Of all the musicians who performed on David Bowie’s Blackstar, drummer/composer Mark Guiliana seems to have been the most affected by its insularity; his own subsequent music has split into two separate personalities. Guiliana made electronic music as early as 2012’s Beat Music and 2014’s The Los Angeles Improvisations, but post-Blackstar—as his latest, triple-titled release confirms—the divide between that and his more freely acoustic music couldn’t be greater.
Mark Guiliana Jazz Quartet’s Jersey arrived in 2017, as pure as a hard-swinging night at the Village Vanguard, where the quartet held court this past spring. By contrast, Beat Music! … sounds like one mad professor with Ableton Live software as his slave. Entirely through-composed with nary an improvised solo, Guiliana’s playful electronica vibrates and buzzes, boings! and sizzles like Kraftwerk matched up with Luke Vibert, Giorgio Moroder, and Tom Tom Club.
