Biography
Junk Magic emerged as an exploratory electro-acoustic jazz ensemble founded and directed by pianist, keyboardist, and composer Craig Taborn. Its self-titled 2004 debut actually appeared under Taborn’s name within Thirsty Ear’s Blue Series, a project overseen by Matthew Shipp. The quartet’s approach fused compositional principles from modern jazz, hip-hop, minimalist industrial textures, European art music, ambient, techno, and assorted electronic idioms with collective improvisation. Sporadic live appearances across fifteen years confirmed the group’s viability. A follow-up, Compass Confusion, surfaced under the Junk Magic name in 2020 on the Pyroclastic imprint.
Taborn’s association with Thirsty Ear dated to the 2001 trio release Light Made Lighter. He cultivated an unstable musical space suspended between composed passages and free improvisation while threading his longstanding interest in techno and beatmaking throughout that space. Once a string of tours and sessions with Roscoe Mitchell, Tim Berne, Susie Ibarra, and Marty Ehrlich—among others—concluded between 2001 and 2004, Taborn convened players he already knew from informal studio and stage encounters: experimental violist Mat Maneri (on whose Blue Decco and Sustain the pianist had appeared), drummer Dave King of the Bad Plus, a lifelong friend, and saxophonist Aaron Stewart, whose résumé includes work with Anthony Braxton, Anat Fort, and Vijay Iyer. Taborn produced the resulting Junk Magic, a dense stylistic collision whose EDM- and hip-hop-derived sounds and fractured rhythms unsettled some jazz reviewers accustomed to his earlier post-bop work with the James Carter Quartet in the 1990s. The album nevertheless earned admiration from vanguard listeners and younger audiences whose primary listening centered on electronic music and hip-hop, many of whom rarely engaged with jazz, and it cleared ground for subsequent experimenters such as Mark Giuliana, Dan Weiss (in whose Starebaby Taborn participates), Kurt Rosenwinkel, Makaya McCraven, and Iyer.
Although the original lineup maintained occasional performances amid members’ separate schedules, Taborn’s commitments prevented an immediate sequel. The first record nevertheless supplied the conceptual footing for his later inquiries into electronics within jazz contexts, both on Daylight Ghosts and in collaborations with Mitchell, Ikue Mori, Cleaver, and Dave Holland. In 2019 Taborn joined King and Bad Plus bassist Reid Anderson for The Golden Valley Is Now, a fluid recording situated at the intersection of jazz and indie rock on which every participant employed electronics alongside conventional instruments. That same year Taborn, Maneri, and King resumed work as Junk Magic, rehearsing and demoing material. They recruited saxophonist Chris Speed in place of Stewart and added bassist Erik Fratzke as a fifth member. The expanded quintet tracked Compass Confusion for Pyroclastic, issuing the album in fall 2020.
Taborn’s association with Thirsty Ear dated to the 2001 trio release Light Made Lighter. He cultivated an unstable musical space suspended between composed passages and free improvisation while threading his longstanding interest in techno and beatmaking throughout that space. Once a string of tours and sessions with Roscoe Mitchell, Tim Berne, Susie Ibarra, and Marty Ehrlich—among others—concluded between 2001 and 2004, Taborn convened players he already knew from informal studio and stage encounters: experimental violist Mat Maneri (on whose Blue Decco and Sustain the pianist had appeared), drummer Dave King of the Bad Plus, a lifelong friend, and saxophonist Aaron Stewart, whose résumé includes work with Anthony Braxton, Anat Fort, and Vijay Iyer. Taborn produced the resulting Junk Magic, a dense stylistic collision whose EDM- and hip-hop-derived sounds and fractured rhythms unsettled some jazz reviewers accustomed to his earlier post-bop work with the James Carter Quartet in the 1990s. The album nevertheless earned admiration from vanguard listeners and younger audiences whose primary listening centered on electronic music and hip-hop, many of whom rarely engaged with jazz, and it cleared ground for subsequent experimenters such as Mark Giuliana, Dan Weiss (in whose Starebaby Taborn participates), Kurt Rosenwinkel, Makaya McCraven, and Iyer.
Although the original lineup maintained occasional performances amid members’ separate schedules, Taborn’s commitments prevented an immediate sequel. The first record nevertheless supplied the conceptual footing for his later inquiries into electronics within jazz contexts, both on Daylight Ghosts and in collaborations with Mitchell, Ikue Mori, Cleaver, and Dave Holland. In 2019 Taborn joined King and Bad Plus bassist Reid Anderson for The Golden Valley Is Now, a fluid recording situated at the intersection of jazz and indie rock on which every participant employed electronics alongside conventional instruments. That same year Taborn, Maneri, and King resumed work as Junk Magic, rehearsing and demoing material. They recruited saxophonist Chris Speed in place of Stewart and added bassist Erik Fratzke as a fifth member. The expanded quintet tracked Compass Confusion for Pyroclastic, issuing the album in fall 2020.
Albums
Singles