John Scofield: Uberjam Deux

It’s easy to have mixed feelings about guitarist John Scofield’s Überjam Deux. Back in 2002, the first installment refused to sit still: It beeped, buzzed, whirred and grooved. A year later, Up All Night felt like a rightful successor, continuing to retrace lines between jazz, funk and electronic music. Both albums demanded contemplation and dance. Ten years later, Überjam Deux seems like an afterthought. At any rate, it sounds like a pale echo of what came before.

Sequels always risk self-parody. Here, the danger is real. On the album’s third track, “Endless Summer,” six minutes of pure Scofield are injected with every confection a MacBook can muster: flangers, phasers, digital delay, a segue that sounds suspiciously like “Boom Boom Pow,” and the result is listlessness.