Sidecar Noir — Lab Notes

smoky, hypnotic, turntable, jazz (3ING-075)

Our Three Ingredients Or Less label has a lot of food-related puns and cooking connections. But this one feels more like a cocktail. Not just any cocktail, however. This particular concoction acts more like a time machine, taking you back to a mid-century noir night club for a stiff drink, then whipping back to the present into the DJ booth of a hipster hang. It’s a trip, that’s for sure.

True to form, the Sidecar Noir (3ING-075) cocktail has three ingredients that will dance on your tastebuds and tease your expectations. Featuring the improvised sonic explorations of Kase, this trio of Jamie Breiwick (trumpet), John Christensen (bass), and Jordan Lee (turntables, electronics) push the boundaries of jazz and hip hop with their unique collaboration.

The album was recorded live with all three members playing together in the same room, so the usual isolated stems aren’t quite what you’ve come to expect. Instead, we captured the intangible energy of complete in-the-moment takes that make you feel like you’re right there in the middle of it... and we think the tradeoff was worth it.

And if all of that isn’t tantalizing enough, Lee utilized samples from our own catalog for his initial inspiration. It’s production music within production music, a commercially viable ouroboros. Lee starts with two questions when searching for samples, “Does it speak to you and does it feel like you?” By digging through full albums in our virtual crates and utilizing some of our extensive stem packs, the talented turntablist identified ideal sonic properties that would become the blueprint for these new compositions. Lee shares that “When working with stems, you can hear a different melody that doesn’t exist in the original compositions.” And by manipulating that base material, he set the stage for the sound of each track.

Quite a few tracks like “A Fortnight” and “Sleeping Buffalo” include samples from Odd Quirk (E&E-007), which unsurprisingly gives those selections a slightly off-kilter feel and bounce that is often found on the original record.

The inventive connections continue on “Stories To Be Told” where samples from a corporate-pop leaning album on Three Ingredients Or Less and full on turntablism from HypeKit get thrown in the blender with the live jazzy trumpet and upright bass. You can follow along with all the locally sourced/sampled material and see how it gained second life with Sidecar Noir with the complete list below.

So when and where do you serve such a potent cocktail? Clear fits include Film Noir and drama, but also quirky ads and late night television. It wouldn’t be a stretch for these tracks to be the sound of one of those post-modern celebrity-endorsed fragrance commercials (you know the kind) or of an emerging alcohol brand or rebrand campaign.

In any case, Sidecar Noir has arrived, and it’s the cure for what ails you.

Here’s a list of the samples used and their respective tracks on Sidecar Noir:

Sleeping Buffalo

Samples: “Buffalo Crop Circles” (E&E-007-06), “Sleep Deep Now” (HK-08-15)

Rhythmic Decisions

Samples: “Decisions Decisions” (3ING-066-06)

Vegan Pork Bellies

Samples: “Pork Belly Gelatin” (E&E-007-08)

Expensive Champagne

Samples: “Champagne Bohemia” (E&E-007-07)

A Fortnight

Samples: “Let's Do It Tonight Baby” (E&E-007-03)