Makaya McCraven takes the throne at Crystal Ballroom on Tuesday, 20 February 2024.

Photay tries out all new material in the opening slot.

Was this a jazz night out, or an ambient evening?

Both and neither.

There’s a strange sauce cooking in experimental music right now, somewhere at the intersection of jazz, electronica, and New Age minimalism. Mix one part Moon Glyph and one part Blue Note into a cauldron, have Carlos Niño spit in the broth, speak some good vibes incantations, and Andre 3000 is bound to come calling along with a host of daemons looking for record deals on International Anthem.

No complaints here, the mood hits just right. If this sound ever hits big, the critics are bound to complain that too many of the albums put out in this scene sound same-y. But that’s other people’s problems.

The New York-based DJ Photay took the stage as a solo act, surrounded by a mix of electronic and analog materials. He slipped right into the music with no introduction, pouring out a few mellow, Tron-salad sound blitzes before saying a few words. ‘New material’ was on the menu tonight, according to the man behind the moniker Evan Shornstein. This guy composed an entire album of samples pulled from telephone hold music samples? Hype.

Makaya McCraven arrived as a three-piece, with a horn player, Junius Paul on bass, and himself on drums. It was a night for paying quiet homage to the household gods, with McCraven the percussionist going on an extended “tiny bells” sequence. Don’t disturb the dead! Just give them a little tickle.

Makaya McCraven has been doing it his way in jazz since his breakthrough album In The Moment (2015). It was proof-of-concept for his label, International Anthem, proving that there really was a market for a new type of jazz sound that still received plaudits from the jazz establishment. What’s that new sound? As mentioned above, something somewhere somehow forged into the crucible of beat-driven, electro-influenced, analog-jazz trance minimalism. Sometimes… Then McCraven goes ahead and releases an album like In These Times to rewrite his story again.

Photo Gallery