A few days ago, I listened to an interview with Radiohead's Thom Yorke. It was interesting to hear not only how Yorke discovers new music (via bandmates and the Internet) but also his listening process — that is, what sounds good to him and why. One of the tracks played (a very electronic one) had Yorke remarking on the slow degrade from 'normal' to more and more 'out.' When Radiohead took their music more 'out,' there were more than a couple of fans with confused and/or annoyed looks on their faces. But Kid A and Amnesiac were not side projects. Yorke and his cohorts have no fear of musical genre "cross-trading."

I do wish that fans of music in general were more open to this sort of thing. Granted, there have been more than a few attempts that have fallen totally flat. Much of that can be blamed on record labels piling cash onto past successes: southern rock, fusion, symphonic 'art' rock. Those genres had their moments as well as their moments of excess.

So what about jazz and hip-hop? Attempts at fusing the two have been very spotty. Us3 was an interesting smashup of hip-hop and traditional jazz. Branford Marsalis' Buckshot Le Fonque put down some dangerous grooves. On the other hand, I've got a few jazz/spoken word recordings (and I'm not naming names) that just don't work. The problem is that if the touch is too light, if the beats don't push things along enough, then the jazz moved dangerously close to smooth jazz. Not good.

Leo Tardin's Grand Pianoramax makes no such errors. Not only does it make great use of hip-hop, it also successfully fuses jazz and and early art rock elements by augmenting the piano with the Minimoog synthesizer. Employing two drummers (Deontoni Parks and Adam Deitch), three American poets/MCs (Celena Glenn, Mike Ladd, Invincible), and French rapper Spleen, this group puts a very different (and crazy funky) spin on things.

The Biggest Piano In Town starts off with the blistering "Showdown," which pits some delicious keyboards and slinky rhythms against a naughty story of love vs. lust, layed out as the tale of two superheros. "Blue Gold" fits a wicked little hook into a rap by Invincible about the water and its importance to us all ("...diamond drops." Love that.) Both Celena Glenn and Spleen are featured on "The Hook." It's great to feel the subtle shifts in rhythm when Spleen is rapping in French, the cadence of that language so different from English.

"Ride I" puts Tardin's piano talents on display with a cool riff constructed from some very angular source material (and check in later, when "Ride II" puts a layer of analogue synth blurp over the same constructs). There are also some spacy jams in the form of "In The Lab" and "Nikola Tesla."

The record ends on a very different note. "Tempest" rides a layers of repeated and slowly shifted piano figures. Reminiscent of both Phillip Glass and Steve Reich, this track shows that Tardin is no one trick, "dance-only" musician.

I can see this record turning on jazz/instrumental fans to the thrill of hip-hop. Similarly, hip-hop fans just might be drawn into the jazz realm. If Radiohead can get listeners to seek out (or avoid?) electronica, you'd think that the Biggest Piano In Town might have something to say about it too.