has really put us on the map."
On Monday, July 31, the five-piece band will show off its brand of fiery sonic spontaneity at Modified Arts. The group's freewheeling live performances move seamlessly from Herbie Hancock Sextant-inspired free funk to robust Bitches Brew rock-fusion to unlabeled avant-garde styles, all the more impressive considering that not all the members call Los Angeles their home (trumpeter Shane Endsley lives in New York City), thus making consistent rehearsals a luxury. "We have a long history together, and most of the music is memorized," says Rastegar, also a founding member of the 70-piece hip-hop orchestra daKAH who has gigged with Nels Cline and Carla Bozulich. "We are all just so psyched to be part of the band, and I think it shows during our concerts." Fusion phenoms Trio Oro will open the show.
Phoenix New Times - Steve Jansen
Chicago Tribune
December 13th, 2005
Breaking the Mold - Flatlands Collective, Kneebody spin jazz in opposite directions.
Like fire and ice, the two emerging bands that played Wednesday night at HotHouse hardly could have been more diametrically opposed.
Yet despite stylistic differences, they shared at least one critical trait: Each was determined to toss jazz convention to the winds and did so with unmistakable eloquence.
Dutch saxophonist Jorrit Dijkstra created the Flatlands Collective not long after he moved to to the U.S. in 2002 and began collaborating with Chicago musicians. But if the Midwest's topography inspired the name of the band, it had scant effect on the nature of Dijkstra's music, which was anything but flat.
Richly textured, subtly nuanced and built on multiple layers of melody, the music of the Collective merged the free-thinking nature of the Chicago avant-garde with elements of contemporary European classical composition. Much of this music suggested an intensely cerebral exercise, with carefully engineered stop-start rhythms, delicate dabs of electronically produced sound and a nearly complete avoidance of a straightforward beat.
When the band ventured into the occasional swing passage, one was startled to hear it, since practically everything else about this ensemble steered clear of the jazz mainstream.
If at first the music sounded so diffuse and muted as to lack coherence, before long the repertoire became more lucid and structured (or did our ears simply become adjusted to its aesthetic?). The other-worldly hums and drones that Dijkstra produced on lyricon, which might be described as a kind of digital clarinet wired to a computer, were answered by pungent bursts of dissonance from the rest of the band in a piece titled "Slitch."
And in the last work of the set, "Dipje," the band produced the exquisite blends of instrumental color one might sooner expect from a classical chamber ensemble.
In the end, the Flatlands Collective linked the intellectual firepower of the Dutch free-jazz scene with the instrumental virtuosity of some of Chicago's most accomplished creative improvisers, including trombonist Jeb Bishop and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm.
Though the band still must be considered a work-in-progress, it deserves respect for the unorthodox musical direction it's pursuing.
If the Flatlands Collective aimed for a studious brand of jazz, the comparably adventurous Kneebody--making its Chicago debut--strove for a much more visceral, accessible, beat-driven sound. Though not exactly dance music, the band's rock-tinged backbeats, back-to-basics riffs and motor-rhythm passages suggested it was playing for an audience that approaches jazz from a pop perspective.
Even so, there was much more here than a casual listening might suggest. Just when the band seemed to be sinking into a rhythmic groove, it sabotaged expectations by changing or suspending its tempo or meter. And by juicing up its acoustic work with keyboard electronics and other computer-processed sound, Kneebody italicized its every gesture.
Some of the most impressive work came from keyboardist Adam Benjamin, who produced a galaxy of space-age sound, while trumpeter Shane Endsley and tenor saxophonist Ben Wendel formed a taut and muscular front line.
-Howard Reich
Westword
December 8th, 2005
Giving the modern jazz world a much-needed kick in the ass, Kneebody has assembled a quirky brand of improv-based crossover jazz that's as refreshing as it is expressive. The New York/Los Angeles-based quintet's sound, which borrows equally from traditional jazz, hip-hop, rock and electronica, is anchored by hard-hitting beats and bass lines and tastefully bolstered by soulful '60s horn lines and ambient electronic noises. This unique approach reflects the diversity and experience of the individual members (keyboardist Adam Benjamin, bassist Kaveh Rastegar, drummer Nate Wood, saxman Ben Wendel and trumpeter Shane Endsley, a Denver native) -- who collectively have backed an assortment of artists such as Snoop Dogg, Ani DiFranco, Chaka Khan and Ravi Coltrane, among others. And unlike a lot of neo-jazz fusion groups, Kneebody's penchant for the groove never gets tedious. Although the players are apt to change keys or tempos at will -- they've developed a unique system of cues that they employ live to keep the arrangements fresh and evolving -- you don't have to wade through ten-minute-long atonal freakouts just to get back to the original jam.
Shawn Bauer
All About Jazz
December 7th, 2005
Kneebody
When trumpeter Dave Douglas parted ways with RCA/Bluebird—which released his projects between 2000 and 2004—he created Greenleaf Music to allow him better control over both his art and its delivery. He also planned to bring exposure to other artists. The first non-Douglas release on the new label, the self-titled debut by Kneebody, fits perfectly with Douglas’ view that music should transcend labels and artificial stylistic restrictions.
A quintet of players who have worked with artists as diverse as Ani DiFranco, Snoop Dogg, and Steve Coleman, Kneebody brings that very diversity to its own music, combining focused yet vivid improvisational interplay with detailed writing, and a sonic palette ranging from the purely acoustic to the outrageously electric. While it's not a fusion band by any standard definition, Kneebody’s trans-genre approach is nevertheless fusion in the broader sense of the word. Much like Lost Tribe—the 1990s band which ultimately brought significant attention to its members, including saxophonist David Binney, guitarist Adam Rogers, and drummer Ben Perowsky—Kneebody manages to combine visceral groove with cerebral musical ideas, making its arrival on the scene a significant one.
With the exception of drummer Nate Wood, everyone in the quintet—keyboardist Adam Benjamin, trumpeter Shane Endsley, bassist Kaveh Rastegar, and saxophonist Ben Wendel—contributes compositions to the disc, but it’s remarkable how unified the band’s vision remains. While it’s difficult to avoid comparisons to Lost Tribe, Kneebody retains a sound all its own, with an even broader stylistic purview. But the way that Endsley and Wendl’s lines intertwine—winding, snakelike, between unison and harmonies that range from close to open—begs comparison to the knotty writing of Binney and Rogers.
While there’s a strong funk element, it’s often with an aggressive edge that clearly leans more towards rock territory. Benjamin’s “Never Remember” shifts from a pedal-to-the-metal groove by Wood and Rastegar to a middle section that’s lighter in texture, before heading into a hard-hitting outro featuring Benjamin’s distorted Wurlitzer. Endsley’s “I’m Your General” finds Benjamin feeding his electric piano through a ring modulator and Rastegar’s fuzz-toned bass referencing ex-Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper. Rastegar’s evocative ballad “Victory Lap,” with its memorable theme, proves that Kneebody can relax the pace and approach the lyrical with equal intent.
With nearly half of the album’s dozen tracks under three minutes, one might expect a compositional focus. Still, Rastegar’s one-minute “Wide-Eyed”—a trumpet/bass/drums trio—is more about interplay, whereas Wendel’s “Clime Pt. I” and “Pt II” both blur the line, with clearly detailed horn lines resting over the more open-ended electronic backdrop created by Benjamin, Rastegar, and Wood.
With Kneebody’s intrepid collage of influences, Douglas’ interest in the group will come as no surprise. Purists will undoubtedly be offended by Kneebody’s blending of technology into the mix, not to mention the group's sometimes aggressive rock stance; but for those who want to hear how the jazz vernacular is being reshaped and the improvisational spirit re-contextualized, Kneebody is a band—and an album—well worth checking out.
All About Jazz - December Issue - By John Kelman
Downbeat
August 1st, 2005
Kneebody: Creating A New Language
At first, it seems that Kneebody chose a name that intentionally invited anonymity. After speaking to a couple members of the quintet, it becomes clear that they also took a firm stance against presenting a single bandleader. Equally crucial is that they wanted to invent a word that conveys no preconceived musical connotations.
"It's a nonsense word that my girlfriend came up with," said saxophonist Ben Wendel. "We wanted a short, memorable word with a nondefinable genre connection."
This collaborative dismissal of categorical purity runs throughout Kneebody's self-titled debut on Greenleaf Music. Serene keyboard and woodwind lines are played on top of driving rock drums. Orchestrated electronic noise flows into classically formed melodies. Each musical shift is episodic, rather than merely contrasting.
Kneebody's hybrids stem from influences on both American coasts. Wendel met trumpeter Shane Endsley, keyboardist Adam Benjamin and bassist Kaveh Rastegar when they all attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., during the late 1990's. As the individual musicians migrated among different jazz, rock and hip-hop groups, they performed together as a part of a weekly residency at the Temple Bar in Santa Monica, Calif., with drummer Nate Wood. "We basically wanted to do stuff that was less about standard form," Wendel said.
All of which requires some rules to make it continually interesting. So Kneebody created their own. Along with the musicians' compositions, they devised a language based on musical cues that each intrumentalist recognizes as a signal for immediately changing direction.
Endsley describes how this works in terms of his composition "Break Me". "I wanted to have a middle section where we overdub these different layers and there's these short things going in and out," Endsley said. "So it's faster paced than what would normally be a solo section where it's one person at a time standing. We jump in and out and on top of each other, like people playing drum 'n' bass, but not with that stylistic sound."
While most of Kneebody has remained in the Los Angeles area, Endsley lives in Brooklyn. Trumpeter Dave Douglas started paying attention to him a few years ago and then asked if he had any projects for his recently launched Greenleaf Music label. As it happened, Kneebody had just finished recording its CD and Endsley presented it to Douglas.
"Their music is a great direction for jazz musicians to go," Douglas said. "It's spontaneous and exciting. The writing is fresh, and the way they integrate it with improvising is unique."
-Aaron Cohen
Jazz Times CD Review
July 30th, 2005
The members of Kneebody have collectively logged hours with such a range of artists - Ani DiFranco to David Murray to Jurassic 5 - that it's tempting to write them off as another multi-hypenate in jazz's crossover era. But eclecticism isn't the point of their music, which sounds too convincingly effortless to be a self-conscious fusion. In fact, their debut on Dave Douglas' new label reinforces just how meaningless the F-word has become.
Kneebody bolts out the gate with "Break Me," a fuzz-tone funk tune by
trumpeter Shane Endsley that twists through a quick succession of formal convolutions. This immediately established the band's rhythmic prowess: Bassist Kaveh Rastegar, keyboardist Adam Benjamin and drummer Nate Wood establish a pocket and hold it tight, no matter what else happens in a tune. And that's saying a lot, considering that the band's originals rarely seek the comfort of a straightforward groove. This is especially true of those by Endsley and tenor saxophonist Ben Wendel - like a stutter-stepping "Coat Rack" and a Return to Forever inspired "Never Remember."
The full impact of Kneebody is in the ensemble. Their cohesive poise is what sells the experiment, which will hopefully yield another record
soon.
Jazz Times - Nate Chinen
The New York Times
June 24th, 2005
Rock, funk and electronic music commingle convincingly with jazz on "Kneebody" (Greenleaf), this quintet's recent studio debut; it's an update of the rugged, exploratory early fusion of Weather Report and Return to Forever, and just as likely to sound better live.
The Arrival of Kneebody
June 15th, 2005
The next major quake to hit LA may have less to do with shifting tectonic plates than with a crackling quintet thundering up the jazz charts with a powerhouse collection, at once challenging and accessible. Kneebody’s eponymous album floats like an iron butterfly and stings like a diesel. “It’s got a lot of testosterone. It’s a very energetic sonic experience,” says resident reedist Ben Wendel. And while their unique soul-jazz-on-steroids sound captures a growing cadre of Knee-heads, their beautifully crafted melodic ballads, and moody impressionistic sketches are the guilty secret.
Formed by Wendel, drummer Nate Wood, bassist Kaveh Rastegar, trumpeter Shane Endsley, and keyboardist Adam Benjamin, Kneebody runs jazz through a broad collective musical background to create a remarkably potent blend whose primary flavor remains jazz. “I’ve been describing our music as hybrid music,” Wendel explains. “We’re musicians that have have absorbed a lot of different styles of music. We’re just trying to make music that is an amalgamation of what’s around us now, just like everybody’s done from whatever era they’re coming up from. So, this music is a hybrid of all the tastes we like.”
“The cool thing about this band is, everyone in the band writes and everyone has a distinct voice,” enthuses Wendel. “Not everyone in this band is coming primarily from a jazz background. Everybody’s coming from different places. We’ve all studied jazz, we all understand the language and are able to express the complexity of jazz. But then, as much as we love jazz, everybody also has equal interests in other genres of music. In my own background, my mom was an opera singer for 25 years. She sang with LA Opera. Different sounds, different sections, it’s like the process of five different musical viewpoints coming together. This band is a leaderless band. This is an equal parts ownership kind of group.”
Keyboard player Adam Benjamin agrees. “It’s such a fundamental part of our music that any of us can control the direction of it at anytime, which is why I think our live show is pretty consistent. On any given night there’s going to be one or two of us that really feel strong enough and confident enough and creative enough to do a lot of the leading. You never really know who it’s going to be in a particular song. It’s really exciting.”
“It’s a very energetic thing, especially live. The last few tours we’ve been really having fun. I think that Nate, Kaveh, and I as a rhythm section, especially with Kaveh and I playing a lot of electronics and effected sounds, really try to think of it as though we’re one unit of sound. Often it’s difficult even for us to tell with particular tones, who in the band it’s coming from. That’s really what we aim for, something where we could really get outside of our established personalities as jazz musicians and form a real identity as a band which we fit into in a very particular way.”
A listen to Kneebody, only the second release on Dave Douglas’ new label, Greenleaf, gives clear context to the musicians’ infectious enthusiasm. In the course of 12 original songs, Kneebody makes a strong case for their ear-loving take on 21st century jazz.
“You can’t escape the instrumentation,” says Wendel, “it’s a jazz quintet. But we’re not playing the traditional music you would associate with a jazz quintet. It’s funny how things change over time. I’m playing an instrument from the 1960’s. He’s playing something else, those same instruments were playing completely different music 50 years ago than they are now. It’s kind of fun that way. I like how music inevitably evolves to fit the sounds around it.
“We didn’t know how people were going to react to this music because obviously it’s not like swing. But it’s been positive. I think regardless of what people enjoy aesthetically, it’s hard to deny music that’s good on an energetic and technical level. These compositions are complex but accessible and you can tell everyone in the band is trained and studied this music. So, for someone just listening to it, or even for a more traditional hardcore jazz fan, generally they have a positive reaction hearing this band.”
They’ve honed their obvious rapport through a lengthy association. “I had gone to Eastman with Ben and Kaveh,” recalls Benjamin. “I transferred out of Eastman to CalArts, meant Nate and the whole year I was at CalArts I had this idea of putting the four of us together, because I think it matched up really well stylistically. Luckily it ended up that Ben and Kaveh decided to move to LA after graduating Eastman. Nate was staying here to finish up school and had already been working here a lot. So, we really got to do a lot of regular playing early on, before we even really took the band seriously. We played weekly at a coffee shop at UCLA, later on weekly at the Temple Bar. It was a year or so before we really felt there was a chemistry there, which is strange. Once it hit then we really got excited about composing music for our personalities and developing this new style.”
“That was the inception,” continues Wendel. “The initial group was all of us minus the trumpet player. We got a residency at the Temple Bar. That was just when the Temple Bar opened, so about 2000 and it was about a year long residency, and that’s when that stuff developed. Until the release of this album, all that we had to sell on tour was this Wendel album and Shane’s album which is essentially all the same players playing this music which is our sound, but nothing that actually had the name ‘Kneebody’ on it. It was kind of confusing at first, so we’re glad to finally have something out there that’s very clear.
“Dave [Douglas] came through Shane. He’s the guy in the band who lives in New York. Dave has this yearly thing called the FONT Festival, Festival Of New Trumpets. Basically, it’s a residency at club there called Tonic. Basically, he books the month and brings in different trumpet players that he likes to do their music. He brought in Shane, and we ended up having a tour around that time. It was Kneebody that played. He talked to Shane, he said I’m leaving RCA, I’m going to start this label, do you have anything ready to go, are interested in getting involved? It was just the timing, we had this album basically ready to go. We sent Dave the rough mixes, and he loved it. It’s cool because he’s like the dream record label owner, because he’s very supportive and very interactive. He in no way tries to affect creative control. So, we were able to do this album completely how we wanted to do it. He’s been a great supporter, it’s been wonderful in that way.”
The resulting album experienced a number of changes in its three years of development. “Theoretically, we’re coming out of the jazz thing,” says Wendel, “but in terms of how long it took to record the record it’s almost like we’re a rock band. That record was recorded here and there over a period of three years. It’s just one of those things, we’ve been consistently touring through that whole time. Everybody in the band outside of the band plays in a bunch of other groups and with other touring artists. So it’s this thing where, whenever we had a chance to go into the studio for a day or two we would track stuff, and then over the period of those three years certain material would get old, other stuff had to be mixed. Just one of those things. Then, the Dave Douglas opportunity came up, and thankfully we basically had an album’s worth of material at that point ready to go.”
“We’re glad it’s finally out,” says Benjamin, “it took us a long time to finally make it what we wanted to. We ended up with two, maybe three records worth of material. We were eliminating stuff as fast as we were recording it. It took us three years to get both the product we wanted and the right venue to release it. We have five or six full completely done songs that I think are great, but just didn’t quite fit into the album as it was. I really hope we find something to do with them at some point.”
“That’s been the other cool thing,” says Wendel, “it’s an independent label, but they have distribution through Koch. It’s everywhere, all over the country. It’s in Tower Records, Virgin Records. A friend of mine just came off tour and said he saw our album in Idaho! We were featured on NPR’s Weekend America last weekend, and we just got notification we’ve gone from #33 to #25 on the CMJ jazz charts. There’s stations all over the country rotating the album.”
Their growing popularity and the freshness of their sound makes them prime targets for the Acolytes of the Sacred Jazz Flame. “I think it’s a natural thing in society in general that at a certain point a musical genre becomes codified and it becomes a museum piece.” Wendel observes. “It’s human nature to put things in a museum., which is fine. I’m ecstatic that symphonies still exist, that we still hear music that’s 400 years old. That’s the thing about jazz in the biggest sense of the word. To me, jazz is not a specific era, like the fifties or the sixties. It’s the concept of improvising, which in one way has been around forever, but in another way was a brand new sound that happened in the last hundred years. In that sense, the idea of human interaction through music and spontaneity, that’s what we want to carry on, the spirit of what I perceive jazz to be. I think a music is not alive unless people are showing up.
“On all these tours we do clinics. We go to schools from jr high, to high school to colleges, we play with these kids and we have them play with us. And sometimes, we’ll do club dates where we’ll teach the kids one of our songs and then they’ll come to the club and play with us. It’s really fun because they have such a great open energy. They’re not jaded in any way. I think that’s the other way the music is going to carry on, for musicians to pass on the torch to the younger kids. I even remember in high school the few times that a clinician would come in and show what he does and even coach the band. You don’t forget those experiences, they have an impact.”
“It’s a big part of our touring,” says Benjamin. “At first, we came up with that mostly as a financial mechanism to finance our tours before we could get significant enough guarantees at clubs to really go on the road and make money from that. But now, over the years it’s actually developed into a pretty big part of the identity of the band. I can’t really picture going on tour with Kneebody without getting up at 7 in the morning to go to some high school or college on most days. It keeps us in touch with the fundamental aspects of music to have to present it ot a new audience and explain it in certain ways, and literally bring people into it. Have people learn the material and play with us, tryout some of our concepts kind of keeps us constantly reinventing the band, keeping a fresh attitude towards it.”
After the years of hard work and determination, the members of Kneebody know their on to something special. “It’s got an intellectual aspect to it, and it’s complex music,” says Wendel, “but we don’t want it to be something that only musicians can enjoy. Music is music. The more you play the more you realize that that’s kind of a special thing that doesn’t happen all the time, a sort of immediate natural level of communication. We said let’s keep going with this because it was fun.”
Benjamin agrees: “I think we all feel that way, especially living out in Los Angeles there’s not a lot of bands doing similar things. When we go to New York City there’s more of a feeling of kinship with a number of bands, and there’s a movement in music we fit into in a certain kind of way. We dreamed for years coming up through music school of having a band where we could play energetic music that was truly ours and really fun to play, but that was unique and had something to say, and really get a chance to perform with it and take it one the road. I think to get to the point that we have with this record makes us feel very fortunate. We’ve been pushing hard with this band for 5 years now, it’s nice to get some rewards back from it. We’re hoping that in terms of not compromising it’ll end up making the music more soulful and from our hearts, so that in that way it will become actually more accessible even though it’ll be a little harder to classify.”
All About Jazz - Rex Butters
Kneebody gets funky at Modified
May 27th, 2005
Kneebody isn't lacking in credibility, not with the L.A.-based, instrumental jazz-rock fusion quintet's collective résumé that sports gigs with Ani DiFranco, Snoop Dogg, and jazz trumpet luminary Dave Douglas. Yet even with academic credentials from New York's prestigious Eastman School of Music for four of Kneebody's five members (the fifth, drummer Nate Wood, graduated from the California Institute of the Arts), it's the band's signing to Douglas' Greenleaf Music label that gives the band's self-titled debut CD its pedigree. While critics have had a difficult time pegging Kneebody's style and sound -- which mixes funky, off-tempo beats with the bouncing melodies of saxophones, trombones, keyboards and sonic bass lines -- it might be just as hard for Kneebody's burgeoning fan base to squeeze into Modified Arts.
Phoenix New Times - Joe Watson
Kneebody
May 26th, 2005
The energy and excitement projecting from this quintet
is unlike anything I have seen before... and they
capture it ALL on their self-titled CD to the point
where it’s surprising that it’s a multi-tracked
recording vs. live. Though difficult to describe,
Kneebody have almost a super-groove-oriented John Zorn
Naked City vibe without the total chaos. They have an
organized, precision style to their challenging runs
that’s driven home with ultra-pocket drummer Nate
Wood. The total standout thrilling quality of
Kneebody, though, is the synchronicity within the
group. It’s like they are playing with a collective
consciousness. Ben Wendel on sax and Shane Endsley on
trumpet play in complete unison. It’s like listening
to The Borg from Star Trek playing experimental,
instrumental jazz. This is challenging music for both
player and listener, but, amidst the calculated
confusion, it FEELS like it’s working, and repeated
listens make it make sense. NOTE: Not for people with
nervous disorders. This stuff is wild!
METRO LA Magazine
AOL Cityguide
May 10th, 2005
Ear to the Ground, Editor's Picks: New Millennial Groove
They've backed Ani DiFranco, Snoop Dogg and Jurassic 5. (Yes, this is jazz.) With members based in both New York and L.A., Kneebody knows a thing or two about reaching across divides. The band's self-titled debut bridges the gap between jazz, rock and hip-hop, stirring up a truly creative cauldron of new-millennial groove.
Nobody Can Label Kneebody
April 23rd, 2005
I've listened to the music of kneebody several times, and it's something I can't easily categorize. Is it indie fusion? Alternative wordless funk infused with inventive solo statements? Or because the group employs daring improvisations and evokes any number of originals from John Zorn's Naked City to Carla Bley, maybe it's best billed as jazz. "This is 'new instrumental' music," says Shane Endsley, a Park Hill native whose trumpet tears through many a skillful solo on kneebody's self-titled debut CD. "It's jazz-oriented, but I don't think of it as 'jazz,' really. If I say it's jazz to the KUVO audience, they'd be surprised at our shows." I'd argue that the more open-minded KUVO listener would find much to admire in kneebody's work, particularly its smart arrangements and rockish song structures, which, on disc, provide for many engaging moments. The CD is one of the most striking debut efforts in recent memory, and it's been awarded a pedigree of sorts by being released on the Greenleaf Music label, which is run by cutting-edge trumpeter Dave Douglas. The signing to Douglas' label was "kind of lucky," according to Endsley. "He saw me (perform) on a good night and then called me out of nowhere" in search of a new project for his label. As it turned out, the kneebody disc was already finished. "We had recorded it in bits and pieces on our own. But releasing it on Greenleaf will help us with the credibility thing." Endsley is another Colorado-bred musician seeking his fortunes away from home. He lives in New York for family reasons while the rest of kneebody is based in Los Angeles. "It's a little frustrating because we want to play together a lot (this week's Dazzle shows will be their first performances as a group since the disc was released last month). But luckily it hasn't been too much of a hindrance." Before New York, he was part of the L.A. music scene, which he claims includes many a Denver-area native. "Denver's making a big mark," he says of Los Angeles. "Other musicians call players from Colorado the 'Denver Mafia."' One of Endsley's compositions on the CD is titled "Break Me."
By Bret Saunders
Denver Post
Rocky Mountain News
October 23rd, 2004
"Role of swanky urban jazz venue suits Dazzle"
Before the Denver School of the Arts launched in 1991, East High was considered the city's flagship school for performing arts.Graduates included Ron Miles, Don Cheadle, Pam Grier and Antoinette Perry (the namesake of the Tony Awards), to name a few. In my four years there, I saw a saxophonist awarded a full ride to Berklee Boston, a bassoonist with perfect pitch who went on to Julliard, and a trumpeter named Shane Endsley. Endsley's dedication and the maturity in which he approached his instrument- two qualities that continue to buoy his climb into the upper ranks of new young lions in the jazz world- set him apart. Endsley's recent accolades have included recording with Art Lande and Ravi Coltrane and touring with Ani Difranco. He's focused on his own project now, a group called Kneebody, a genre-defying quintet steeped in the musical landscape of the past few decades. Blending equal parts jazz, hip-hop, and rock, and flavoring it all with hints of folk, Americana, and a few foreign influences, Kneebody is and all-original exercise in contemporary musical exploration. And it rocks. So when I heard they were in town and playing at Dazzle, I quickly phoned The German and told him to keep that Friday night open. An East graduate himself (notice a pattern here?), The German was only too excited for the opportunity to catch up with an old friend and see a good show. We were not disappointed. Ever since the powers that be at Dazzle learned that they could carve a niche as a swanky urban jazz venue, things have been on the up. Dazzle has managed to provide a destination where jazz traditionalists and experimentalists can alternately succeed, with neither group suffering in draw to the other. A rare juxtaposition, it suggests that Denver's musical tastes may not be a complete loss after all. Certainly the jazz fans are an educated bunch (I'll tip my hat to KUVO-FM (89.3) for that one). The interior of the club is beset with deep blues and rich reds, and the sultry lighting gives everything a touch more panache. The bar/lounge area provides an elegant mingling environment while the larger dining room off to the side showcases the stage. And it was on that stage that Kneebody captivated us for two hours. With the exception of one table of misfits, the entire room sat enraptured by the collective improvisations and dynamic shifts that Kneebody expertly weaved. There was plenty of room for open solos, but I would never have likened this group to a "jam band". For one thing, any of the soloists, whether it be Endsley, saxophonist Ben Wendel, keyboardist Adam Benjamin or even bassist Kaveh Rastegar, knew when to stop and how to utilize space. Secondly, all the solos seemed so well-honed that they appeared to be a natural extension of the song itself. Most importantly, it never got boring.
- Dave Flomberg
Westword "Alter Ego"
August 8th, 2004
Denver-born trumpeter Shane Endsley migrated this summer from balmy, laid-back Los Angeles to dense, teeming Brooklyn so he can be closer to his fiance -- and to New York's fertile experimental-music scene. For some people, such a move might have been a shock to the system. But at age 27, Endsley has already learned to live with (and to love) abrupt changes of tone and temper in his life. Witness the astonishing variety of his early musical experiences: Since graduating from the prestigious Eastman School of Music in the late '90s, he's toured the United States and Europe with anarchist folkie Ani DiFranco, recorded three CDs as a sideman to M-base founder Steve Coleman and burned a fourth, Between Tangents, with second-generation jazz innovator Ravi Coltrane. Through Colorado-based trumpeter Hugh Ragin, he met and played with free-jazz icon David Murray.
The L.A.-based sextet Endsley founded a year ago with fellow Eastman alum and saxophonist Ben Wendel, the Wendel-Endsley Group, reflects a similar bombardment of influences. Endsley, Wendel and keyboard player Adam Benjamin all come from jazz roots. (The saxophonist has worked with Dave Holland and Billy Higgins, among others; the pianist's hungers took him from 91-year-old alto giant Benny Carter to avant-bassist Charlie Haden.) By contrast, drummer Scott Seiver -- also a Denver native -- has played and/or toured with members of Bad Brains, Fishbone and Pearl Jam. Percussionist Davey Chegwidden appeared on Macy Gray's first two albums and works with the hip-hop orchestra DAKAH. Electric and acoustic bassist Kaveh Rastegar, a third Denverite who also attended Eastman, has worked with rockers as divergent as Tre Hardson (Pharcyde), Fish (Fishbone) and Mike Andrews (the Grey-Boy Allstars) while maintaining a parallel identity as a staffer at the Silverlake Conservatory of Music.
How do young musicians this diverse get a collective identity together?
"We just put one foot in front of the other and move slowly," Endsley says. "It's very personal, and sometimes it's very hard, but we share a broad aesthetic, employing many aspects of different musical genres. The challenge was to find a middle ground and do something that is both original and hard to define -- a compilation of all our experiences."
The results, for now, include a self-produced CD called 2nd Guess, which is beginning to attract attention in the L.A. and New York undergrounds, and a new tour that will take the Wendel-Endsley Group, whose home base until now has been L.A. (specifically, Santa Monica's funky Temple Bar), to the North Beach Jazz Festival in San Francisco, back to L.A. and on to Denver. The ensemble will appear -- minus percussionist Chegwidden -- Monday night in City Park and Tuesday on the newly installed bandstand at Dazzle Supper Club.
As you might expect, the group's challenging music ignores genre borders and defies easy categorization. Jazz-based but stylistically fluid, tunes like "Veiled Heart" and "After the Snakepit" boldly throw funk, groove, alternative rock, hip-hop and assorted electronica variations into the mix in what, for lack of a better term, the musicians call "future instrumental jazz." "Actually, we're discovering the philosophy of the group as we go along," Endsley says. "All of us work with other bands, too, but this group is like a church we can go to. This is our heart. Some of the other music we play [individually] is not always so gratifying. This group is where we can produce new combinations of elements and new forms. We think orchestrally and tend to be compositional, but we improvise when there's a need. What we hope to do is make each song a new event each time, to alter the journey every time for the listener as we try to reconcile many different ideas."
Fellow musicians have started to take notice. Endsley's friends Coleman and Coltrane are talking the group up in New York, and jazzmen, in particular, have praised their multifaceted fusion of styles. Guitarist Mike Cain: "Passion combined with intellect to form wonderful musical vibrations." Pianist and composer James Carney: "The Wendel-Endsley Group is a passionate collective of high-caliber, forward-thinking musicians who dependably exude a pleasing blend of cathartic edginess and dynamic subtlety."
For Endsley, it was almost inevitable that he would be a player. His mother, Pamela, is principal flutist with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. His father, Gerald, a trumpeter, music publisher and the longtime director of the Denver Municipal Band, was his first instructor. While a teenager going to East High School, Shane was also deeply influenced by Denver jazz trumpeter Ron Miles ("I still try not to sound too much like him") and mentored by two fine local jazz pianists: Ron Jolley taught him theory and harmony; Boulder's Art Lande gave him "some tools that I'll use for the rest of my life."
That history makes next week's homecoming (their second one this year) all the more important for Endsley and fellow Denverites Seiver and Rastegar. "We're very excited about coming home, and we're proud to bring this band back," the trumpeter says. "It's something we've worked hard with and something we believe in."
Indeed, Endsley took $15,000 worth of belief out of his own pocket -- earnings from his year-long tour with DiFranco -- to finance 2nd Guess, and he says he'll be content even if he never gets another dime back from the 1,000-copy CD run. "I'm very happy with it. Most of the tracking was done in a week, but the overdubs and the mixing took months. It's hard to retain your perspective over that period of time, being totally immersed in the project, but once it was finally done, new ideas started coming in a rush. I expect the band will now go in some new directions."
That means Endsley will have to go West once in a while. Living in Brooklyn while his bandmates remain in Los Angeles is a huge obstacle, but he means to overcome it. "I'll have to get smart with my frequent-flyer miles," he says, "and we'll play more periodically, booking our jobs in bunches. But we believe in our resources and our dedication. Staying together will be daunting, but we can do it. We may even get up a new head of steam through my old New York friends."
Meanwhile, the band is looking for a new name that more accurately reflects its collaborative ways. While Endsley has been the group's primary composer for the last year, the other members have increasingly brought new ideas to bear in recent months. "With the new tour, we'll be playing new music," he explains. "You know, we learned quite a bit about the music business itself in Los Angeles. It can be pretty intense. The bands on major labels are in a larger corporate channel, and that can consume the music itself. You become aware of the vacuum; you can get passed by. Our kind of music is not heard much in L.A., so for us it's sometimes been like circling the wagons in the middle of a storm."
Or going to church.
by: Bill Gallo
La Music Scene Online
June 15th, 2004
Kneebody@ the Temple Bar
"Hip's Hip"
by: the Amish Gangster
Kneebody is the future. At the Temple Bar, the audience consumed the mesmerizing organic grooves. This outstanding ensemble told an evocative story with a single, unified pulse to every single person in the room, at the bar and standing outside on the sidewalk - possibly even some across the street and down the block.
Kneebody is one band trapped in five people's bodies, each forming a tantalizing whole by the time it meets the ear. Kaveh Rastegar levitates on Bass, and if you don't know what a bass is, look for the tall guy with the mischievous smile. He'd be the one laying down the grooves and sending out the "Check this out" vibe. On drums was Scott Seiver reinventing the pocket and, best of all, LISTENING! To complete the rhythm section, Adam Benjamin performed on Fender Rhodes with all the style, fluid finesse and virtue of the monster acts he's toured with (Charlie Haden, Bob Brookmeyer, and Benny Carter). The horns players are the band's namesakes Ben Wendel on Saxamaphone, and Shane Endsley on Trumpet. This powerful combination reminds me of Wynton and Branford Marsalis giving anyone who listens the feeling that they have played together their whole lives, complementing and enhancing each other's notes, to their fullest potential.
The music was awe inspiring and reminiscent of Charlie Hunter's Quartet but with an undeniable Hip-Hop element not dissimilar to D'Angelo's Voodoo. Indeed the music lends itself to few outside influences and can only be traced to each member striving for the next level of creativity and musicianship. The set opened with "Song 4" beginning with a short, repeated phrase, which later graduated and expanded using the same theme. The repeated phrase became the ostinato in the rhythm section. The groove was so tight it sounded like the best take of a studio session, with perfect time, pensiveness and surgical accuracy in each note. Without introduction, the group began new feels and directions into tunes with brand new sycopations and abstract feel which slowly melted into an intense piece of audio therapy. At this point we entered the realm of absolute captivation and meditation... to the light, to the light! Although the music had the personal stamp of each player, it was as if a musical Ouija board were guiding the hands (and feet) of the bandmates. Nobody had a clue, even them, about where it would end up. Except that they did. Winding towards the close of the already short set, the horns began somber and quiet long tones tricking the audience into a thinking a ballad was eminent...enter the drums with a high-paced and busy jungle beat. Even my Mother couldn't sit still. By this time, we all felt that we had somehow experienced some new musical (and mathematical) truth.
Kneebody has an epic, transgenerational gravity. As a reviewer I'm supposed to point out the things I like and don't like about a group. In this case I am at a loss, this is the best band I have seen in Los Angeles and there was nothing I didn't like. Be sure to see them before they're a legend.
Article by: the Amish Gangster
Submitted: Mid June, 2002
Email: amishG@thelamusicscene.com
All About Jazz - May Issue
May 3rd, 2004
You may have heard trumpeter Shane Endsley with
Mike McGinnis' excellent group Between Green, or on
recordings by such far-flung artists as Steve Coleman
and Ani DeFranco. But if you havenít heard Endsley's
freakishly talented quintet KneeBody, that needs to
change. These geographically separated, mainly
LA-based Eastman alums play in this area only about
once a year. The Jazz Gallery was kind enough to host
this year's show on a Sunday (April 11th), when the
space is normally dark.
This amusing yet rigorous venture, which used to
be known as the Wendel-Endsley Group, features
Endsley with Ben Wendel on tenor sax, Adam
Benjamin on piano and Rhodes, Kaveh Rastegar on
electric bass and Nate Wood (of the rock band The
Calling) on drums. (Endsley also gigs as a drummer,
but not with this band.) All members write, and what
they write is impossibly intricate, often throughcomposed,
epic and funky, emphasizing the written
detail over the extended solo. Only none of
KneeBodyís material is ever written down. Every tune
sounds impeccably rehearsed, and yet the band rarely
does so. The solo sections, when they do crop up, are
not enviable things to blow over. Dousing the
listener in a flood of sonic and metric contrasts,
pounding, infectious grooves and turn-on-a-dime
endings, KneeBody announces itself as a jazz/rock
chamber group of the oddest sort. - David Adler
The La Music Scene Online
April 15th, 2004
Wendel-Endsley Group : Knitting Factory
Sexy. Smooth. Saavy. Seductive. Just a few adjectives to describe the Wendel-Endsley Group experience. A definite must see for any jazz/funk/avant garde/groove enthusiast. The music that culminates from Shane's trumpet, Ben's sax, Adam's Rhodes, Kaveh's bass, Scott's drums and Davey's percussion suspends time as you spend your evening grooving with the band. What is most amazing about the Wendel-Endsley group is the talent these six long time friends have individually. No one member stands out above the others and each player is afforded his chance to lead the audience through a musical journey in a style that crosses many musical genres and with a sound that's identical to nobody else. Of course, members of Wendel-Endsley individually play with the likes of Ani Difranco, Macy Gray, Steve Coleman and Dakah, so the higher standard of musical talent applies. You can catch the very tight, absolutely amazing Wendel-Endsley Group most Monday nights at Temple Bar in Santa Monica as well as around the Los Angeles area.
by: A.C.
The Onion
April 10th, 2004
Kneebody, formerly the Wendel-Endlsey Group, is an innovative LA jazz band featuring three Denver-born musicians: Tumpeter Shane Endsley, drummer Scott Seiver, and bass player Kaveh Rastegar. Endsley has toured and recorded with Ani DiFranco, and Ani-ites may have noticed his horn-playing on DiFranco's "So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter" and her new "Evolve". Kneebody's two other members met the Denver musicians while studying at New York's Eastman School of Music. Seiver is the only member if Kneebody who didn't attend Eastman. Instead, he honed his skills at Berklee College, and he boasts the most eclectic musical background, having recorded with P.J. Olsson, Tupak Shakur, and Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament's side project, 3 Fish. Kneebody's surprising music makes sense coming from a group of musicians whose resumes include stint with folk, funk, jazz, rock, hip-hop, and jam bands.
Tucson Weekly: City Week
March 2nd, 2004
BODY PARTS. You never know what you'll get during the Zeitgeist Jazz at the Institute series. The music is often improvised, meandering around a theme or chord progression.
The five members of Kneebody all possess heavy-duty jazz educations--the Eastman/Cal Arts/Berklee crowd. They're based in Los Angeles and they used to be called Wendel-Endsley Group. Despite their original lawyerish name, their sound is anything but buttoned up. They're informed by their 20-something generation's music: hip-hop, electronica, radical folk pop, jam bands, modern funk and alt rock.
When the cooperative quintet isn't grooving together, they're playing with the likes of Ani DiFranco, Macy Gray and the Dakah Hip-Hop Orchestra. Trumpeter Ralph Alessi says of Kneebody, "This is some of the freshest, most innovative, category-defying music that I've heard in a long time."
The group includes Ben Wendel on sax, flute and pedals--he's also just finished a score for a short film that went to Sundance. Shane Endsley plays trumpet and pedals, and is the creative force behind many of the bands compositions. Adam Benjamin Fender Rhodes (why not sport four names?) hits the pianos and keyboards. Kaveh Rastegar is the band's prolific bassist, composer and visual artist. And Scott Seiver also composes for Kneebody and pounds on the drums and messes with samples.
Hear them altogether at 8 pm at the Mat Bevel Institute, 530 N. Stone Ave.
Spinner.com
August 26th, 2010
8/26/10
By Tad Hendrickson
Kneebody Presents a Democratic Collective's Mix of Jazz and Rock
Jazz is traditionally a music of names and hierarchy. This goes back to great bandleaders like Ellington and Basie, but also applies to many smaller groups today where you get the Vijay Iyer Trio, David S. Ware Quartet, Wayne Shorter Quartet, or even simpler tags like Sonny Rollins or Herbie Hancock. Nonetheless, there have been notable exceptions to this premise of leadership with groups such as the Modern Jazz Quartet, Weather Report, the Bad Plus and Kneebody.
Kneebody is a New York/Los Angeles quintet of thirtysomethings that have been kicking around for 10 years. Featuring keyboardist Adam Benjamin, trumpeter Shane Endsley, electric bassist Kaveh Rastegar, saxophonist Ben Wendel and drummer Nate Wood, the band has always had the same lineup, honing its vision into something that hovers in the worlds of jazz and rock while tossing in other genre elements, as well.
"We are a democratic equally owned-and-operated band with shared ownership and leadership," Endsley points out. "Everyone brings in music and everyone votes on everything. Musically, it's a band because it's always been just the five of us."
The band returns now with its third album, 'You Can Have Your Moment,' which is an excellent new 12-song collection. To rock fans, the new offering invites easy comparisons to Tortoise and other post-rock bands thanks to Kneebody's muscular sound, interest in tricky and sometimes downright complicated songwriting, and a willingness to eschew vocals. At the same time, jazz fans will hear a different set of touchstones. There's an element of jazz fusion (without the wankiness) thanks to electric bass and keys that creates a strong groove. Of course, improvisation is at a premium as well; yet, the band also takes into account some modern acoustic jazz's interest in bold melody and innovative sense of harmony.
"I like this band because we're loud," Endsley says, weighing in on the matter. "If you want to talk a little bit, that's fine, because our sound is going to bury you. Have some fun. At the same time, the audience is tuned in if the music is engaging. I like the old-school concept that people can walk in and say hi to a friend they see, unlike jazz clubs now where you have to sneak in and be quiet on the way to the table and hope that your chair doesn't squeak."
That isn't to say that the group hides behind a wall of sound. Four of the five band members met at the Eastman School of Music and some have gone on to get secondary music degrees. The quintet's ventured into avant-garde and classical with vocalist Theo Bleckman on its last album in 2008, which was the Grammy-nominated (in the Classical Crossover category) 'Twelve Songs by Charles Ives.'
Kneebody have also created a language based on musical cues whereby any musician can play one at any time to change the music's tempo, key or song. Different bands have different strategies for conveying ideas and moving the music and improvisations forward; Kneebody's have gotten complicated and nuanced, making it downright tricky if the quintet ever has to bring in a temporary replacement. According to Endsley, that's the downside of being in a leaderless band – everyone needs to be there for it to work right, which can be complicated with members on two coasts with all of them working on outside the band as well. That being said, no one in the band would change anything.
"We've enjoyed the changes we've gone through," Endsley says with obvious pride. "We've gone out and done different gigs with different people and then come back together. This variety of professional experience makes it feel like our music is really growing and changing over the years. The band sounds and plays a lot differently and a lot better now than starting out a few years ago."
This ongoing sense of friendship serves both the band and the band concept well. It's a chemistry between the members, but it's also something more than that. Drawing inspiration from rock and pop worlds – which some members are very active in – the group's objective is to make its music as enjoyable to listen to by the audience as it is for the members to play.
"For us I think the most important thing is for people to feel pulled in by the music and enjoy it on a personal level," Endsley says. "Our music is what it is, but we want to extend a welcoming hand even if people come in and don't know exactly what is going on. I feel like some people are afraid to listen to jazz because they feel like they have to know what's going on. And if you don't know what's going on, you just don't get it. I hope that we in the jazz world get better at that."
Read the article here:
Spinner.com
New York Times
August 13th, 2010
8/13/10
By Nate Chinen
Kneebody
Cohesion is the truest constant in the music of Kneebody, a band that inhabits the borderland abutted by post-bop, indie-rock and hip-hop, without seeming to give much thought to the borders. The group released an ethereal album of Charles Ives songs last year, earning an unlikely Grammy nomination in the classical crossover field. “You Can Have Your Moment” (Winter & Winter), the follow-up, takes a screeching turn in the direction of groove. At the album’s core is a lean but darkly woozy rhythm section composed of Adam Benjamin on Fender Rhodes piano, Kaveh Rastegar on electric bass and Nate Wood on drums. The trumpeter Shane Endsley and the saxophonist Ben Wendel make up the front line, though not always with respect to melody. Everyone proves himself a resourceful improviser, but over the course of a dozen thoughtful originals — ranging from the sober hum of “The Entrepreneur” to the stuttering lunge of “No Thank You Mr. West” — their clout registers as a cogent whole.
You can visit the link here:
NY TIMES
All About Jazz
August 8th, 2010
8/07/10
By Troy Collins
Following in the wake of Twelve Songs by Charles Ives, a 2009 collaboration with avant-garde vocalist Theo Bleckmann, You Can Have Your Moment is Kneebody's second album for the enterprising German label Winter & Winter, and the quintet's fourth full-length release since its self-titled 2005 debut on Greenleaf records. Similar to the band's sophomore effort, Low Electrical Worker (Colortone Media, 2007), this heavily amplified session finds the young ensemble delving further into electronic territory, eschewing the partially acoustic instrumentation of previous endeavors for a more plugged-in sound.
Continuing to explore a variety of genres, the five members of Kneebody juxtapose the fractured rhythms and tempos of M-Base funk, the impressionistic palette of chamber-pop, and the cool futurism of post-rock into a cohesive fusion of styles. Syncopated rhythms, shifting time signatures and contrapuntal harmonies underpin the cantilevered foundations of the group's sophisticated writing, bolstered by a straightforward melodic sensibility that values soulfulness over virtuosity.
The kaleidoscopic array of Fender Rhodes patterns that underscore "Call" are indicative of the former—a testament to keyboardist Adam Benjamin's creative talents, honed as a regular member of Dave Douglas' Keystone sextet. The congenial interplay that introduces "High Noon" spotlights the bond between saxophonist Ben Wendell and trumpeter Shane Endsley, whose emotive horns spar and feint with impetuous fervor. Bassist Kaveh Rastegar and drummer Nate Wood infuse labyrinthine forms with graceful aplomb, providing stalwart focus to an array of approaches, from the fractious intervals of the angular "Nerd Mountain" to the rubato ebb-and-flow of the ethereal tone poem "The Entrepreneur."
Brief and to the point, none of the twelve tunes break the seven minute mark, with many half that duration. Individual solos are brief and thematically driven—models of economy and compositional foresight. On "The Blind," the quintet works in opposition to the pithy metric grooves it excels at, patiently developing a heartrending theme that expands to anthemic proportions in under four minutes—a miniature-pop symphony in all but name. From the metallic grind of "Teddy Ruxpin" to the opulent balladry of "Desperation Station," Kneebody has found a viable middle ground between the emotional accessibility of popular music and the cerebral heights of free improvisation. You Can Have Your Moment offers listeners a chance to have their own.
Track listing: Teddy Ruxpin; Held; The Entrepreneur; No Thank You Mr. West; You Have One Unheard Message; The Blind; You Can Have Your Moment; Desperation Station; Nerd Mountain; Call; Unforseen Influences; High Noon.
Personnel: Adam Benjamin: Fender Rhodes, effects; Ben Wendel: saxophone, melodica, effects; Shane Endsley: trumpet, effects; Kaveh Rastegar: electric bass, effects; Nate Wood: drums.
View the article here:
ALL ABOUT JAZZ
Kneebody Brings Fresh Sound to SF JAZZ
December 18th, 2007
By Aaron Nicholas Arabian
Kneebody
25th Anniversary San Francisco Jazz Festival
Great American Music Hall, San Francisco, California
November 7, 2007
While yesterday's jazz greats had swing, bebop, and hard bop forming the core of their influences, the young improvisers of today have been brought up with a whole spectrum of musical influences, traditions and styles. From electronic music to hip hop to hard rock, the new generation of musicians soaks up everything around it and comes up with many nice surprises. Kneebody, a band of LA-based musicians, is a perfect example of a genre-defying fresh new sound. Performing recently as part of the San Francisco Jazz Festival, the group was featured on a concert program subtitled “New Discoveries.” Although many fans of more straight-ahead, mainstream jazz might have been put off by the aggressive, abrasive, even “noisy” approach of Kneebody, no one could deny that the group has carved out a sound completely its own, taking the improvisational spirit that jazz fans love and mixing it with an arresting, multi-faceted aesthetic at once refreshing and challenging.
After a brief intro, the band went into a pulsing, rhythmic piece focusing more on composition than improvisation. At times the five members seemed to have their own individual rhythmic agendas, with melodies and chords dancing around each other in a manner echoing Steve Reich’s minimalist compositions.
Most of the set was aimed in a similar direction, each tune an unpredictable series of grooves some of which resonated with the dark soundscapes of Radiohead—gloomy and textured but with Kneebody’s signature harmonic and rhythmic complexity. The penultimate tune (for this listener the most exciting number on the program) started with trumpeter Shane Endsley playing a lyrical, fanfare-like passage with Arabic flavors. Picking up a cue in the melody, percussionist Nate Wood began with some cymbal-concentrated drumming, laying down the first in a long series of morphing grooves while the horns followed closely, playing rhythmically tight melodies and creating oxymoronically sweet-sounding dissonances.
“Although many fans of more straight-ahead jazz might have been put off by the abrasive approach of Kneebody, no one could deny that the group has carved out a sound completely its own.”
At times the rhythm section sounded like Metallica trying to play funk, or perhaps The Family Stone attempting metal. Saxophonist Ben Wendel’s solo was frantic yet calculated, incantatory yet interesting, as he stamped out unique phrases that seemed almost intentionally unsatisfying.
It can be extremely difficult to tell how much of a Kneebody performance is improvised and how much is composed. The group is known for using a series of pre-planned musical cues to get from one groove to the next, or to change tempos, to modulate to a different key, or to signal certain members to drop out as well as come in. Such “planned spontaneity” lends itself to a fascinating, albeit sometimes enigmatic, sort of group improvisation that in turn creates the impression of the song practically playing itself. The tune “Coat Rack,” for example, though well-known to listeners of the band's first album, had an extended solo section after the head, unlike the sequence of solos and soloists on the recorded track. Keyboardist Adam Benjamin growled frantically on his distorted Rhodes over a bed of distorted bass and back-beat (occasionally break-beat) drums. When they went back into the head, the tempo was twice as fast and the rhythm a galloping, ping- pongy groove that the whole band contributed to with seemingly nonchalant precision.
At the same time, the Kneebody that so many followers of the LA music scene has grown to love—the group that used to play a weekly gig at a small Santa Monica club called The Vic, employing more of their signature cues more frequently while taking the songs to looser, more stretched-out, free-form realms with exhilarating solos and heady compositions—was less in evidence on this occasion. Perhaps it was the crowd and the nature of the event— a sit-down concert rather than an informal gig at a small local venue—that made the musicians tailor their music to a more general audience, providing easy-to-digest songs exhibiting their sound at the expense of some of the unpredictable energy.
Kneebody was, as always, engaging if not captivating, especially for anyone new to their music. A fan accustomed to their “older” sound may have wanted to catch some riskier, extemporaneous playing from the group and the soloists alike but, as always, the band displayed its distinctive approach to instrumental, improvised music. They captured the spirit of Bird, Monk, Coltrane and Sun Ra but reflected the cutting- edge sounds and styles of a new millennium.
Jazz Convention [Italy]
December 12th, 2007
Jazz Convention
by Diego D'Angelo, December 2007
(The following are excerpts from the original Italian)
"Jazz elettrico? No, oseremmo dire jazz futurista."
"Il suono della band è un mix di influenze radicalmente opposte, da Bjork a Bartok, da Squarepusher a Cannonball Adderley, da Frank Zappa agli Steely Dan, fondando qualcosa di decisamente nuovo. Tra tutti gli strumenti, quello usato in modo particolarmente innovativo - almeno in un disco jazz - è la batteria di Nate Wood, che abbandona lo swing e si produce in un suono secco, con pelli tiratissime un uso di piatti piuttosto parco, e sempre con un suono molto corto.
"D’altra parte, l’insistente uso di Fender Rhodes non può far saltare alla mente i Return To Forever di Chick Corea, e in modo particolare in Mr. Darcy, anche se in brani come Of course è praticamente impossibile non sentire l’influenza del Keith Jarrett dei tempi di Expectations. Assolutamente da segnalare Mahalia, un brano stupendamente rilassato per quanto sempre immerso in sonorità caustiche, che fanno inevitabilmente tornare alla mente certe atmosfere simili del Dave Douglas di dischi come The infinite. Il tutto però naturalmente, più elettrico, più elettronico, più funky, oseremmo dire "più metropolitano": più futurista, appunto."
Jazz Magazine [France]
December 12th, 2007
by Nicolas Bremaud
2007
(this review translated from the French by Kneebody superfans Steven Muller and Gabriel Kyne)
This album gives you seperate samples and tracks by Dr. Beauchef Penguin Dentist. You can remix them as you wish (as long as you don't make money off of them) but I wouldn't recommend it, not only because its not of great interest, but also because the original mix by the drummer Nate Wood, also responsible for recording the songs, is simply perfect and you couldn't do better.
Maybe it's this mix of haughty lyricism and an almost mathematical approach to the songs that make the sound of Kneebody like "West Coast" music. It reminds us of, particularly in Roll, David Binney's compositions, who lived in NY, but grew up on the Pacific coast.
The improvisations are parsimonious, very skilled, but always controlled by tight structures; the rhythms are rather heavy and binary. The extreme saturation of the Fender and the hammering of the drums (Poton, Notwithstanding) veer towards more a disheveled sound, in the likes of Gutbucket (New York) or accoustic Ladyland (London).
Kneebody is grand, yet showing it subtly and elegantly. All these groups are in the middle of meticulously erasing the line between jazz and rock (if not drawing new ones) much more efficiently than the jazz-rock bands of the 70s. Among them, Kneebody holds a strong place.
Kneebody
November 25th, 2007
Reviewed by: Glenn Astarita
A hip friend and music critic recently advised (or demanded) that I check out this very hip and young quintet. Long story short, the band’s latest album will sure be counted among my 2007 top-10 list. Powerful, articulate and teeming with youthful enthusiasm, this album is asymmetrical parts jazz, grunge, jazz-rock and punk. But the predominant component would be progressive-jazz as they stylishly rip through several genres while engineering an inimitable group-focused sound. According to the group’s website, the respective musicians have performed with well-known figures in the jazz, hip-hop and rock spectrum. But like-minded individuals usually generate some magic when aligned.
With a makeup consisting of horns, keys, and the bass-drums element, the band uncannily morphs punchy backbeats with colorific overtones and pesky, soloing spots. They’re a multidimensional unit for sure. And they navigate thru sinuous time signatures with the exactitude of a complex mathematical formula. It’s all energetically executed, where laid-back funk/blues motifs are seamlessly integrated with darting horns choruses, beefy fuzz-bass lines and memorably melodic riffs. At times, trumpeter Shane Endsley and saxophonist Ben Wendel roll of the rhythm section’s variable metrics with a smoothing edge.
They project a panorama of scenarios here, as the quintet also injects a textural approach to these largely, up-tempo and pleasantly, in-your-face and ears pieces. But they tone matters down some on the genteel work titled “Of Course,” then engage difficult rhythmic metrics via the hornists’ circular passages heard on the following number titled “Finlayson.” In other spots, the musicians fuse EFX into their game-plan. And it’s all meaningful and simply adds to the thrust or tonalities of a particular mood or segment. Don’t miss out, folks. This gem is an antidote for those who periodically experience listening fatigue, thanks to a glut of ho-hum recordings emanating from the affordable aspects brought about by the digital age
Dame Dos (Translated From Spanish)
September 13th, 2007
Sergio Piccirilli, El Intruso (link)
9/10 Rating
The imagination is not more than the advantage of which it is had in the memory (Pierre Bonnard)
Not always the things are what they seem. Not always a good synthesis expresses a set of things and, much less, it explains them.
Let us imagine to a girl caressing to a cat. We approached sigilosamente and we asked to him:
- Spider?
- No, cat.
An extreme reduction sometimes leads us to an almost irrational point that returns us to the place in where we were originally.
When I listened to speak for the first time of Kneebody, I interrogated my circumstantial interlocutor of the following way:
- What music does?
- Fusion, responded to me.
At that time the Thousand Davises in Bitches Brew, Chick Korea with Return came to my mind to Forever, John McLaughlin with Mahavishnu Orchestra, Joe Zawinul with Weather Report, Larry Coryell with Eleventh House, Tony Williams with Lifetime and, from that, the rest. Surely about that moment I thought “either all I listened to it, or all I know it”; and I followed my way.
Error.
In the case of Kneebody, the answer (although correct) was not the sufficiently abarcativa thing in description terms.
Although also it is certain that the precariedad of my question, of some form, induced to that. Let us continue giving loose rein to the imagination…
In a train the guard is requesting passages. A passenger begins to look for his ticket frenetically. In his desperation he reviews his pockets, the trunks, portafolio, but he does not find it. The guard smiles, observes moments, until she decides to take pity itself of the passenger. He removes the passage to him from the mouth (in where there was been all along) and follows its way. If we had been witnesses of the happened thing, we could conclude in which the fleeting one was an idiot.
How many times has been called on to us to live a similar or at least comparable situation? How many times in the life we acted as the guard and we followed our way?
Perhaps if we returned and we reviewed the situation with thoroughness, we would find a version different from the facts. It is enough like example to indicate that the young person of the story only had a used passage and she was chewing it so that the guard did not realize. Who was the idiot?
Return to the starting point. Kneebody is a fusion band.
Seguimos our way or we deepened?
Excuse all this perorata but, lately, I have developed to an irreducible analytical voracity and a irrefrenable will to know the principles original the things and to establish analogies of compulsive way. And this began when I changed the traditional breakfast of white coffee and toasted with jam by another one with vodka, gin and brandy. The concrete thing is that now always I see the things of two ways or, to be more precise, I see all double.
Kneebody represents a state posmoderno of the fusion music. It combines instrumental sophistication with virtuous improvisations.
In his conceptual nucleus it does not have you limit after the influences. Of Duke Ellington to Jimi Hendrix. Of Steve Reich to Aphex Twin.
Elements that are familiar but that they do not form an impediment to construct a cohesivo and original speech.
Kneebody is a dense amalgam of sorts and styles with a unified and singular voice. An implicit deal with M-Base funk, post futurist rock, the pop camarística introspection and a bittersweet one.
To find a new band integrated by young composers and eximios executants, always is inspirador.
Without going more far, to me it encourages to me and it impels to learn, to improve, to increase the knowledge…
Definitive: the day that finds in where it studies to be young, I register.
The tecladista Adam Benjamim is a respected composer, educator and improvisador that an ample recognition when integrating itself to the Dave Douglas Keystone Band obtained. The trompetista Shane Endsley is graduated as the Eastman School. In his short but prolífica trajectory, it has touched with John Hollenbeck, Ani Di Franco, Slavic Soul Party, David Binney, Steve Coleman, Tim Berne and Ralph Alessi. The drummer Nate Wood is member of the group of pop rock The Calling. The bear Kaveh Rastegar also is withdrawn of the Eastman School and comprises of the Thruster trio next to Timothy Young and Matt Chamberlain, besides to collaborate with musicians of the stature of Nels Cline, Car it Bozulich and Wayne Horvitz. The saxofonista Ben Wendel has touched with Dave Holland, the Todd Sickafoose' s Blood Orange, Nels Cline and Myra Melford, among others. Hace lacks more?
Low Electrical Worker opens with Poton. There the piano, low and the battery offer a powerful rythmical support so that saxo and the trompeta constructs to delicate textures of resistance, unfolding a speech of strange metric ruthless precision and that establishes a perverse game of seduction with laberínticas and controlled dissonances.
The adjustments in Blue Yellow White construct to polifónicas harmonies and rates in counterpoint, fixing, which seems to be the spine of the aesthetic one of Kneebody.
In the addictive Dr Beauchef Penguin Dentist, delicious groove dresses the harmonic skeleton in clothes hit single.
Flood on 12th Street is an exploratory sonorous block of brief, distant and surrounding outlines. An atmosphere retro characterized by the sound of the Fendher piano distorted Rhodes, in that the single ones neutralize the tendency, so common in the fusion music, to emphasize the technical virtuosity and the note vortex by on the compositivo factor.
Roll allows us to distinguish clear references to the minimalismo. In Notwithstanding they come near with authority to the rock and Of Course is closest to the pop one than we will find in Low Electrical Worker.
In the extensive Finlayson, the base is a generating usina of polirrítmica interaction, while the piano, the trompeta and saxo accentuate and condimentan the structural nucleus. The brief passage of Cupcake Baby goes of the jazz to electronic music. However, the intense misfortune of Looking Back is a combat until death with metrónomo (giggle in the end including). In the melódico drawing of Mahalia, the trompeta and saxo dispute the brush. Finally each one takes hold the own one and that gains the best one. A climatic vals-fusion, deliberately unfinished.
Mr. Darcy is an angular piece, cants and of economic vocabulary.
And the closing, with The Politician, offers a lacking frame of ornamentación, simple and empty (like most of the politicians).
Kneebody incorporates and assimilates, with a manifest balance, the aggressiveness of the rock, melodías of pop a baroque one, the virtuous improvisations that characterize to the jazz and intelligent compositivas structures.
In synthesis: they make fusion but with an explicit innovating vocation, more interested in formulating questions that in obtaining answers.
From time to time he is healthful to put a question mark in those things that for a long time have occurred like safe (Bertrand Russell)
For jazz, next wave could be Kneebody
August 8th, 2007
Richard Scheinin, Mercury News (link)
A century after Buddy Bolden, where does jazz go? After swing, bop, cool, modal, free, fusion, M-base, and a slew of other mini-movements, where now?
Kneebody has been thinking about this. The young electric quintet, four-fifths of which is from L.A., with one member winging in from New York, is something of a rock band with jazz chops and a classical obsession with structure. There are few extended solos; so long, Coltrane. Instead, there's a steady collective improvisation in which the whole musical environment - the key, the tempo, the texture - keeps shifting, often on a dime.
If that sounds brainy, it is. But it's handled with such apparent ease and infused with such thrashing grooves that it should be only a matter of time before Kneebody breaks through to a wider audience. Wednesday night at Stanford University's Campbell Recital Hall, a couple hundred cheering listeners, many of them teenagers attending the Stanford Jazz Workshop's summer camp, couldn't get enough of the group.
Mostly, I think, that was because of Kneebody's focus on rhythm. Drummer Nate Wood can take the weirdest tempo imaginable and make it sound like a tribal-punk call to the mosh pit. He is rhythmically conjoined not only with electric bassist Kaveh Rastegar and keyboardist Adam Benjamin but also with saxophonist Ben Wendel and trumpeter Shane Endsley, whose syncopated melodies, hocketing riffs and quick, concentrated solos fuel the rhythmic boil.
also Kneebody's focus on tunes, some of which last only three or four minutes. Within that time frame, the band moves from compositional signpost to signpost, while the players feed one another musical cues that trigger instantaneous changes of volume, key, orchestration and tempo. It's as if a switch has been pulled, pointing the group toward its next destination.
The concert, part of the Stanford Jazz Festival, included Endsley's "Blue, Yellow, White," which built off a stuttering melody, rocketed up with a quick solo from the trumpeter, landed a moment later in 1975, with Wood bashing out an electric-funk groove on his cymbals (the type Al Foster used to play with Miles Davis), suddenly slowed way down with trumpet and saxophone playing a unison mantra-riff, and kept on morphing.
"Flood on 12th Street," also by Endsley (the New Yorker in the band), had trumpet and saxophone floating, like Miles and Wayne Shorter in '68, through a Radiohead landscape, then turned into a nervous rock-out. Benjamin's "Unforeseen Influences" had a hip-hop coda. His "Roll" was bouncy, droll and detached, with a nifty little melody and chord progression; Wes Anderson should stick it in one of his films.
Awash with electronic effects (everyone except Wood is outfitted with foot pedals, switchboards, assorted gear), the music stayed in flux. For me, an old jazzer, it changed gears too often, skipping from place to place without adequately exploring the intervening territories. I wanted more solos (Endsley's a beautiful trumpeter; fat tone, clean lines), more grit and intensity.
But for this band, the exploration seems to be in the process, the controlled flux, the commitment to change. Maybe it's time for old jazzers to tamp down expectations and go for the ride.
Low Electrical Worker
May 27th, 2007
Troy Collins, All About Jazz (link)
A young quintet on the rise, Kneebody's self-titled 2005 debut on Dave Douglas' then newly formed Greenleaf records was an obvious indicator of its potential. The group’s sophomore follow-up, Low Electrical Worker (released on Colortone Media), is a dense amalgam of genres and styles delivered with a unified voice.
Filled with youthful vigor, Kneebody delivers a sense of palpable enthusiasm throughout these varied tunes. Weaving together an impressive collection of stylistic influences, the quintet knits threads of M-Base funk, post rock futurism, Sabbath-inspired thrash, bittersweet pop and chamber-esque introspection into a singular sonic tapestry.
Each piece runs through an array of perambulations inside modular structures; contrapuntal rhythms, polyphonic harmonies and metric tempo shifts are all part of the Kneebody aesthetic. Never just a means to an end, all these virtuosic trappings are at the service of tuneful, sing-song melodies bolstered by infectious rhythms. Accessibility is Kneebody's secret weapon.
With a distorted Fender Rhodes and fuzz-toned electric bass at its disposal, Kneebody occasionally rocks, hard. While the retro ambience of the Fender Rhodes is currently in vogue, it's nice to hear someone who really understands the intricacies and history of the instrument. Adam Benjamin is such a player. From waves of ring modulated distortion to ethereal vibe-like tonalities, he coaxes an array of otherworldly sounds from the instrument.
Bassist Kaveh Rastegar and drummer Nate Wood are an outstanding rhythm duo, interlocking in polyrhythms with an ease that belies their complexity. Saxophonist Ben Wendell and trumpeter Shane Endsley create a harmonious blend, weaving intricate dual horn counterpoint with ebullience. Always mindful of the tunes' structure, solos are thematically driven and designed to accentuate the tune at hand, not the ego of the soloist.
A heady blend of aggressive rock music conventions, gorgeously baroque pop melodies, virtuosic jazz improvisation and intricate compositional smarts, Kneebody forges headlong into the future. Low Electrical Worker is an ideal balance between popular music and jazz improvisation, fusion in the most perfect sense of the term.
The Future Of Instrumental Music
April 12th, 2007
Denver Westword
Kneebody has had many labels thrown at it, but none seem to fit. That said, the members of the transcontinental quintet (whose new album, Low Electrical Worker, is due next month) haven't exactly gone out of their way to make it easy for folks to pin down their shapeshifting sound. Thanks to a system of musical cues they've developed that allows each player to tweak nearly any element of any given song -- be it volume, orchestration, tempo or key -- the act's arrangements change constantly and zigzag through various vibes and moods. We asked trumpeter Shane Endsley to give Kneebody's chameleon-esque style a name and to explain how he and his bandmates cue-municate with each other.
Westword: Say you're talking with someone who's never heard you guys before. How do you describe exactly what you do?
Shane Endsley: Well, if I have to give a quick answer, the thing that I've been saying is "electro-acoustic instrumental music." I try to avoid the stylistic references. A lot of times, we've been labeled as funk jazz or fusion or post-jazz -- all these different things. But nothing seems to ring well. So I've been saying electro-acoustic instrumental music. And hopefully that covers it.
I was reading about how you use musical cues, which I think you borrowed from Steve Coleman, right?
Yeah, he's one of the guys I played with. He would do a couple of things. He had something that he would play for stopping the band and for changing tempo; there would be little things like that that would happen. That's more of a direct influence. But it's the kind of thing bands have been doing for a long time. Like, every band has its own language of cues for when it's the last time, or when you're going to vamp and all that stuff.
With our stuff, we're just starting to think about it and trying to expand it into this, like, whole system that would encompass any element of the music you would desire to shift at any point if you were thinking as a producer or an arranger-type head. So now we've expanded it so that anybody can cue the music. It doesn't have to all come from one person. And it can change anything, like volume, or the orchestration, or the tempo, the key -- just trying to cover everything. Like if you're on a vamp and want to cue chord changes, can you do that somehow? So there's, like, twenty of them.
I also read that when you guys compose stuff, you don't actually write anything down. So it's all pretty much by memory?
Well, whoever wrote it usually has his sketch, so they can refer to it if we forget parts. But we don't take the time to write lead sheets, usually, or parts, because we don't use them. So usually someone has his little sketchpad, and they're teaching the thing to everybody, one at a time. And then we try to learn each other's part so that hopefully we can switch. As much as we can, we try to get the music more and more modular.
Kneebody at Moody's
October 30th, 2006
Kneebody, an almost infinitely versatile quintet made up of Adam Benjamin (keyboards), Shane Endsley (trumpet), Kaveh Rastegar (bass), Ben Wendel (saxophone) and Nate Wood (drums), stopped by Moody’s Bistro & Lounge in Truckee for two free shows last weekend.
Though unmistakably a Modern Jazz band, the member of the group aren’t quite comfortable with that label.
“When we’re speaking to musicians, we try not to put a category to it because we feel like this isn’t really a category yet. When we talk to non-musicians we say it’s progressive instrumental jazz music. But ‘jazz’ is such a dangerous word at this point. Jazz covers 60 years of music, so ‘jazz’ could mean 100 different things,” Ben Wendel said during a break in between sets at Friday’s show. “But basically it’s a little bit of jazz, a little bit of classical, a little bit of hip-hop... and we put it all in the bag.”
At Moody’s, the band pulled a number of tricks out of its bag including a good deal of improvisation and some very creative solos. But it was the interaction among the players that drew the most appreciation from the University of Nevada, Reno jazz program students in the front row, as well as the patrons sitting at the noisier lounge bar.
As is always the case at Moody’s — which caters to a dinner crowd in the lounge until 9:30 or 10 p.m. — the band picked up the tempo and the volume as the night got older and the crowd loosened up.
“This is a 100-percent democratically-run band. Everybody has their thing, and they’re able to express it within the band, and we all come to a common place together,” Wendel said, adding, “It is more challenging, but in a way it’s better to have five band leaders, because you can go more directions.”
Just getting the band together can be somewhat challenging, for while four of the members live in Los Angeles, trumpet player Shane Endsley hails from New York City. But while living on the opposite coast can make it harder to join the rest of the band for practice sessions, Endsley said that the New York connection also brings another element to Kneebody’s sound.
“When they come out to New York, there is just so much music there; it really is the most concentrated place for especially newer music and adventurous stuff. So when they get there, they’re really amped up and catch a lot of music when they go out. So it influences the rest of the guys too when they come into town. So I think New York does have a pretty big influence, and that kind of balances out the one-to-four ratio in the band.”
The Kneebody shows were part of Moody’s co-owner JJ Morgan’s continuing attempt to build the club into a fixture of the jazz scene in Truckee and Tahoe by bringing in a nationally recognized act each month. And while Kneebody likely won’t be back through town anytime soon, you can hear more of their music online at www.ColorToneMedia.com.
Tahoe World - Paul Raymore
Kneebody Gets Jazzy at Modified
July 27th, 2006
Kneebody no longer toils in the jazz-anonymity abyss reserved for many modern-creative contemporary groups. In 2005, the 10-year-strong spontaneous jazz/rock/funk ensemble released a self-titled debut on pioneering jazz trumpeter Dave Douglas' Greenleaf Music label, and "the response has been wonderful," says bass player Kaveh Rastegar. The album, he says, "has really put us on the map."
On Monday, July 31, the five-piece band will show off its brand of fiery sonic spontaneity at Modified Arts. The group's freewheeling live performances move seamlessly from Herbie Hancock Sextant-inspired free funk to robust Bitches Brew rock-fusion to unlabeled avant-garde styles, all the more impressive considering that not all the members call Los Angeles their home (trumpeter Shane Endsley lives in New York City), thus making consistent rehearsals a luxury. "We have a long history together, and most of the music is memorized," says Rastegar, also a founding member of the 70-piece hip-hop orchestra daKAH who has gigged with Nels Cline and Carla Bozulich. "We are all just so psyched to be part of the band, and I think it shows during our concerts." Fusion phenoms Trio Oro will open the show.
Phoenix New Times - Steve Jansen
Chicago Tribune
December 13th, 2005
Breaking the Mold - Flatlands Collective, Kneebody spin jazz in opposite directions.
Like fire and ice, the two emerging bands that played Wednesday night at HotHouse hardly could have been more diametrically opposed.
Yet despite stylistic differences, they shared at least one critical trait: Each was determined to toss jazz convention to the winds and did so with unmistakable eloquence.
Dutch saxophonist Jorrit Dijkstra created the Flatlands Collective not long after he moved to to the U.S. in 2002 and began collaborating with Chicago musicians. But if the Midwest's topography inspired the name of the band, it had scant effect on the nature of Dijkstra's music, which was anything but flat.
Richly textured, subtly nuanced and built on multiple layers of melody, the music of the Collective merged the free-thinking nature of the Chicago avant-garde with elements of contemporary European classical composition. Much of this music suggested an intensely cerebral exercise, with carefully engineered stop-start rhythms, delicate dabs of electronically produced sound and a nearly complete avoidance of a straightforward beat.
When the band ventured into the occasional swing passage, one was startled to hear it, since practically everything else about this ensemble steered clear of the jazz mainstream.
If at first the music sounded so diffuse and muted as to lack coherence, before long the repertoire became more lucid and structured (or did our ears simply become adjusted to its aesthetic?). The other-worldly hums and drones that Dijkstra produced on lyricon, which might be described as a kind of digital clarinet wired to a computer, were answered by pungent bursts of dissonance from the rest of the band in a piece titled "Slitch."
And in the last work of the set, "Dipje," the band produced the exquisite blends of instrumental color one might sooner expect from a classical chamber ensemble.
In the end, the Flatlands Collective linked the intellectual firepower of the Dutch free-jazz scene with the instrumental virtuosity of some of Chicago's most accomplished creative improvisers, including trombonist Jeb Bishop and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm.
Though the band still must be considered a work-in-progress, it deserves respect for the unorthodox musical direction it's pursuing.
If the Flatlands Collective aimed for a studious brand of jazz, the comparably adventurous Kneebody--making its Chicago debut--strove for a much more visceral, accessible, beat-driven sound. Though not exactly dance music, the band's rock-tinged backbeats, back-to-basics riffs and motor-rhythm passages suggested it was playing for an audience that approaches jazz from a pop perspective.
Even so, there was much more here than a casual listening might suggest. Just when the band seemed to be sinking into a rhythmic groove, it sabotaged expectations by changing or suspending its tempo or meter. And by juicing up its acoustic work with keyboard electronics and other computer-processed sound, Kneebody italicized its every gesture.
Some of the most impressive work came from keyboardist Adam Benjamin, who produced a galaxy of space-age sound, while trumpeter Shane Endsley and tenor saxophonist Ben Wendel formed a taut and muscular front line.
-Howard Reich
Westword
December 8th, 2005
Giving the modern jazz world a much-needed kick in the ass, Kneebody has assembled a quirky brand of improv-based crossover jazz that's as refreshing as it is expressive. The New York/Los Angeles-based quintet's sound, which borrows equally from traditional jazz, hip-hop, rock and electronica, is anchored by hard-hitting beats and bass lines and tastefully bolstered by soulful '60s horn lines and ambient electronic noises. This unique approach reflects the diversity and experience of the individual members (keyboardist Adam Benjamin, bassist Kaveh Rastegar, drummer Nate Wood, saxman Ben Wendel and trumpeter Shane Endsley, a Denver native) -- who collectively have backed an assortment of artists such as Snoop Dogg, Ani DiFranco, Chaka Khan and Ravi Coltrane, among others. And unlike a lot of neo-jazz fusion groups, Kneebody's penchant for the groove never gets tedious. Although the players are apt to change keys or tempos at will -- they've developed a unique system of cues that they employ live to keep the arrangements fresh and evolving -- you don't have to wade through ten-minute-long atonal freakouts just to get back to the original jam.
Shawn Bauer
All About Jazz
December 7th, 2005
Kneebody
When trumpeter Dave Douglas parted ways with RCA/Bluebird—which released his projects between 2000 and 2004—he created Greenleaf Music to allow him better control over both his art and its delivery. He also planned to bring exposure to other artists. The first non-Douglas release on the new label, the self-titled debut by Kneebody, fits perfectly with Douglas’ view that music should transcend labels and artificial stylistic restrictions.
A quintet of players who have worked with artists as diverse as Ani DiFranco, Snoop Dogg, and Steve Coleman, Kneebody brings that very diversity to its own music, combining focused yet vivid improvisational interplay with detailed writing, and a sonic palette ranging from the purely acoustic to the outrageously electric. While it's not a fusion band by any standard definition, Kneebody’s trans-genre approach is nevertheless fusion in the broader sense of the word. Much like Lost Tribe—the 1990s band which ultimately brought significant attention to its members, including saxophonist David Binney, guitarist Adam Rogers, and drummer Ben Perowsky—Kneebody manages to combine visceral groove with cerebral musical ideas, making its arrival on the scene a significant one.
With the exception of drummer Nate Wood, everyone in the quintet—keyboardist Adam Benjamin, trumpeter Shane Endsley, bassist Kaveh Rastegar, and saxophonist Ben Wendel—contributes compositions to the disc, but it’s remarkable how unified the band’s vision remains. While it’s difficult to avoid comparisons to Lost Tribe, Kneebody retains a sound all its own, with an even broader stylistic purview. But the way that Endsley and Wendl’s lines intertwine—winding, snakelike, between unison and harmonies that range from close to open—begs comparison to the knotty writing of Binney and Rogers.
While there’s a strong funk element, it’s often with an aggressive edge that clearly leans more towards rock territory. Benjamin’s “Never Remember” shifts from a pedal-to-the-metal groove by Wood and Rastegar to a middle section that’s lighter in texture, before heading into a hard-hitting outro featuring Benjamin’s distorted Wurlitzer. Endsley’s “I’m Your General” finds Benjamin feeding his electric piano through a ring modulator and Rastegar’s fuzz-toned bass referencing ex-Soft Machine bassist Hugh Hopper. Rastegar’s evocative ballad “Victory Lap,” with its memorable theme, proves that Kneebody can relax the pace and approach the lyrical with equal intent.
With nearly half of the album’s dozen tracks under three minutes, one might expect a compositional focus. Still, Rastegar’s one-minute “Wide-Eyed”—a trumpet/bass/drums trio—is more about interplay, whereas Wendel’s “Clime Pt. I” and “Pt II” both blur the line, with clearly detailed horn lines resting over the more open-ended electronic backdrop created by Benjamin, Rastegar, and Wood.
With Kneebody’s intrepid collage of influences, Douglas’ interest in the group will come as no surprise. Purists will undoubtedly be offended by Kneebody’s blending of technology into the mix, not to mention the group's sometimes aggressive rock stance; but for those who want to hear how the jazz vernacular is being reshaped and the improvisational spirit re-contextualized, Kneebody is a band—and an album—well worth checking out.
All About Jazz - December Issue - By John Kelman
Downbeat
August 1st, 2005
Kneebody: Creating A New Language
At first, it seems that Kneebody chose a name that intentionally invited anonymity. After speaking to a couple members of the quintet, it becomes clear that they also took a firm stance against presenting a single bandleader. Equally crucial is that they wanted to invent a word that conveys no preconceived musical connotations.
"It's a nonsense word that my girlfriend came up with," said saxophonist Ben Wendel. "We wanted a short, memorable word with a nondefinable genre connection."
This collaborative dismissal of categorical purity runs throughout Kneebody's self-titled debut on Greenleaf Music. Serene keyboard and woodwind lines are played on top of driving rock drums. Orchestrated electronic noise flows into classically formed melodies. Each musical shift is episodic, rather than merely contrasting.
Kneebody's hybrids stem from influences on both American coasts. Wendel met trumpeter Shane Endsley, keyboardist Adam Benjamin and bassist Kaveh Rastegar when they all attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., during the late 1990's. As the individual musicians migrated among different jazz, rock and hip-hop groups, they performed together as a part of a weekly residency at the Temple Bar in Santa Monica, Calif., with drummer Nate Wood. "We basically wanted to do stuff that was less about standard form," Wendel said.
All of which requires some rules to make it continually interesting. So Kneebody created their own. Along with the musicians' compositions, they devised a language based on musical cues that each intrumentalist recognizes as a signal for immediately changing direction.
Endsley describes how this works in terms of his composition "Break Me". "I wanted to have a middle section where we overdub these different layers and there's these short things going in and out," Endsley said. "So it's faster paced than what would normally be a solo section where it's one person at a time standing. We jump in and out and on top of each other, like people playing drum 'n' bass, but not with that stylistic sound."
While most of Kneebody has remained in the Los Angeles area, Endsley lives in Brooklyn. Trumpeter Dave Douglas started paying attention to him a few years ago and then asked if he had any projects for his recently launched Greenleaf Music label. As it happened, Kneebody had just finished recording its CD and Endsley presented it to Douglas.
"Their music is a great direction for jazz musicians to go," Douglas said. "It's spontaneous and exciting. The writing is fresh, and the way they integrate it with improvising is unique."
-Aaron Cohen
Jazz Times CD Review
July 30th, 2005
The members of Kneebody have collectively logged hours with such a range of artists - Ani DiFranco to David Murray to Jurassic 5 - that it's tempting to write them off as another multi-hypenate in jazz's crossover era. But eclecticism isn't the point of their music, which sounds too convincingly effortless to be a self-conscious fusion. In fact, their debut on Dave Douglas' new label reinforces just how meaningless the F-word has become.
Kneebody bolts out the gate with "Break Me," a fuzz-tone funk tune by
trumpeter Shane Endsley that twists through a quick succession of formal convolutions. This immediately established the band's rhythmic prowess: Bassist Kaveh Rastegar, keyboardist Adam Benjamin and drummer Nate Wood establish a pocket and hold it tight, no matter what else happens in a tune. And that's saying a lot, considering that the band's originals rarely seek the comfort of a straightforward groove. This is especially true of those by Endsley and tenor saxophonist Ben Wendel - like a stutter-stepping "Coat Rack" and a Return to Forever inspired "Never Remember."
The full impact of Kneebody is in the ensemble. Their cohesive poise is what sells the experiment, which will hopefully yield another record
soon.
Jazz Times - Nate Chinen
The New York Times
June 24th, 2005
Rock, funk and electronic music commingle convincingly with jazz on "Kneebody" (Greenleaf), this quintet's recent studio debut; it's an update of the rugged, exploratory early fusion of Weather Report and Return to Forever, and just as likely to sound better live.
The Arrival of Kneebody
June 15th, 2005
The next major quake to hit LA may have less to do with shifting tectonic plates than with a crackling quintet thundering up the jazz charts with a powerhouse collection, at once challenging and accessible. Kneebody’s eponymous album floats like an iron butterfly and stings like a diesel. “It’s got a lot of testosterone. It’s a very energetic sonic experience,” says resident reedist Ben Wendel. And while their unique soul-jazz-on-steroids sound captures a growing cadre of Knee-heads, their beautifully crafted melodic ballads, and moody impressionistic sketches are the guilty secret.
Formed by Wendel, drummer Nate Wood, bassist Kaveh Rastegar, trumpeter Shane Endsley, and keyboardist Adam Benjamin, Kneebody runs jazz through a broad collective musical background to create a remarkably potent blend whose primary flavor remains jazz. “I’ve been describing our music as hybrid music,” Wendel explains. “We’re musicians that have have absorbed a lot of different styles of music. We’re just trying to make music that is an amalgamation of what’s around us now, just like everybody’s done from whatever era they’re coming up from. So, this music is a hybrid of all the tastes we like.”
“The cool thing about this band is, everyone in the band writes and everyone has a distinct voice,” enthuses Wendel. “Not everyone in this band is coming primarily from a jazz background. Everybody’s coming from different places. We’ve all studied jazz, we all understand the language and are able to express the complexity of jazz. But then, as much as we love jazz, everybody also has equal interests in other genres of music. In my own background, my mom was an opera singer for 25 years. She sang with LA Opera. Different sounds, different sections, it’s like the process of five different musical viewpoints coming together. This band is a leaderless band. This is an equal parts ownership kind of group.”
Keyboard player Adam Benjamin agrees. “It’s such a fundamental part of our music that any of us can control the direction of it at anytime, which is why I think our live show is pretty consistent. On any given night there’s going to be one or two of us that really feel strong enough and confident enough and creative enough to do a lot of the leading. You never really know who it’s going to be in a particular song. It’s really exciting.”
“It’s a very energetic thing, especially live. The last few tours we’ve been really having fun. I think that Nate, Kaveh, and I as a rhythm section, especially with Kaveh and I playing a lot of electronics and effected sounds, really try to think of it as though we’re one unit of sound. Often it’s difficult even for us to tell with particular tones, who in the band it’s coming from. That’s really what we aim for, something where we could really get outside of our established personalities as jazz musicians and form a real identity as a band which we fit into in a very particular way.”
A listen to Kneebody, only the second release on Dave Douglas’ new label, Greenleaf, gives clear context to the musicians’ infectious enthusiasm. In the course of 12 original songs, Kneebody makes a strong case for their ear-loving take on 21st century jazz.
“You can’t escape the instrumentation,” says Wendel, “it’s a jazz quintet. But we’re not playing the traditional music you would associate with a jazz quintet. It’s funny how things change over time. I’m playing an instrument from the 1960’s. He’s playing something else, those same instruments were playing completely different music 50 years ago than they are now. It’s kind of fun that way. I like how music inevitably evolves to fit the sounds around it.
“We didn’t know how people were going to react to this music because obviously it’s not like swing. But it’s been positive. I think regardless of what people enjoy aesthetically, it’s hard to deny music that’s good on an energetic and technical level. These compositions are complex but accessible and you can tell everyone in the band is trained and studied this music. So, for someone just listening to it, or even for a more traditional hardcore jazz fan, generally they have a positive reaction hearing this band.”
They’ve honed their obvious rapport through a lengthy association. “I had gone to Eastman with Ben and Kaveh,” recalls Benjamin. “I transferred out of Eastman to CalArts, meant Nate and the whole year I was at CalArts I had this idea of putting the four of us together, because I think it matched up really well stylistically. Luckily it ended up that Ben and Kaveh decided to move to LA after graduating Eastman. Nate was staying here to finish up school and had already been working here a lot. So, we really got to do a lot of regular playing early on, before we even really took the band seriously. We played weekly at a coffee shop at UCLA, later on weekly at the Temple Bar. It was a year or so before we really felt there was a chemistry there, which is strange. Once it hit then we really got excited about composing music for our personalities and developing this new style.”
“That was the inception,” continues Wendel. “The initial group was all of us minus the trumpet player. We got a residency at the Temple Bar. That was just when the Temple Bar opened, so about 2000 and it was about a year long residency, and that’s when that stuff developed. Until the release of this album, all that we had to sell on tour was this Wendel album and Shane’s album which is essentially all the same players playing this music which is our sound, but nothing that actually had the name ‘Kneebody’ on it. It was kind of confusing at first, so we’re glad to finally have something out there that’s very clear.
“Dave [Douglas] came through Shane. He’s the guy in the band who lives in New York. Dave has this yearly thing called the FONT Festival, Festival Of New Trumpets. Basically, it’s a residency at club there called Tonic. Basically, he books the month and brings in different trumpet players that he likes to do their music. He brought in Shane, and we ended up having a tour around that time. It was Kneebody that played. He talked to Shane, he said I’m leaving RCA, I’m going to start this label, do you have anything ready to go, are interested in getting involved? It was just the timing, we had this album basically ready to go. We sent Dave the rough mixes, and he loved it. It’s cool because he’s like the dream record label owner, because he’s very supportive and very interactive. He in no way tries to affect creative control. So, we were able to do this album completely how we wanted to do it. He’s been a great supporter, it’s been wonderful in that way.”
The resulting album experienced a number of changes in its three years of development. “Theoretically, we’re coming out of the jazz thing,” says Wendel, “but in terms of how long it took to record the record it’s almost like we’re a rock band. That record was recorded here and there over a period of three years. It’s just one of those things, we’ve been consistently touring through that whole time. Everybody in the band outside of the band plays in a bunch of other groups and with other touring artists. So it’s this thing where, whenever we had a chance to go into the studio for a day or two we would track stuff, and then over the period of those three years certain material would get old, other stuff had to be mixed. Just one of those things. Then, the Dave Douglas opportunity came up, and thankfully we basically had an album’s worth of material at that point ready to go.”
“We’re glad it’s finally out,” says Benjamin, “it took us a long time to finally make it what we wanted to. We ended up with two, maybe three records worth of material. We were eliminating stuff as fast as we were recording it. It took us three years to get both the product we wanted and the right venue to release it. We have five or six full completely done songs that I think are great, but just didn’t quite fit into the album as it was. I really hope we find something to do with them at some point.”
“That’s been the other cool thing,” says Wendel, “it’s an independent label, but they have distribution through Koch. It’s everywhere, all over the country. It’s in Tower Records, Virgin Records. A friend of mine just came off tour and said he saw our album in Idaho! We were featured on NPR’s Weekend America last weekend, and we just got notification we’ve gone from #33 to #25 on the CMJ jazz charts. There’s stations all over the country rotating the album.”
Their growing popularity and the freshness of their sound makes them prime targets for the Acolytes of the Sacred Jazz Flame. “I think it’s a natural thing in society in general that at a certain point a musical genre becomes codified and it becomes a museum piece.” Wendel observes. “It’s human nature to put things in a museum., which is fine. I’m ecstatic that symphonies still exist, that we still hear music that’s 400 years old. That’s the thing about jazz in the biggest sense of the word. To me, jazz is not a specific era, like the fifties or the sixties. It’s the concept of improvising, which in one way has been around forever, but in another way was a brand new sound that happened in the last hundred years. In that sense, the idea of human interaction through music and spontaneity, that’s what we want to carry on, the spirit of what I perceive jazz to be. I think a music is not alive unless people are showing up.
“On all these tours we do clinics. We go to schools from jr high, to high school to colleges, we play with these kids and we have them play with us. And sometimes, we’ll do club dates where we’ll teach the kids one of our songs and then they’ll come to the club and play with us. It’s really fun because they have such a great open energy. They’re not jaded in any way. I think that’s the other way the music is going to carry on, for musicians to pass on the torch to the younger kids. I even remember in high school the few times that a clinician would come in and show what he does and even coach the band. You don’t forget those experiences, they have an impact.”
“It’s a big part of our touring,” says Benjamin. “At first, we came up with that mostly as a financial mechanism to finance our tours before we could get significant enough guarantees at clubs to really go on the road and make money from that. But now, over the years it’s actually developed into a pretty big part of the identity of the band. I can’t really picture going on tour with Kneebody without getting up at 7 in the morning to go to some high school or college on most days. It keeps us in touch with the fundamental aspects of music to have to present it ot a new audience and explain it in certain ways, and literally bring people into it. Have people learn the material and play with us, tryout some of our concepts kind of keeps us constantly reinventing the band, keeping a fresh attitude towards it.”
After the years of hard work and determination, the members of Kneebody know their on to something special. “It’s got an intellectual aspect to it, and it’s complex music,” says Wendel, “but we don’t want it to be something that only musicians can enjoy. Music is music. The more you play the more you realize that that’s kind of a special thing that doesn’t happen all the time, a sort of immediate natural level of communication. We said let’s keep going with this because it was fun.”
Benjamin agrees: “I think we all feel that way, especially living out in Los Angeles there’s not a lot of bands doing similar things. When we go to New York City there’s more of a feeling of kinship with a number of bands, and there’s a movement in music we fit into in a certain kind of way. We dreamed for years coming up through music school of having a band where we could play energetic music that was truly ours and really fun to play, but that was unique and had something to say, and really get a chance to perform with it and take it one the road. I think to get to the point that we have with this record makes us feel very fortunate. We’ve been pushing hard with this band for 5 years now, it’s nice to get some rewards back from it. We’re hoping that in terms of not compromising it’ll end up making the music more soulful and from our hearts, so that in that way it will become actually more accessible even though it’ll be a little harder to classify.”
All About Jazz - Rex Butters
Kneebody gets funky at Modified
May 27th, 2005
Kneebody isn't lacking in credibility, not with the L.A.-based, instrumental jazz-rock fusion quintet's collective résumé that sports gigs with Ani DiFranco, Snoop Dogg, and jazz trumpet luminary Dave Douglas. Yet even with academic credentials from New York's prestigious Eastman School of Music for four of Kneebody's five members (the fifth, drummer Nate Wood, graduated from the California Institute of the Arts), it's the band's signing to Douglas' Greenleaf Music label that gives the band's self-titled debut CD its pedigree. While critics have had a difficult time pegging Kneebody's style and sound -- which mixes funky, off-tempo beats with the bouncing melodies of saxophones, trombones, keyboards and sonic bass lines -- it might be just as hard for Kneebody's burgeoning fan base to squeeze into Modified Arts.
Phoenix New Times - Joe Watson
Kneebody
May 26th, 2005
The energy and excitement projecting from this quintet
is unlike anything I have seen before... and they
capture it ALL on their self-titled CD to the point
where it’s surprising that it’s a multi-tracked
recording vs. live. Though difficult to describe,
Kneebody have almost a super-groove-oriented John Zorn
Naked City vibe without the total chaos. They have an
organized, precision style to their challenging runs
that’s driven home with ultra-pocket drummer Nate
Wood. The total standout thrilling quality of
Kneebody, though, is the synchronicity within the
group. It’s like they are playing with a collective
consciousness. Ben Wendel on sax and Shane Endsley on
trumpet play in complete unison. It’s like listening
to The Borg from Star Trek playing experimental,
instrumental jazz. This is challenging music for both
player and listener, but, amidst the calculated
confusion, it FEELS like it’s working, and repeated
listens make it make sense. NOTE: Not for people with
nervous disorders. This stuff is wild!
METRO LA Magazine
AOL Cityguide
May 10th, 2005
Ear to the Ground, Editor's Picks: New Millennial Groove
They've backed Ani DiFranco, Snoop Dogg and Jurassic 5. (Yes, this is jazz.) With members based in both New York and L.A., Kneebody knows a thing or two about reaching across divides. The band's self-titled debut bridges the gap between jazz, rock and hip-hop, stirring up a truly creative cauldron of new-millennial groove.
Nobody Can Label Kneebody
April 23rd, 2005
I've listened to the music of kneebody several times, and it's something I can't easily categorize. Is it indie fusion? Alternative wordless funk infused with inventive solo statements? Or because the group employs daring improvisations and evokes any number of originals from John Zorn's Naked City to Carla Bley, maybe it's best billed as jazz. "This is 'new instrumental' music," says Shane Endsley, a Park Hill native whose trumpet tears through many a skillful solo on kneebody's self-titled debut CD. "It's jazz-oriented, but I don't think of it as 'jazz,' really. If I say it's jazz to the KUVO audience, they'd be surprised at our shows." I'd argue that the more open-minded KUVO listener would find much to admire in kneebody's work, particularly its smart arrangements and rockish song structures, which, on disc, provide for many engaging moments. The CD is one of the most striking debut efforts in recent memory, and it's been awarded a pedigree of sorts by being released on the Greenleaf Music label, which is run by cutting-edge trumpeter Dave Douglas. The signing to Douglas' label was "kind of lucky," according to Endsley. "He saw me (perform) on a good night and then called me out of nowhere" in search of a new project for his label. As it turned out, the kneebody disc was already finished. "We had recorded it in bits and pieces on our own. But releasing it on Greenleaf will help us with the credibility thing." Endsley is another Colorado-bred musician seeking his fortunes away from home. He lives in New York for family reasons while the rest of kneebody is based in Los Angeles. "It's a little frustrating because we want to play together a lot (this week's Dazzle shows will be their first performances as a group since the disc was released last month). But luckily it hasn't been too much of a hindrance." Before New York, he was part of the L.A. music scene, which he claims includes many a Denver-area native. "Denver's making a big mark," he says of Los Angeles. "Other musicians call players from Colorado the 'Denver Mafia."' One of Endsley's compositions on the CD is titled "Break Me."
By Bret Saunders
Denver Post
Rocky Mountain News
October 23rd, 2004
"Role of swanky urban jazz venue suits Dazzle"
Before the Denver School of the Arts launched in 1991, East High was considered the city's flagship school for performing arts.Graduates included Ron Miles, Don Cheadle, Pam Grier and Antoinette Perry (the namesake of the Tony Awards), to name a few. In my four years there, I saw a saxophonist awarded a full ride to Berklee Boston, a bassoonist with perfect pitch who went on to Julliard, and a trumpeter named Shane Endsley. Endsley's dedication and the maturity in which he approached his instrument- two qualities that continue to buoy his climb into the upper ranks of new young lions in the jazz world- set him apart. Endsley's recent accolades have included recording with Art Lande and Ravi Coltrane and touring with Ani Difranco. He's focused on his own project now, a group called Kneebody, a genre-defying quintet steeped in the musical landscape of the past few decades. Blending equal parts jazz, hip-hop, and rock, and flavoring it all with hints of folk, Americana, and a few foreign influences, Kneebody is and all-original exercise in contemporary musical exploration. And it rocks. So when I heard they were in town and playing at Dazzle, I quickly phoned The German and told him to keep that Friday night open. An East graduate himself (notice a pattern here?), The German was only too excited for the opportunity to catch up with an old friend and see a good show. We were not disappointed. Ever since the powers that be at Dazzle learned that they could carve a niche as a swanky urban jazz venue, things have been on the up. Dazzle has managed to provide a destination where jazz traditionalists and experimentalists can alternately succeed, with neither group suffering in draw to the other. A rare juxtaposition, it suggests that Denver's musical tastes may not be a complete loss after all. Certainly the jazz fans are an educated bunch (I'll tip my hat to KUVO-FM (89.3) for that one). The interior of the club is beset with deep blues and rich reds, and the sultry lighting gives everything a touch more panache. The bar/lounge area provides an elegant mingling environment while the larger dining room off to the side showcases the stage. And it was on that stage that Kneebody captivated us for two hours. With the exception of one table of misfits, the entire room sat enraptured by the collective improvisations and dynamic shifts that Kneebody expertly weaved. There was plenty of room for open solos, but I would never have likened this group to a "jam band". For one thing, any of the soloists, whether it be Endsley, saxophonist Ben Wendel, keyboardist Adam Benjamin or even bassist Kaveh Rastegar, knew when to stop and how to utilize space. Secondly, all the solos seemed so well-honed that they appeared to be a natural extension of the song itself. Most importantly, it never got boring.
- Dave Flomberg
Westword "Alter Ego"
August 8th, 2004
Denver-born trumpeter Shane Endsley migrated this summer from balmy, laid-back Los Angeles to dense, teeming Brooklyn so he can be closer to his fiance -- and to New York's fertile experimental-music scene. For some people, such a move might have been a shock to the system. But at age 27, Endsley has already learned to live with (and to love) abrupt changes of tone and temper in his life. Witness the astonishing variety of his early musical experiences: Since graduating from the prestigious Eastman School of Music in the late '90s, he's toured the United States and Europe with anarchist folkie Ani DiFranco, recorded three CDs as a sideman to M-base founder Steve Coleman and burned a fourth, Between Tangents, with second-generation jazz innovator Ravi Coltrane. Through Colorado-based trumpeter Hugh Ragin, he met and played with free-jazz icon David Murray.
The L.A.-based sextet Endsley founded a year ago with fellow Eastman alum and saxophonist Ben Wendel, the Wendel-Endsley Group, reflects a similar bombardment of influences. Endsley, Wendel and keyboard player Adam Benjamin all come from jazz roots. (The saxophonist has worked with Dave Holland and Billy Higgins, among others; the pianist's hungers took him from 91-year-old alto giant Benny Carter to avant-bassist Charlie Haden.) By contrast, drummer Scott Seiver -- also a Denver native -- has played and/or toured with members of Bad Brains, Fishbone and Pearl Jam. Percussionist Davey Chegwidden appeared on Macy Gray's first two albums and works with the hip-hop orchestra DAKAH. Electric and acoustic bassist Kaveh Rastegar, a third Denverite who also attended Eastman, has worked with rockers as divergent as Tre Hardson (Pharcyde), Fish (Fishbone) and Mike Andrews (the Grey-Boy Allstars) while maintaining a parallel identity as a staffer at the Silverlake Conservatory of Music.
How do young musicians this diverse get a collective identity together?
"We just put one foot in front of the other and move slowly," Endsley says. "It's very personal, and sometimes it's very hard, but we share a broad aesthetic, employing many aspects of different musical genres. The challenge was to find a middle ground and do something that is both original and hard to define -- a compilation of all our experiences."
The results, for now, include a self-produced CD called 2nd Guess, which is beginning to attract attention in the L.A. and New York undergrounds, and a new tour that will take the Wendel-Endsley Group, whose home base until now has been L.A. (specifically, Santa Monica's funky Temple Bar), to the North Beach Jazz Festival in San Francisco, back to L.A. and on to Denver. The ensemble will appear -- minus percussionist Chegwidden -- Monday night in City Park and Tuesday on the newly installed bandstand at Dazzle Supper Club.
As you might expect, the group's challenging music ignores genre borders and defies easy categorization. Jazz-based but stylistically fluid, tunes like "Veiled Heart" and "After the Snakepit" boldly throw funk, groove, alternative rock, hip-hop and assorted electronica variations into the mix in what, for lack of a better term, the musicians call "future instrumental jazz." "Actually, we're discovering the philosophy of the group as we go along," Endsley says. "All of us work with other bands, too, but this group is like a church we can go to. This is our heart. Some of the other music we play [individually] is not always so gratifying. This group is where we can produce new combinations of elements and new forms. We think orchestrally and tend to be compositional, but we improvise when there's a need. What we hope to do is make each song a new event each time, to alter the journey every time for the listener as we try to reconcile many different ideas."
Fellow musicians have started to take notice. Endsley's friends Coleman and Coltrane are talking the group up in New York, and jazzmen, in particular, have praised their multifaceted fusion of styles. Guitarist Mike Cain: "Passion combined with intellect to form wonderful musical vibrations." Pianist and composer James Carney: "The Wendel-Endsley Group is a passionate collective of high-caliber, forward-thinking musicians who dependably exude a pleasing blend of cathartic edginess and dynamic subtlety."
For Endsley, it was almost inevitable that he would be a player. His mother, Pamela, is principal flutist with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra. His father, Gerald, a trumpeter, music publisher and the longtime director of the Denver Municipal Band, was his first instructor. While a teenager going to East High School, Shane was also deeply influenced by Denver jazz trumpeter Ron Miles ("I still try not to sound too much like him") and mentored by two fine local jazz pianists: Ron Jolley taught him theory and harmony; Boulder's Art Lande gave him "some tools that I'll use for the rest of my life."
That history makes next week's homecoming (their second one this year) all the more important for Endsley and fellow Denverites Seiver and Rastegar. "We're very excited about coming home, and we're proud to bring this band back," the trumpeter says. "It's something we've worked hard with and something we believe in."
Indeed, Endsley took $15,000 worth of belief out of his own pocket -- earnings from his year-long tour with DiFranco -- to finance 2nd Guess, and he says he'll be content even if he never gets another dime back from the 1,000-copy CD run. "I'm very happy with it. Most of the tracking was done in a week, but the overdubs and the mixing took months. It's hard to retain your perspective over that period of time, being totally immersed in the project, but once it was finally done, new ideas started coming in a rush. I expect the band will now go in some new directions."
That means Endsley will have to go West once in a while. Living in Brooklyn while his bandmates remain in Los Angeles is a huge obstacle, but he means to overcome it. "I'll have to get smart with my frequent-flyer miles," he says, "and we'll play more periodically, booking our jobs in bunches. But we believe in our resources and our dedication. Staying together will be daunting, but we can do it. We may even get up a new head of steam through my old New York friends."
Meanwhile, the band is looking for a new name that more accurately reflects its collaborative ways. While Endsley has been the group's primary composer for the last year, the other members have increasingly brought new ideas to bear in recent months. "With the new tour, we'll be playing new music," he explains. "You know, we learned quite a bit about the music business itself in Los Angeles. It can be pretty intense. The bands on major labels are in a larger corporate channel, and that can consume the music itself. You become aware of the vacuum; you can get passed by. Our kind of music is not heard much in L.A., so for us it's sometimes been like circling the wagons in the middle of a storm."
Or going to church.
by: Bill Gallo
La Music Scene Online
June 15th, 2004
Kneebody@ the Temple Bar
"Hip's Hip"
by: the Amish Gangster
Kneebody is the future. At the Temple Bar, the audience consumed the mesmerizing organic grooves. This outstanding ensemble told an evocative story with a single, unified pulse to every single person in the room, at the bar and standing outside on the sidewalk - possibly even some across the street and down the block.
Kneebody is one band trapped in five people's bodies, each forming a tantalizing whole by the time it meets the ear. Kaveh Rastegar levitates on Bass, and if you don't know what a bass is, look for the tall guy with the mischievous smile. He'd be the one laying down the grooves and sending out the "Check this out" vibe. On drums was Scott Seiver reinventing the pocket and, best of all, LISTENING! To complete the rhythm section, Adam Benjamin performed on Fender Rhodes with all the style, fluid finesse and virtue of the monster acts he's toured with (Charlie Haden, Bob Brookmeyer, and Benny Carter). The horns players are the band's namesakes Ben Wendel on Saxamaphone, and Shane Endsley on Trumpet. This powerful combination reminds me of Wynton and Branford Marsalis giving anyone who listens the feeling that they have played together their whole lives, complementing and enhancing each other's notes, to their fullest potential.
The music was awe inspiring and reminiscent of Charlie Hunter's Quartet but with an undeniable Hip-Hop element not dissimilar to D'Angelo's Voodoo. Indeed the music lends itself to few outside influences and can only be traced to each member striving for the next level of creativity and musicianship. The set opened with "Song 4" beginning with a short, repeated phrase, which later graduated and expanded using the same theme. The repeated phrase became the ostinato in the rhythm section. The groove was so tight it sounded like the best take of a studio session, with perfect time, pensiveness and surgical accuracy in each note. Without introduction, the group began new feels and directions into tunes with brand new sycopations and abstract feel which slowly melted into an intense piece of audio therapy. At this point we entered the realm of absolute captivation and meditation... to the light, to the light! Although the music had the personal stamp of each player, it was as if a musical Ouija board were guiding the hands (and feet) of the bandmates. Nobody had a clue, even them, about where it would end up. Except that they did. Winding towards the close of the already short set, the horns began somber and quiet long tones tricking the audience into a thinking a ballad was eminent...enter the drums with a high-paced and busy jungle beat. Even my Mother couldn't sit still. By this time, we all felt that we had somehow experienced some new musical (and mathematical) truth.
Kneebody has an epic, transgenerational gravity. As a reviewer I'm supposed to point out the things I like and don't like about a group. In this case I am at a loss, this is the best band I have seen in Los Angeles and there was nothing I didn't like. Be sure to see them before they're a legend.
Article by: the Amish Gangster
Submitted: Mid June, 2002
Email: amishG@thelamusicscene.com
All About Jazz - May Issue
May 3rd, 2004
You may have heard trumpeter Shane Endsley with
Mike McGinnis' excellent group Between Green, or on
recordings by such far-flung artists as Steve Coleman
and Ani DeFranco. But if you havenít heard Endsley's
freakishly talented quintet KneeBody, that needs to
change. These geographically separated, mainly
LA-based Eastman alums play in this area only about
once a year. The Jazz Gallery was kind enough to host
this year's show on a Sunday (April 11th), when the
space is normally dark.
This amusing yet rigorous venture, which used to
be known as the Wendel-Endsley Group, features
Endsley with Ben Wendel on tenor sax, Adam
Benjamin on piano and Rhodes, Kaveh Rastegar on
electric bass and Nate Wood (of the rock band The
Calling) on drums. (Endsley also gigs as a drummer,
but not with this band.) All members write, and what
they write is impossibly intricate, often throughcomposed,
epic and funky, emphasizing the written
detail over the extended solo. Only none of
KneeBodyís material is ever written down. Every tune
sounds impeccably rehearsed, and yet the band rarely
does so. The solo sections, when they do crop up, are
not enviable things to blow over. Dousing the
listener in a flood of sonic and metric contrasts,
pounding, infectious grooves and turn-on-a-dime
endings, KneeBody announces itself as a jazz/rock
chamber group of the oddest sort. - David Adler
The La Music Scene Online
April 15th, 2004
Wendel-Endsley Group : Knitting Factory
Sexy. Smooth. Saavy. Seductive. Just a few adjectives to describe the Wendel-Endsley Group experience. A definite must see for any jazz/funk/avant garde/groove enthusiast. The music that culminates from Shane's trumpet, Ben's sax, Adam's Rhodes, Kaveh's bass, Scott's drums and Davey's percussion suspends time as you spend your evening grooving with the band. What is most amazing about the Wendel-Endsley group is the talent these six long time friends have individually. No one member stands out above the others and each player is afforded his chance to lead the audience through a musical journey in a style that crosses many musical genres and with a sound that's identical to nobody else. Of course, members of Wendel-Endsley individually play with the likes of Ani Difranco, Macy Gray, Steve Coleman and Dakah, so the higher standard of musical talent applies. You can catch the very tight, absolutely amazing Wendel-Endsley Group most Monday nights at Temple Bar in Santa Monica as well as around the Los Angeles area.
by: A.C.
The Onion
April 10th, 2004
Kneebody, formerly the Wendel-Endlsey Group, is an innovative LA jazz band featuring three Denver-born musicians: Tumpeter Shane Endsley, drummer Scott Seiver, and bass player Kaveh Rastegar. Endsley has toured and recorded with Ani DiFranco, and Ani-ites may have noticed his horn-playing on DiFranco's "So Much Shouting, So Much Laughter" and her new "Evolve". Kneebody's two other members met the Denver musicians while studying at New York's Eastman School of Music. Seiver is the only member if Kneebody who didn't attend Eastman. Instead, he honed his skills at Berklee College, and he boasts the most eclectic musical background, having recorded with P.J. Olsson, Tupak Shakur, and Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament's side project, 3 Fish. Kneebody's surprising music makes sense coming from a group of musicians whose resumes include stint with folk, funk, jazz, rock, hip-hop, and jam bands.
Tucson Weekly: City Week
March 2nd, 2004
BODY PARTS. You never know what you'll get during the Zeitgeist Jazz at the Institute series. The music is often improvised, meandering around a theme or chord progression.
The five members of Kneebody all possess heavy-duty jazz educations--the Eastman/Cal Arts/Berklee crowd. They're based in Los Angeles and they used to be called Wendel-Endsley Group. Despite their original lawyerish name, their sound is anything but buttoned up. They're informed by their 20-something generation's music: hip-hop, electronica, radical folk pop, jam bands, modern funk and alt rock.
When the cooperative quintet isn't grooving together, they're playing with the likes of Ani DiFranco, Macy Gray and the Dakah Hip-Hop Orchestra. Trumpeter Ralph Alessi says of Kneebody, "This is some of the freshest, most innovative, category-defying music that I've heard in a long time."
The group includes Ben Wendel on sax, flute and pedals--he's also just finished a score for a short film that went to Sundance. Shane Endsley plays trumpet and pedals, and is the creative force behind many of the bands compositions. Adam Benjamin Fender Rhodes (why not sport four names?) hits the pianos and keyboards. Kaveh Rastegar is the band's prolific bassist, composer and visual artist. And Scott Seiver also composes for Kneebody and pounds on the drums and messes with samples.
Hear them altogether at 8 pm at the Mat Bevel Institute, 530 N. Stone Ave.
BIOGRAPHIES
The Band
Adam Benjamin
Shane Endsley
Kaveh Rastegar
Ben Wendel
Nate Wood
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The Band Adam Benjamin Shane Endsley Kaveh Rastegar Ben Wendel Nate WoodINFO
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