Album Review: Otis Sandsjö - Y​-​OTIS 2

There was a point in music's past, long long ago, in a place that might as well have been another galaxy, when plundered breaks and horn toots brought jazz into the popular imagination as a catalytic engine to keep the treads of linguistically lavish and rhythmically complex new forms of musical expression peeling against the pavement of modernity, while simultaneously and steadily grounding these forms in the work of the masters from a different era. Connecting the old with the new in a kind of silver bridge of divine inspiration. Jazz doesn't really serve this function for hip hop and electronica anymore, as these genres have moved on, sometimes to more exotic, sometimes to more insipid, sources of beats to buck up their flexes and flows. However, the revived interest in jazz as a contemporary mode of expression that these plunderphonic adventures inspired continues to thrive in new exciting ways, especially in the world of jazz, where the integration of hip hop elements has become nigh essential in recent years. The appearance of a Grant Green sample in a Tribe song added a smoothing quality to the chuck and rumble of the crew's flow, but reflecting the breaking quality of a hip hop sample in a jazz composition is an entirely different experience altogether.

At this point, we will need to drop in on our man of the hour, Otis Sandsjö to see what he's got steaming in the pressure cooker of his head-case. Sandsjö is a respected saxophonist in the worlds of progressive jazz and contemporary pop. He is recognized for having a free jazz style, which he has chosen to funnel his considerable talents into a reconstitution of fusion jazz under the moniker Y-OTIS. His second album in this vein is appropriately labeled Y-OTIS 2, a collaboration with producer Petter Eldh (who he also worked on Koma Saxo with, and who plays double bass on this album), along with keyboardist and sound sequencer Dan Nicholls, drummer Tilo Weber, as well as Per' Texas' Johanssen and Jonas Kullhammar on flute, Lucy Railton on cello, and Ruhi-Deniz Erdogan on trumpet. Sandsjö dubs his stir of influences- from hip hop, to smooth jazz, to drum ‘n bass, to house- "liquid jazz," a centrifugal melding of styles that produces a cool and hydrating elixir of sound.

It's hard not to feel refreshed after allowing the ethereal trickle and prickly massage of "waldo" with its rain-drop like beats and frictionless ribbon of harmonics infiltrate your ear canal. This track is followed by the break beat brush of "tremendoce" which makes space for Sandsjö's wildly playful free sax passes, as the track shifts tempos, slowing, accelerating and finally, almost, reversing, untying time and tilling-over and refreshing sonic space in the process. "abysmal" has an incredibly unrepresentative title, exhibiting a brilliant and luxurious spiritual jazz-inspired piano riff that deeply flirts with an excitable clarinet performance, swept up in a gravity challenging melody, that gains altitude with the help of consummate influxes of sure-stroke percussion. The term liquid jazz is never more applicable than on the soft boil and electronic gurgle of "ity bity" with its gallons of light pouring, precipitous sequencing, and the bubbly, bat-and-purr of the dry-greased house-breaker "bobby." I could go on, but you get the jist.

Y-OTIS 2 is a fluid, restorative, and cohesive statement of true inspiration and intent, executed in a way that feels as natural and invigorating as inhaling a breath of warm summer air after a rainstorm.

 Get a copy of Y-OTIS 2 from Helsinki's We Jazz here.