Jazzhole – Moonlight Mile (2025)
Combining jazz grooves with soul has decades behind itself, and adding hip-hop to the mix at least two. There were so many names and labels given to this, you can call them grooves – everything from acid jazz to smooth anything, from jazz itself to hip-hop. Many give this kind of music a negative connotation, and yes, quite often this genre or genres tend to sound like a musical wallpaper. Yet, there are also quite a number of artists who tackle this kind of music with a delicate and often quite complex touch. You see, to truly sound ‘smooth’ you have to know what you are doing, from your songwriting to intricate production you have to apply. Extensive experience definitely helps here. That is where we come to New York’s collective Jazzhole, who have been dealing with this kind of sound since 1994 and their self-titled album.
After some 30 years or so, Jazzhole came up with Moonlight Mile, another smooth-everything effort that involves a lot of jazz, soul, funky rhythms, and a good dose of hip-hop through 13 tracks. Joining forces with Jazzhole this time around are also luminaries like Peter Levin (Greg Allman, Blind Boys of Alabama), jazz trumpet legend Randy Brecker, and tabla master Prabhu Edouard, among others.
The trick for smooth, acid and other jazz variations that bring in pop elements is not only perfect to almost perfect musicianship, but also bringing in more than just an ounce of emotion – and Jazzhole does that here from the start with a breezy, seemingly sparse cover of Elvis Costello’s ‘Allison’. All the elements of the original song are there, but the band give it that jazzy touch and bubbling complexity to make it work.
Throughout the album, you get the sense that you can wake up these guys in the middle of the night, stick them in the studio and let them do their thing, and they can easily handle anything from straight-ahead jazz to a hip-hope variant like on ‘Love…Life…’ or bluesy, soulful ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’. Throughout the album, all involved don’t miss a beat, making it all seem as if it was such an easy thing to do.
It takes some musical master to come up with a nifty combination of sounds that can be heard here, and all involved obviously have it, and they have given the proceedings that extra touch needed for this kind of music to work – a personal involvement that goes beyond this being just another studio session. If you don’t have many acid/smooth jazz albums in your collection, this one just might be a good start to gauge the current state of the genre on its good side.
Find out more about Jazzhole on their official website, Facebook, Instagram, Bandcamp and Spotify.
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