Smooth Tendencies - that album title must be irony, right? And also, the track titles: "Zero To Negative Diggity", "Midnite Plu$$", etc., on an album that’s ostensibly avant-jazz. But there are smooth tendencies on Microkingdom’s album, and that’s what makes it more than just an other avant-jazz album. Most of the textures are smooth indeed, there are hints of exotica (with vibraphone, probably the smoothest instruments of all), ambient, deep house-jazz and jazz-rock fusion. But nascent, more or less pretty melodies remain half-formed, because the players deviate from them to answer to the lure of free playing. Some of the grooves are asymmetric, wonky, and when they’re properly grooving, the other instruments deviate from them.
Not to the extent to the music become arrythmic or polyrhythmic: they comply to the basic meter, but don’t give a shit about the groove itself.
It’s better if we understand Microkingdom not to mock smooth jazz, but to explore what do “smooth tendencies” mean, what is appealing and what is appalling about smoothness - and about free playing. Is it true that freedom and smoothness are irreconcilable enemies? Anyone with the slightest interest in free playing might answer with an firm Yes, but Microkingdom invites as to stop and think again. They don’t say yes, nor no, they just want to explore this question, in a playful, sometimes even winkingly funny way.