It's hard to imagine that a live, largely improvised set from a trio with heavy jazz influences and a Rhodes electric-piano player would go over big with the kind of hardcore clubbers who populate the world's dance-music super clubs, but Cobblestone Jazz pulled it off somehow.
"The first time we played Fabric," recalls Tyger Dhula, "pretty much the first note we hit, there was a big swell of enthusiasm, it seemed like. I think it was about eight or ten months after 'Dump Truck' came out, so people were definitely knowledgeable about what we did, and they responded pretty well, for sure. When we play, it's a lot of improvised and live-type energy stuff, and you can tell that people appreciate that."
Clubbers were probably also floored by the act's gorgeous, enchanting sound. Hypnotic and graceful, it synthesizes the dance-floor aesthetics of techno with the creative possibilities and organic grooves of jazz to create a fresh, exciting hybrid.
The three members of Cobblestone became friends while growing up in Canada, where they became involved in the dance scene of the late '90s. Danuel Tate, who plays Fender Rhodes electric piano and other keyboards, has the formal jazz background and traditional chops. Dhula, meanwhile, plays the role of the DJ, laying down the basic song elements and tweaking arrangements on the fly from his laptop. Mathew Jonson, a well-known and respected techno producer in his own right, contributes vintage synth sounds and live drum programming. Jonson and Dhula share the task of blending the whole thing as they play, bringing elements in and out of the mix and shaping the overall sound.
It's a complex system to juggle live, but it allows for unlimited tweaking of the songs. "That's a big part of when we play," Dhula explains. "We want every show to keep it fresh for us as well as the audience. We really try to lean on some material made up kind of in the moment." The approach worked so well that the act adopted similar methods in the studio; jam sessions were recorded and edited down to the best sections, which were then used as a starting point for further improvised overdubs and tweaking. Eventually, the process yielded the material that became the group's stellar debut album, 23 Seconds.
"At first when we were trying to write the album, we would focus on one person writing a bass line while we all sit around here with our thumbs up our butts, waiting or whatever," Dhula says. "That approach didn't really work at all, because it was just really stagnant. So what we decided to do was basically try to re-create what we do live, which is jam off each other and get inspired by each other."
