Jazz Bastard Podcast

Hewing to our promise made in oaths of blood and tears, the bastards talk about four more releases from this banner year of 2026. The bag, my friends, as you may well have guessed, is mixed. Mike and Pat have the same favorite from the episode (hint - the artist has been eligible for social security for decades) but after that, the feelings are as mixed as the bags. Stefon Harris – LEGACY DANCES; Shawn Lovato – BIOTIC; Dave Wilson – WHEN EVEN GOES EAST; Ran Blake – VOICES.

The boys are sticking to recent releases for the foreseeable future and this episode, inasmuch as it has a discernible theme, is about how different jazz musicians are trying to reach audiences in 2026. Feel free to listen, though, if you are against cerning in any form. Tigran Hamasyan – MANIFESTE; Ben Wolfe – ANY TIME AFTER NOW; New Jazz Underground – HOODIES; Lakecia Benjamin – WE DREAM.

A nice, straight-forward jazz album caught Mike's ear, so he decided to do a podcast devoted to new releases that don't over egg the pudding, or as google suggested, "go all around Robin Hood's barn"? (Google's been drinking again). Anyway, while he came up with two fine straight-ahead examples, Pat's offerings ended up a little thornier, if still on the right side of "academic brain-ouch inducer." Jesse Davis – REFLECTIONS; Ize Trio – GLOBAL PRAYER; Emily Kuhn – FEATHERED THINGS; Seamus Blake – THE ELECTRIFYING SEAMUS BLAKE

Mike is swamped in Spain (with homework, not water), so Pat does an intermediary episode that is .5 by name, .5 by nature. He takes a look at five box sets in three completely made up categories and when he's done you'll still have time to go out for a nice dinner. John Coltrane - THE COMPLETE 1961 VILLAGE VANGUARD RECORDINGS; Charles Mingus - THE COMPLETE 1970s STUDIO RECORDINGS; Miles Davis - MILES IN FRANCE 1963 & 1964: THE BOOTLEG SERIES VOL. 8; Various Artists: NEWVELLE RECORDS SEASON FOUR: COMPLETE BOX SET; Various Artists: COMPLETE KEYNOTE COLLECTION.

Those of a certain age remember the early eighties, and those with adventurous ears remember it wasn’t all about young lions and retro-cool on the jazz front. A personal hero of Pat’s from this era recently passed, and so here’s another episode devoted to a fallen giant of the music – James Blood Ulmer. Or, as Mike calls him, James High-Blood Pressure Ulmer. Dig him or not, no one brought his kind of harmolodic, cross-over energy to the electric guitar – and no one sang so many syllables most listeners could never hope to decipher.