Temporal Gaslighting
Sungazer live at Islington Assembly Hall, 26th March 2025
It’s Bobsled Time
Embarrassing admission: I have had coworkers call me out in the office for air drumming along to music. You think you’re being subtle, but when they can expressly point out that you’re going for the crash cymbal by rotating in your spinny chair, I guess there’s no defence. Turns out this was just a gateway drug, with the pandemic and working from home leaving me unchecked to engage in all sorts of rhythmic perversity. With endless hours and no peers to stage an intervention, my hands got sordidly busy. I started figuring out how to tap polyrhythms; I’d slip phrases back repeatedly by a 16th note on one hand whilst keeping the other constant; there was other freebasing percussive wankery1.
I place the blame for slipping into this taboo tapping behaviour at the feet of a few bands and influencers2. But probably none more so than Sungazer - the jazz fusion project of YouTube / Nebula influencers Adam Neely and Shawn Crowder. Here is a band more obsessed with time than Justin Timberlake in that lousy sci-fi movie. Specifically, how to stretch, warp, fill, and play with it, nesting and contrasting all the prime numbers you can think of. And they want you to know it as well, and how goddamn clever they are at it - whether in their song breakdowns, memes, or even during their live set via comic demonstrations.
Honestly, I still can’t make up my mind about this band. They’re like a recipe for a cake with all my favourite ingredients - virtuoso free jazz, djent-y breakdowns, a relentless experimental streak, a good ear for melody, and, yes, time signature nerdery - but you take a bite and it’s... Fine? Partly I’m in a sour mood following their live show for other reasons. Eschewing a support act probably cuts down on the costs a chunk, but waiting till nearly two hours after doors to start (and over a half hour past the advertised start time) robbed me of my early night and my patience. I like Islington Assembly Hall as a venue, but it’s at its best for grandiose post-rock (Maybeshewill and 65daysofstatic have played some of my favourite shows there) or for genres that thrust themselves upon you. Here, it felt large for the band, austere; for an act caught between cultured jazz clubs and sweaty rock venues, it swamped them a bit.
In addition to Neely and Crowder, Sungazer tour with a rotating cast of guests. This show featured crowd favourite Jared Yee (cue chants of “Yee!”) on saxophone and Joshua de la Victoria on guitar - both bringing unexpected forms of energy. Yee’s sax playing is surprisingly circumspect, obsessed with space and ambience as much as hell-for-leather freestyling. De la Victoria’s percussive, rapid style sits somewhere between Cory Wong and Allan Holdsworth, virtuosic but occasionally lacking the brio of, say, The Mars Volta’s Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. With no touring keyboardist, this was Sungazer at their most angular.
The beating heart is drummer Crowder - whose brain runs at a thousand miles per hour, intuitively working out exactly which polyrhythms and numeric rebasing he can do to a song at any given moment without losing the feel. But it feels more like an exercise of “look what I can do” versus the naturalistic, intentional, but no less complex polyrhythmic talent of Tigran Hamasyan. Neely, by contrast, runs the show from his bass guitar - forever engaging the crowd, trying to push the energy, explain the song, or instigate a gaslighting time signature clap and chant. His talent for explanation and entertainment is evident in a scripted setting from his popular YouTube series, but loses some coherence when working off the cuff. His bass chops are undeniable, particularly on the two-handed tapping front, and a solo rendition of Holst’s Jupiter theme is delightful (though the conjured mental image of freshly baked bread is a cultural curiosity likely lost on him).
Perhaps here is where the problem lies. Neely and Crowder are part of a production-heavy generation - Neely’s YouTube channel is full of immaculately produced and paced videos, the sort of meticulously planned effort that pays dividends. And their music follows suit - it’s complex and intricate and heavily scripted, right down to the ever-present backing tracks. And this sits awkwardly against the jazz improvisation traditions. The encore is a cover of Vital Transmissions by Mahavishnu Orchestra, before which the band make a huge song and dance of turning off the backing & click track laptop. It’s a weird focus, especially given two earlier moments stuck in my head. First, a loss of pace in opener Against The Fall Of Night where the rigid click track tempo made the main passage drag. And later, a moment during Paydushko Horo where Neely, in full flight tapping mode, predicts he will lose the downbeat - and does. But that loss of tightness was actually charming, and added to rather than reduced the performance. The encore, by contrast, is free-flowing, messy and superb (I must listen to more Mahavishnu Orchestra).
“Improv good, click track bad” is, of course, a caveman take and, in this instance, untrue. Sungazer are here to do their thing, and that thing is purposeful and designed - right down to the matching coloured pyjamas. Take that away and they’re just another noodly jazz band - who gives a shit? Perhaps there’s a balance to be struck. And there’s loads to praise too: the high drama of Whisky and Mes, the vibrant Cool 7, That Riff in Against The Fall Of Night. For a band obsessed with time signature onanism, it’s the moments of crashing breakdowns and cheesy melodies that stick in the head. All the ingredients are there. Until then, I’m counting until it clicks.
It’s been a minute. Truth is, the past three months have featured some 2.2 major life events (1.4 of which are live and ongoing) and finding time to write for Post- has been tricky. In reality, I’ve written quite a bit of stuff for here (as well as having published a slew of features and reviews over at Distorted Sound), but in my earnest desire to stick to the monthly magazine format of essay + live review + album review + playlist, I’ve got several drafts of contemporary content languishing for that one last component.
So, from now on, I’m moving to single feature posts. Live reviews and the occasional album review will be individually packaged, as will any features or essays. Substack gives me the stats for playlist clicks, and virtually no readers click through to them (except for the big festivals or end-of-year Top 50 lists), so regular monthly new music round-ups are binned too.
In good content news, whilst I fell off the wagon of Album Club at the back end of last year, Season Two has started up, and I’m keeping pace so far, so expect some retrospective album reviews every six weeks or so to enjoy. The first post will hopefully be later this week.
Once again, thanks to all of you who subscribe to the blog. If you enjoy the content, a like and comment are most welcome. And tell your friends! To quote my good friend Rich: “This is not easy listening. But it is good listening.”
And yet, I’m Bad At It - I still can’t do a 5-over-3 polyrhythm.
The evangelism of Steve Reich’s Clapping Music by Squid is a big one, though it’s Apple only (c’mon guys, use React Native), so I still haven’t had the genuine experience.