Just a minute and 40 seconds into You Want That Too!, Max Jaffe and his cast of collaborators pull off the first of many head fakes. Opener “Up Top Up,” builds slowly and softly, with plinking piano, pulsing guitar, and bleepy synth organizing themselves like the multicolored tiers of a bismuth crystal. For a full minute, the quiet concatenation gurgles along, accumulating extra notes and flourishes, suggesting an eventual kosmische surge. But instead, each instrument disappears and the tempo drops to half-time, leaving only an uneasy chord structure and a lethargic drum pattern. Suddenly, Jeff Parker plucks a sighing six-note guitar run, dropping his shoulders into a solo section that carries the tune to its swooning conclusion. It’s only three minutes long, but at no point could you guess what might happen from measure to measure.
You Want That Too!, Jaffe’s latest release, is filled with these gleefully destabilizing moments. It’s the first record the percussionist has made from start to finish under his own name since decamping to Los Angeles from New York, where he spent nearly 15 years pinballing around the city’s experimental, noise, and jazz scenes. He has a vigorous yet graceful approach to the drums, a style that Dave Harrington, who plays in a trio with Jaffe and saxophonist Patrick Shiroishi, has described as “painterly” and “gestural.” His work with Amirtha Kidambi’s liberatory jazz group, Elder Ones, was commanding and direct, tethering the group’s freer impulses to the ground while occasionally erupting into quick, controlled explosions. In JOBS, his minimalist pop group with Rob Lundberg, Jessica Pavone, and Dave Scanlon, Jaffe’s rhythms are angular and sharp, carving clean spaces for the other instruments to crowd into. His solo music is a much looser affair, a potpourri of ideas that seem concurrently unintuitive and completely natural. It’s easy to imagine Jaffe seated at his drum kit or perched above a keyboard, smiling mischievously, keen to take a left turn he knows his ensemble will eagerly follow.
