All Music Guide: Find

Content: All Music Guide: Find


Find
Artist	Birth
Album Title	Find
Date of Release	Jun 2001
AMG Rating
Genre	Jazz
Tones	Cathartic, Visceral, Brash, Fiery, Plaintive, Intense, Energetic, Searching
Styles	Modern Creative, Avant-Garde, Post-Bop, Jungle/Drum'n'bass, Avant-Garde Jazz

For a group of such young players, Birth display an awful lot of confidence. It's not without reason, either. Like their debut, Find is a thick, muscular record of avant grooves which careen from Joshua Smith's typically free sax squonk to more drum'n'bass-influenced numbers. Despite the obvious electronica influence displayed on tracks like the opening "Seek," or the dub-affected snare hits mixed in throughout, Birth remain, first and foremost, a contemporary cerebral jazz trio. Near the end of "The Round One," featuring guest trumpeter Cuong Vu (of the Pat Methany Group), the band emerge into a sweet ballad melody, which is then slowly deconstructed through drummer Joe Tomino's counter rhythms before disintegrating into an almost ambient horn meltdown. The approach is typical of the band, who sound like the Slip, if the Slip had chosen to follow their original jazz leanings, as opposed to the jam-band path they chose to follow. The next track, bassist Jeremy Bleich's "Bismallah," begins in an almost IDM fashion (calling to mind the Squarepusher influence they proudly proclaim) before launching into a fairly mundane freak-out. Nonetheless, they've hit on a pretty interesting idea: that so-called intelligent dance music is the free jazz of the electronic scene. It's a fusion they approach at other points on Find, usually when working out in more dissonant territory, but rarely explicate. When they do, their sound will be a truly original one. -- Jesse Jarnow


			1.		Seek (Tomino) - 6:42
			2.		Smile (Smith) - 9:02
			3.		The Round One (Smith) - 10:33
			4.		Bismillah (Bleich) - 6:56
			5.		Untitled R_D (Tomino) - 12:09
			6.		Emitter (Smith) - 5:28
			7.		Pakora Menorah (Bleich) - 6:54
			8.		Because the Sky Is Blue (Smith) - 12:07


Peter Beckerman	-	Engineer
Fred Kevorkian	-	Mastering
Cuong Vu	-	Trumpet
Jeremy Bleich	-	Bass
Colleen Sanders	-	Artwork
Birth	-	Producer, Mixing
Joshua Smith	-	Saxophone
Joe Tomino	-	Drums


2002	CD	Hopscotch Records	11

Music Expert Check. If you know this album well, your help in answering the following questions is much appreciated and will assist the AMG staff in improving the database. Do you feel this album is:
Some of Both
Energizing, Exciting Soothing, Relaxing N/A
Dense, Thick Light, Free, Transparent N/A
Harsh, Aggressive Gentle, Peaceful N/A
Cold, Firm Warm, Soft N/A
Bright, Dynamic, Ornate Low Key, Calm, Melancholic N/A
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Dark, Pessimistic, Bitter Light, Cheerful, Sweet N/A
Emotional, Sensual, Playful Sober, Arranged, Proper N/A
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While on tour in January 1967, the Monkees were not only unaware that their second album More of the Monkees was being released, but were forced to buy a copy at a mall to hear the material.