"Tae Parade" is one of those multi-phase songs that works wonderfully well. There's an distant, solemn organ that paces a soft, ambient intro before the funky rhythm crashes into the scene about 90 seconds later, joined by a xylophone and later, Hass' dissonant electric piano. The song takes two more twists before segueing into "Santiago Lends A Hand," which is similarly structured, This time, instead of a xylophone, the exotic sounds of tubular bells are used.

"Goodnight Ollie" likewise begins soft, this time via a electric piano interrupted by the odd electronic sound before Raymer and Mathis arrive unexpectedly with a steady rock beat to chase the doldrums away.

"Autumnal" sounds similar to the post-rock of Hyena Records label-mate Marco Beneventos' Invisible Baby (on which Mathis contributed) and even has what sounds like a guitar on it. But since JFJO doesn't have a guitarist and no one was credited as such, one might assume that it was sampled in. The songs builds itself up to a frenzy of played and overlaid instruments before making way for a gentle outro, which had been broken out into its own track called "Winter Clothes."

"Tether Ball Triumph" milks a keyboard loop for all it's worth, running it both backward and forward to create an fascinatingly intricate phrase, like some computer-generated arpeggio.

"Recovering The Time Capsule" is the closest thing to a normal song found anywhere on the record; it's a melancholy figure played over and over, at one point over Raymer's sharply contrasted crashing cymbals.

The four remaining tracks are short cuts of three minutes or less, mostly ambient interludes or electronica exercises consisting of an idea or two, rather than fully-formed songs.

The jazz listener in me would have liked to have heard these guys show off more of their considerable chops. Clearly that's not what Haas, Mathis and Meyulks had in mind for JFJO's latest long-player. So it's best to approach Lil Tae Rides Again with only the last word in the "Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey" in mind. For this release, the first three words don't apply.

Here are a couple of short videos of portions of two tracks from Lil Tae Rides Again that should give you a little flavor for the album. These were put together by Meyulks himself:

photo by Zack Smith