Scissors (2006)
11 tracks, 54 minutes
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This album took me some time to get into – I didn’t like it for quite a few listens. To be honest, I’m still not 100% sold on it, but there is definitely something very compelling about it.
Hans Dulfer is a Dutch jazz saxophonist who has never really done things the straight way. Although he is more than proficient in a small-band jazz setting (as his live performances will attest), his recorded output has always included a twist, incorporating elements from Afro-Latin music, funk, hip-hop and pop over the years. Bearing that in mind, Scissors isn’t actually a million miles away from his previous work, and it’s certainly in keeping with his genre-defying mindset.
This album certainly holds Hans Dulfer at its core, but the artistic direction comes from producer handieMan. Dulfer’s playing itself serves as handieMan’s instrument and the name Scissors is appropriate – everything is hacked up, flipped about, looped, overdubbed and processed in about every which way you can imagine. These reformed sax lines become the basis of some heavy hip-hop-funk-electro-dub, that maintain a jazzy outlook throughout.
A lot of it is totally cheesy and some of the tracks still don’t really work for me, but there are a lot of interesting ideas that are bounced around the album. If anything, I think handieMan could have afforded to be even more experimental here – the very 90s-sounding funk is fine if that’s the mood you’re going for, but the work that he does in sampling and chopping Dulfer’s noises is so much more exciting, and it’s that which makes me keep listening to this album and what warrants its place on this list. As a whole, the album may represent a bit of a missed opportunity, but its innovative, electrifying and unusual perspectives on jazz saxophone and the roles it can play within non-jazz music make Scissors a worthwhile listen.
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