On the Industrial Jazz Group

In the current Philadelphia Weekly:

Industrial Jazz Group
Fri., Oct. 16, 7:55pm. $5. With Agent Moosehead, Gina Ferrera. Green Line Café, 4426 Locust St. 215.222.0799 www.industrialjazzgroup.com

Soon after Keith Jarrett famously cursed out photographers in Italy, Andrew Durkin orchestrated the whole tirade for the singers and players of his acoustic 16-piece Industrial Jazz Group. That’s Durkin’s specialty: arch, knowing humor delivered with uncommon skill. The self-described “hack composer and pseudo-intellectual” from Portland, Oregon has assembled just the sort of traveling circus to carry this out. Their live gigs, well represented on the 2008 disc LEEF, include sung narration between numbers, visual aids, audience prompts and so forth. Amid all the zaniness lurks a subtlety and precision-tooled ensemble craft. Not industrial, certainly not pure jazz, but as Durkin puts it: “Were the Beatles really insects?” — David R. Adler