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Dancing with Chance By Jake TenPas The Entertainer

Andy Milne’s Dapp Theory keeps each new release and performance fresh

CORVALLIS — Unlike most danceable music, Andy Milne’s funk doesn’t beat you over the head. Instead, it sort of sidles up next to you and whispers in your ear.

Pretty soon, your head is nodding, which invariably leads to your shoulders moving. The rhythms spread down your Photo courtesy of Hal Horowitz body one part at a time until, before you know it, your feet Andy Milne’s Dapp Theory brings its propulsive mix of jazz, are shuffling and shaking, twitching and twisting. Looking hip-hop and funk to Bombs Away Cafe at 10 p.m. Thursday, back, you’ll have no idea how you got here. April 10. Fortunately, Milne is in control. He should be. He’s played with everyone from New York sax pioneer Steve Coleman to Canadian folk legend Bruce Cockburn.

Weaving a tapestry of complex piano parts, understated but relentlessly grooving electric and acoustic bass, alto and soprano sax and some of the funkiest drumming this side of Tony Williams, Milne and his band Dapp Theory are masters of understatement.

Listening to the band’s latest release, “Layers of Chance,” it’s easy at first to focus on the piano and sax solos or the lovely Weather Report-style harmonies that fill the upper register. But underneath it all is the rhythm section of Christopher Tordini and Sean Rickman, tapping, slapping, brushing and beating their way to rhythmic infinity.

“This album that just came out is a huge departure,” Milne says. “There’s a certain continuum that I’m going for.”

The last time the Toronto native brought Dapp Theory through town, it was 2003. Five years ago, the idea of rappers and serious jazz players working together was still a relatively fresh idea. But Milne had already been doing it for nearly five years by then.

Not that it was ever a gimmick or an attempt on his part to incorporate new musical forms into his already stuffed background of acoustic and electric jazz, funk, soul and avant-garde music.

“The motivation was purely based on the people I knew,” he recalls of his reason for first bringing an MC into the mix. “As I got into it, I realized the possibility of it.”

The man that’s been realizing that possibility with Milne for the past six or so years is poet/rapper John Moon, whose flow can range from soft and pensive to stern and righteous, just as his lyrical focus can shift from the intensely personal to the powerfully political.

On the first track off of “Layers of Chance,” “After the Fact,” Moon raps: “I used to think you were my reason/ The point of breathing/ And eyes for seeing/ The childish dreaming that revealed itself/ When I watched you leaving.” Unlike other instrumental music that features hip-hop style vocalizations, Milne’s compositional voice is strong enough to stand up to Moon’s lyrics, forcing them to orbit its interstellar body, instead of the other way around. At the same time, while pieces of rock or Middle Eastern or soul or even folk might enter that orbit occasionally, Moon’s raps are every bit as integral to the music as Milne’s instrumental passages. In other words, there’s a balance to the music that is tenuous when considered intellectually, but just plain funky when considered physically.

In the past few years, Milne has been away from Dapp Theory, working on a solo record called “Dreams and False Alarms” and a duet album with harmonica virtuoso Gregoire Maret called “Scenarios,” as well as another collaboration with a tap dancer.

He says that each one has informed his approach to his recording and road stints with Dapp Theory.

“Each new thing I went to injects new info in terms of how I can create,” he says. “It led me to thinking about writing music that was more textural, but also about my relationship with the piano.”

CHECK IT OUT

What: Funky jazz purveyors Andy Milne and Dapp Theory live

Where: Bombs Away Cafe, 2527 N.W. Monroe Ave., Corvallis

When: 10 p.m. Thursday, April 10

Cost: $10

Information: www.bombsaway cafe.com or www.andymilne.com/ dapp_site/

By Mel Minter

Andy Milne is of two minds. On the one hand, he’s not particularly optimistic about the country’s prospects these days, given our dependency on foreign oil, the ballooning debt and other unpromising conditions. On the other hand, he feels that he has something of an obligation to comment on the situation and, at the same time, inject a dose of positive energy.

An accomplished jazz pianist, he created the group Dapp Theory to do exactly that, blending jazz, rock, hip-hop and spoken word elements into an innovative, Hal Horowitz socially conscious mix that grooves. Andy Milne and Dapp Theory

With a compelling new CD, Layers of Chance (Contrology Records), under their belt, Andy Milne and Dapp Theory—with Loren Stillman (saxes, ﬂute, clarinet; see “Sonic Reducer”), John Moon (percussive poetry), Chris Tordini (electric and acoustic bass) and Kenny Grohowski (drums)—will bring the mix to the Outpost on Thursday.

Coming to Fruition

Arriving in New York in 1991 at the invitation of saxophonist/composer Steve Coleman (his teacher at the Banf Centre for Fine Arts), Milne played with Coleman for several years, hooking up with Cassandra Wilson, Greg Osby, Ravi Coltrane and Geri Allen, among others.

Working with Coleman brought a comfort level with intricate structures that, combined with Milne’s native lyricism, created an instantly identiﬁable voice.

“The thing I kind of came away with is that if I want to create a structure, I just create a structure. I don’t worry about what it is,” says Milne on the phone from his Pennsylvania home. “You can ﬁgure it out for the sake of annotating it, but ... the idea is to let your idea come to fruition and try to learn how to navigate it musically.”

Groove, Poetry and Lyricism

“The idea behind Dapp Theory,” Milne says in the band bio, “is to create complete musical compositions that groove as hard as they express melodic and poetic lyricism.”

Layers of Chance certainly accomplishes that, reprising both the lyrical beauty and the social conscience of its predecessor, 2003’s Y’all Just Don’t Know, which featured a collaboration with singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn.

This time around, Moon provides the poetry. His percussive word improvs passionately communicate a sense of urgency, as on “Bodybag for Martin,” which, written one MLK Day, moves from a dark plangency—“wondering what could be,” Moon says—to a fresh optimism. On “SOS,” the CD’s hardest-hitting tune, Moon sends out the signal: “SOS! Up to you. Up to me. Emergency on planet No. 3.” “I’m a little dark on [the current social/political situation], but I have to use my music to try to comment on these things,” says Milne. “But also I use it as a sort of healing element for myself. To be able to create music gives me a certain amount of pleasure, to explore ideas—whether they be a profound social commentary message or whether they just be a texture or an interpersonal idea.”

Dapp Theory swings the pendulum to instrumental lyricism on tunes such as “Tracing the Page,” focused on orchestral textures, and “Bird Calls,” whose Americana feel is given sensitive expression in Milne’s ﬂuid, understated piano solo.

“My thing is balance,” he says. “I’m always looking for that. I think it’s a certain architectural need.”

Milne balances Dapp Theory with other projects. On the CD Scenarios (ObliqSound), he collaborates with master harmonica player Grégoire Maret on duo improvisations about sonic textures. Dreams and False Alarms (SongLines) ofers solo meditations on folk music that informed Milne’s childhood. On Crystal Magnets (SongLines), due in the fall, Milne and French pianist/composer Benoît Delbecq explore the surround-sound environment, with help from a Chamber Music America grant.

On Thursday, Milne and Dapp Theory will balance poetry, groove and lyricism with the intention of raising your spirits and your awareness.

Andy Milne and Dapp Theory appears at the Outpost Performance Space (210 Yale SE, 268-0044) on Thursday, April 3, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $17, $12 members and students. http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/review_print.php?id=28945 1/1/09 10:01 PM

Review Courtesy AllAboutJazz.com Layers Of Chance Dapp Theory | ObliqSound

By Martin Gladu

The Dapp's back!

After a five years hiatus since the brilliant Y'all Just Don't Know (Concord, 2003), Dapp Theory returns with yet another stellar recording in Layers Of Chance.

Anchored by ex-Steve Coleman acolyte Andy Milne and drum wiz Sean Rickman, the quintet now sports a few new faces in bassist Christopher Tordini, reedman Loren Stillman and percussive poet John Moon, the latter joining after Kokayi's unfortunate departure. 24-year old Kenny Grohowski tolls the troops on the road in lieu of Rickman. Of course, as Kokayi's charismatic presence goes hardly unnoticed, Moon's diametrically different approach to MC'ing truly shines here. In fact, it veers the band into an emotionally deeper tangent previous line-ups had not ventured into.

For example, whereas Kokayi scored big with spectacular, machine gun performances like “Bermuda Triangle” and witty social critiques like “Trickle Down” and “Bad Air,” Moon engages in less gung-ho, more sensitive exchanges, docilely drawing one into his words instead of spewing flamboyant and dashingly lashed out diatribes.

Such is the case in “Blackout,” in which he cleverly plays with lexical fields pertaining to vision and perception. His tense, indecisive vocals places the narrator--a desperately lost, blinded soul searching to, in sum, “see through” the complexities and limitations of social interaction--in an emotive, insecurity- building spiral/revolving door, an effect also imparted to the captive listener.

That said, fans will still find the band's grabbing, MBase-fueled grooves in “After The Fact,” with its perky piano/soprano sax interlude, as well as in the ostinato-driven “SOS,” and “Deja Vu,” a road-tested piece that encapsulates the group's musical spirit.

A multi-section composition, the track journeys back and forth (enhancing the feeling of deja vu the tune's text recounts) through diversely enthralling textural layers and atmospheres that Tordini's burly bass, Milne's spatial keyboards pads and

Page 1 of 2 http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/review_print.php?id=28945 1/1/09 10:01 PM

Rickman's ricocheting, jerky beats create through colloquial interaction. The acute rhythmic sensitivity the players display in the manner they phrase this music, as well as the infatuating, offbeat thrust that results above which Milne's oblique, razor sharp motives, zigzag, has one ask rather humbly; “how in God's name do they do that?”

Augmented by two guests female vocalists brought in to harmonize entrancing, 3-against-4 polyrhythmic rounds above its minimalist theme and accompanying 16th note pattern, the title track's patchwork-like, collaged density dissipates to make room for a surprise, thinner-sounding piano/sax interlude, as well as for Moon and Stillman's solos, the latter in a relaxed yet rather inspired one. As a matter of fact, Stillman's elastic time feel adds another, welcomed dimension to the music's rhythmic flow.

If the strength of the performances herein is a token of what audiences can expect on upcoming live dates, than expect to be mesmerized and spend one exciting evening.

Track Listing: After The Fact; Blackout; Bodybag For Martin; SOS; If You Count It; Layers Of Chance; Tracing The Page; Bird Calls; Three Duets; Monk Walks; Deja Vu.

Personnel: Andy Milne: piano & keyboards; Loren Stillman: alto sax, soprano sax, flute & clarinet: John Moon: percussive poetry: Chris Tordini: bass; Sean Rickman: drums & percussion; Gord Grdina: oud (3,9); Latyana Hall: voice (6); Becca Stevens: voice (6).

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CD Reviews: Dapp Theory - “Layers of Chance” CD-2008 Username Contrology Records/Obliqsound Posted by: editoron Saturday, September 13, 2008 - 01:34 PM Glenn Astarita Password

The band’s first album since its 2003 Concord Records Remember me release looms as a stylistic crossover among M-Base, Search eJazzNews hip-hop, progressive jazz, funk and more. To that end, I missed out on the group’s inaugural outing. However, Login keyboardist Andy Milne and saxophonist Loren Stillman are among the preeminent movers and shakers within Log in Problems? modern jazz circles. In effect, they conjure up an New User? Sign overall tone of newness whether performing as solo Up! Main Menu artists, or accompanying others. Such is the case here, as the quintet designs a multi-genre gait that yields · Home high dividends, largely due to its penchant for crafting Profiles · a distinct sound. · More about · Reviews Reviews · Education Admittedly, I’m not a huge fan of rap, but on several · News by editor cuts John Moon provides what he calls, “percussive · Club Listings / Gigs poetry.” Think rap-lite here, and the good news is that · Jazz Topics Moon’s orations seldom become overbearing. He Most read story in · Music Business doesn’t override, complements the rather hip musical Reviews: · Recording Musician plane, which is a potpourri of New Orleans shuffle Dani Thompson - beats, quirky flows, and funk-driven pulses, steered by Fine lady of song · Technology News Milne and Stillman’s sinuous phrasings and melodic · Jazz Radio Playlists textures. · Canada Jazz Festivals · Festival Info With tight rhythms and mood evoking themes, the · Interviews quintet seamlessly integrates a buoyant vibe into the grand schema. It’s partly about the “groove” amid · Obituaries Milne’s occasional jazz-fusion type forays via his subtle · Jazz Web Links synth generated lines. Moreover, the soloists’ fluid line of attack atop Christopher Tordini’s pumping bass lines instill a sense of continual motion into the preponderance of these eleven works. Ultimately, the User Area band should garner wide appeal, to include the younger · Login / Logout generation along with well-versed aficionados who · Add Your Link appreciate the ever-evolving state of jazz music. – Glenn Astarita · Submit News / PR Andy Milne: piano & keyboards; Loren Stillman: alto & soprano sax., flute & clarinet; John Moon: percussive General Site Info poetry; Christopher Tordini: electric & acoustic bass; · Stats Sean Rickman: drums & percussion · Top 10 List · FAQ 686 Reads · Members List · Advanced Search · Contact eJazzNews

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