While I was an avid consumer of indie-rock and post-punk/hardcore throughout the ’90’s, somehow I never stumbled upon Karate. Maybe because they were a Boston area band and I was more aware of the West Coast and D.C. area scenes. Whatever the case, thanks to a Bandcamp article highlighting the reissue of their 2000 album, I found a new corner of the DIY indie-rock scene full of strange alchemy.
The term “jazz fusion” is one that generally makes me cringe. But I do actually love music that bridges jazz structures into other genres (hip-hop and electronica in particular) or takes jazz influences and applies them in unexpected places – unfortunately, it is a tricky chemistry and difficult to pull off well. [Side Note: my friend Jeremy recently introduced me to Laufey which led to a very long discussion about what is jazz and highlighted the particular finicky ups and down of doing jazz influenced music.]
What Karate were bold/crazy/intelligent/ignorant enough to do was take the intricate rhythms, shifting time structures, and cerebral lyrics common in the DIY post-hardcore scene of the ’90’s and apply a very thick dose of jazz creating a very singular sound. In hindsight, some of this seems natural, like it should have been an obvious step (for example, the fingerprints of Fugazi are certainly there) but where they took their music was not obvious and remains a unique sound even to this day.
In Karate’s initial albums the jazz tones were not as “up-front” or pervasive, with the sound shifting through influences and stylings as if they were trying on different outfits to see what they liked best. But with 1998’s The Bed Is In the Ocean, they began to hit their stride and then in 2000 they released Unsolved, pushing the jazz leaning far enough that the swinging guitar play and Geoff Farina’s vocal style generated what could almost be described as lunge-punk – two words I would never have thought I’d put together without it being a joke. But this album is not a joke.
Not More Music Crap? 