It's a pity that some people have a mental block against the terms fusion and jazz funk but that's kind of what these are. I think prissy 'Berklee Funk' puts a lot of people off the possibilities of what can be done.

For me it's the junction of skronk and funk. what's not to like?

Anyway, this time there's a bit of a change rhythmically.

This is a jam in ⅞ time. It's a little tricky at first to make the mental switch on all instruments but fun to play over once you get into the groove.

Of course there are polyrhythms going on. I kept the Tabla in ⅞, there's congas in 4/4, various percussion in 5/4 and so on. The handclaps, apart from being a bit of a reference to Miles Davis' skeletal death funk jams from 'on the corner' (which turns 50 right about now) are a device used for tabla players to keep time and end up as part of the sound.

Quick production note here on the series in total. All these tracks are being made and mixed in the same week. You're hearing them as soon as they're 'finished'. I'm putting all this out as an album on bandcamp and may well rebalance a few things before then. Think of this as a raw, working mix. But then funk should be raw, recorded hard onto tape.

I'm using a template for all these tracks which has the instruments set up ready to use. It saves time and I think they all inhabit a pretty consistent sonic space. This track is a bit heavier than recent ones and that's intentional

I was listening to Miles' 'Rated X', and wishing that he had not layered discordant organ over thise amazing drums that Ted Maceo looped up. So much more could have been done with that track. So that's kind of where I was coming from.

On previous tracks I've layered up loads of keyboards, here we'll imagine that there are three of those keyboard players stood clapping their hands.

The genesis of this track came out of my thinking of further ways to further abstract funk as a medium. Putting things in ⅞ adds a tension to the music I think (I haven't tried dancing to it myself but can imagine it could be confusing if you're not fully paying attention).

Of course the scales I'm using are pretty tense already. Again we're pretty much in an octatonic (or fully diminished) key (though I didn't really use the minor second). I broke things down wn into fragments of the scale and played those back on different instruments as a basis for the improvisations that make up all of these tracks. I find it a quick and effective way of generating musical information to bounce off myself with.

When this becomes an album, some of what's been recorded already will be edited a bit for brevity. I'll try and make it a full on listening experience. There are a couple of slow themes I'm working on which may be premiered on the channel or I may keep them in the bag for now.

As I mentioned earlier I'll be putting all of these tracks, some truncated, into a full album form, who knows, it may even be a double at this rate.

If there are any horn players out there (or in fact anyone who plays an expressive instrument who want to collaborate then let's do it. Hell, is there an Arkestra full of intercontinental free souls out there? I'm sure there is.

A note on the video. I wanted to do a lot more zooming in and rotation of the graphics on here but the program I use (VSDCfree) kept crashing. Maybe I was just pushing my limited RAM but truly I tried to get this out on time for my self imposed 'a track every Friday' rule.