Recollection Harvest Revivew
Publication: Kynd Music, Right Action
Reviewer: Mick Skidmore

Surprisingly it has been over two decades since the California-based Djam Karet made its first release of improvisational music with a mind blowing cassette entitled No Commercial Potential. Despite that foreboding title of their debut they’ve proved themselves to be one of the finest and most consistent purveyors of instrumental music around. An interesting note is their name is an Indonesian word that translates as “Elastic-time” or the “hour that stretches.” They’ve certainly stretched the boundaries of various genres along the way and when they experiment they are apt to do 20 and 30 minute pieces. They’ve released 17 CDs including, the recently released Recollection Harvest (Cuneiform), as well as appearing on a number of compilations and solo projects.

Djam who you say? For me, they are the best instrumental band in America and also one of the countries best kept secrets. For most of its existence the band has been a four-piece consisting of Gayle Ellett (guitar, keyboards), Mike Henderson (guitar, keyboards) Chuck Oken, Jr. (drums, keyboards) and bassist Henry Osbourne, a few years ago they added Aaron Kenyon on bass and keyboards. Musically they drink from a deep well. Their albums have encompassed complex progressive rock, spacey improvisational jams, ambient electronics, jazz-rock, psychedelia as well as more arranged melodic pieces.

They’ve always garnered lots of critical acclaim and been compared to the likes of King Crimson, The Grateful Dead, Ozric Tentacles, Yes, among others. The truth is they are a stunningly original band that has kept true to itself and remains quite unique. Just being able to produce so many completely instrumental albums without becoming repetitive is a feat in itself, and these guys do it with style and panache. Yet despite all this they have never really gotten widespread appeal even though they sell enough albums to keep going as guitarist Gayle Ellett explains,

“We have been reviewed in Billboard and Rolling Stone a couple of times and they gave us #2 independent album of the year. Labels see that and say “Wow, let’s contact these guys and because we don’t fall easily into any of the bins in the record store then they just don’t know what to do. I think that record labels are not doing a good job of servicing adults at all, so it’s there own fault that their CD sales are down. They are just catering to kids in junior high and ignoring adults who have even more spending money. There really handling their business, in my opinion in a really ignorant way.”

Musically Djam Karet is a highly sophisticated outfit and their music crosses many boundaries and they do it with ease. Despite being a band that’s music involves a lot of improvisation they don’t seem to have that much recognition “jamband” circles, although personally I would think if you like the complicated side of the music of moe, and Phish you’d like at least some of Djam Karet’s music. Ellett reflects on this,

“Right, they (Jamband fans) like music that is more challenging and they are open to it. Jamming music is the exact opposite to pop music. A lot of pop music is super minimal and says everything it has to in the first half of its 3-minutes whereas improvised music you have to almost hear the whole tune a few times and then you appreciate how the whole thing moves from transition to transition so their audience is musically mature and willing to put the time into listening to stuff that’s challenging to listen to, even if it is grooving it is still big slabs of music, and those types of listeners are great for us.

I think that we do get cross over from that world but in a lot of ways our fans are very varied because we have electronic music. Some people like that and don’t like our really rocky stuff and some people really like the improvised stuff. Some of our fans like all of it but some have preferences for one sub-genre over another. We are also sort of connected to the progressive rock movement although we don’t fall in that either. In many ways we draw a lot listener’s from the world of jazz but we sound very rock based because of our age, most of us were born in 1960s so our interest is in The Allman Brothers, Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Yes, Gentle Giant and groups like those, and then fusion bands like Mahuvishnu Orchestra and Return to Forever. We just make very self-indulgent music. We just make what we like to hear for ourselves and try it a recording we are proud of and when we are done we put them on CD and see if people want to buy them. We are never trying to chase what we think people want.”

In fact, despite a penchant for improvisation (two albums that come highly recommended are No Commercial Potential and Still No Commercial Potential) the band doesn’t play that many concert. I suggested to Ellett that maybe that was part of the problem and he was quite philosophical and realistic in his answer., “It’s true we are missing out a lot, but we live in Los Angeles and there is very little in the way of places for live music. We play more in San Francisco than we play in Los Angeles and that’s still a six hour drive and that is the closet next big city to play than LA. All the other good ones like Austin or Chicago, Miami are a long way away. The East Coast is more of a hot bed for sort of progressive rock than the West Coast is. There’s a bigger movement seemingly happening on the East Coast for groups like Porcupine Tree, Ozric Tentacles and some of these other traditional progressive rock groups so we sort of live in the wrong place for it. But I think our music has a lot of a Southern California sound to it, it has surf music aspects, I think it has a feel that we are a West Coast group. It has part of a regional sound to it which I personally like. We just absorb all sorts of sounds from just living here.” Note: the band does have one really good live album from the Knitting Factory in New York a few years back.

I also asked Ellett what he felt the future held for Djam Karet and he responded, “I think we are just going to continue doing what we are doing and keep perpetuating what we do because we really enjoy doing what we do, and we sell enough CDs to fund future CD projects. I don’t think we are ever going to get particularly big because we don’t have a singer, we are getting too old and we don’t know how to dance very well and you need to with pop music.”

That brings us to the band’s new release, Recollection Harvest; Ellett says “I think it is our best CD so far. It’s certainly our best recorded album so far. I think our compositions are more organized, the orchestration is more interesting. There’s lots more instruments that come and go. Some of our tunes are just bass, guitar and drums but now there are mellotrons, acoustic guitars, and analog keyboards. We have tried to keep the pacing quick and we are trying to make an energetic record like Night For Baku was. For us we do enough writing and people do not have solid expectations as what they are going to hear on a new record. We are free to do what we like personally. I think this new album works well. We did a little bit better playing but a lot better recording which is a separate science in itself. It’s enjoyable but it is also great having our own studios which we have since the beginning.”

Djam Karet
Recollection Harvest
Cuneiform

This latest album from the Djam Karet will certainly delight long-time fans as it is many ways a kind of a distillation of the various facets of the bands exploratory music. And as Ellett indicated above, it is extremely well recorded. For the uninitiated it is also a good place to start as it is in many ways more accessible.

The set is broken down into two specific segments, “Recollection Harvest,” which consists of five fairly lengthy parts that have a lot of power and texture with some really amazing guitar and keyboard work. The second portion, “Indian Summer” consists of six shorter tracks that are more pastoral and reflective in tone and texture. Here the band melds synths with more acoustic elements and a variety of other exotic instruments.

The opening track of the disc “The March To The Sea Of Tranquility” is a killer. It opens with some somber Mellotron that reminds of something in a Beatles song (but quite what I’m note sure) before it moves into a more muscular hard hitting groove and winds its way through a myriad of textures with pounding rhythms and doomy keyboard work. It then builds to a crescendo with a short but blistering guitar solo and then slowly winds down again with an eerie space segment. “Dr. Money” has a very 70s prog-rock feel with its great bass work and swirling keyboards. But overall there’s a real sense in much of this album that the band worked hard on the arrangements as the music is complex yet remarkably cohesive and melodic. This is best exemplified in the fusion-like title cut which is a standout that clocks in at just over 10-minutes and builds on a repetitive riff that opens up into some odd rhythmic paces while synthesizers and guitars weave in and out. Highly recommended.