Impressive Jazz Reworks

On this collection, remix and reverence co-exist comfortably. After all, Impulse never held preservation as a primary directive. It prioritized new sounds and new technologies, and treated all of its musicians as innovators, as revolutionaries in their own right. Perhaps that’s the label’s true calling card, the real reason behind the continued reverence. From the most challenging jazz to the most traditional, Impulse made it all sound equally, eternally modern.

- From the Spectremusic review of Impulsive! Revolutionary Jazz Reworked

II B.S. (RZA's Mingus Bounce Mix) (mp3)

Iconic bassist and composer Charles Mingus' output on Impulse Records remains his most alive, his most soulful and his most contemplative. "II B.S." not only showcased Mingus' lyrical bass-playing (especially its momentous intro), but also the rebellious, fiery nature that colored Mingus' life. The RZA is the production mastermind behind the Wu-Tang Clan, the Staten Island collective that turned hip-hop on its head with their gritty, grimey street-reared albums over the last decade. RZA, who has become a masterful composer in his own right (check his score for Jim Jarmusch's "Ghost Dog," or Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" movies), turns Mingus' original inside out, playing with the windblown horn stabs and chopping up the song's rhythms into a playful jazz-bounce.

-from vervemusicgroup.com

Mizrab (Gabor Szabo / Prefuse 73 remix) (mp3)

Gabor Szabo's free-wheeling, self-taught guitar style, personified the limitless creative palette that jazz had appropriated in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This composition, from the 1972 album of the same name, was one of his most astounding. The gorgeous, original "Mizrab," has become a favorite of many jazz-heads through the years, so it is no surprise that Prefuse 73 aka Scott Heren, chose to remix it for his contribution to Impulsive. Prefuse 73, who splits his time between Atlanta and Barcelona, has a wonderfully experimental sensibility when composing music, using electronics, samples and new ideas in sound compression to create formed, melodic mosaics. Here, he replicates Szabo's passionate guitar playing with his own fractured electronic melodies and the result is pure elegance.

- from vervemusicgroup.com