Standouts from 50 Years of Electronic Jazz

In Kodwo Eshun's Afrofuturist masterpiece, More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction, the theorist explains the ancestral connections between jazz and contemporary dance music genres. Arguing that modal, spiritual and experimental jazz is the blueprint for Black artistry over the past half-century, he charts a lineage from Alice Coltrane, George Russell and Pharoah Sanders through to Detroit techno, jungle, dub, Parliament-style funk and beyond.

And justifiably so. So much of the electronic world has a jazz touch–from jungle's breakbeat (chopped up drum solos northwards of 150 BPM) to the operating system of Chicago house and deep techno (layers of extended jazz chords). Sonic Youth, Can and Melt-Banana took structural cues from the tonal chaos of avant-garde jazz; Fugazi and Talking Heads borrowed the syncopation of jazz-funk; hip-hop icons J Dilla and MC Solaar sampled heavily from vintage library music. Entire subgenres like acid jazz, broken beat and downtempo were born from the lush harmonies and swung grooves of '70s records.

Our latest cover stars, Jeff Mills and Ricardo Villalobos, are part of this rich history, too. The minimal maestro recently reimagined Sun Ra; while the Detroit don has several live ensembles, including Tomorrow Comes The Harvest (initially done with Tony Allen), Spiral Deluxe and The Paradox.

Inspired by them, we've rummaged deep in the crates. The records on this list, personal favourites selected by Resident Advisor staff, pivot away from some noted classics of the form that might come to mind. Together, they form a small glimpse of jazz's reach across drum & bass, techno, IDM and various other corners of the machine music spectrum, showing how the artform just never stops moving. - Nyshka Chandran, Senior Editor (North America)

In the '70s and '80s, the arrival of analogue synthesisers in the Global South was a structural revolution for music. For countries with scarce resources, a synthesiser became the band, helping artists leapfrog into a digital future. Casablanca's organ king Abdou El Omari was one such pioneer. He added a psychedelic touch to gnawa and chaâbi music with his Farfisa Professional and ARP, creating sultry funk inspired by John Coltrane. This final instalment of his Nuits album trilogy captures his slower side with its laid back grooves and unhurried pace. - Nyshka Chandran

Imagine, if you will, 1982, when guitars were guitars, synths were synths and society generally knew where it stood. Along comes the immaculately coiffured Pat Metheny, whose featherlight ECM-core was more suited to tavernas than transgression, wielding a Synclavier and a wacky-looking device, the Roland GR-300, from which he wrests insanely expressive chromatic melodies in a tone you struggle to wrap your head around. At a time when conservative jazz listeners might still huff derisively at anything digital, Offramp blew the promise of guitar synthesisers wide open, making the Missourian a fusion superstar and setting a new standard in proto-Balearic noodling. I feel a kind of envious kinship with Metheny, who soars around this record sounding as if he's truly cracked life's code. - Gabriel Szatan

Cameroonian musicologist and composer Francis Bebey embraced electronic hardware early into his career. Using synthesisers and drum machines alongside local instruments like the sanza (a type of thumb piano) and Pygmy flute, he fused makossa and Afro-pop with proto-disco. Much of his discography is upbeat, with lyrics that serve as social commentary, but not this EP. Its overdubbed sanza loops, echo effects, futuristic ambient textures plus atmospheric style of vocals (a change from Bebey's usual bright storytelling) are delightfully chuggy and a Balearic lover's dream. - Nyshka Chandran

Part dub, part pop and part rocksteady, the entire discography of this cult '90s Japanese band is pure sonic gold. The 2021 release of a documentary on the group's story, which debuted in North America this year, helped expand their following. Yet the key, as ever, lies in the craft. Their songs drift along a stream of reverb-soaked instruments and seemingly endless delay, coming off like one immersive sound wave—a big reason why the ensemble resonates so widely today. Each Fishmans record has a daydream quality, but "Nantettano" off 1992's King Master George is especially breezy. Pairing melancholic vocals with jazz-funk breakbeats, loungey chords and city pop assurance, these five minutes are a blissful journey into the clouds. - Nyshka Chandran

As Galaxy 2 Galaxy, Mike Banks essentially created a new genre, recasting techno’s relationship with jazz in a way not seen before, eventually coining the term hi-tech jazz. Like much of the Underground Resistance catalogue, it's driven by the belief that music can imagine new worlds and brighter futures. It's incredible how a track with no lyrics can communicate optimism, belief and hope so clearly. You can hear it from the opening beat, in the warmth of the synth pads, the twinkling melodies and, of course, that saxophone. Is there a more transformative jazz-techno record? Probably not. - Fahad Akinsanya

Released in 1983, Jean-Luc Ponty's eternal classic Computer Incantations For World Peace has, at first glance, a lofty ambition—one that feels far removed from our technofascist era. Yet even now it's a reminder of electronic music's promise. Incantations translate to a spell, a series of words that, when said out loud, create a sense of magic, and Ponty casts his through cascading arpeggios that descend like a curtain of rain after a drought. 13 years later, three men in Baltimore—Teddy Douglas, DJ Spen and Maurice Fulton, working as Those Guys—took four bars of those arpeggios and set them turning for ten minutes. Adding a kick drum and soulful declarations, it's a house classic capable of making any dance floor go weak at the knees. - Bella Aquilina

Listen to some people and they'll tell you illbient never really got its due. I'm some people. The indifference that faced this microscene isn't a surprise: everyone magpied from everything in the '90s, and illbient's claustrophobic sound wasn't engineered to break large. On As Is, though, chief instigator DJ Olive and the assorted players in We™ got the formula spot on. Accented by flute swarms, lights-down-low samples and violin scribbled on top, this fecund mix of rugged trip-hop and organic drum & bass cast the spirit of live collaboration in new shapes for bohos in Brooklyn to mellow out to. OK, it's a squiggly line from hard bop to "Magnesium Flares"—but jazz is a big club, and even second cousins are welcome to hang. - Gabriel Szatan

Few albums are such fine unifiers. When French producer Ludovic Navarre released Tourist, he bridged the jazz-electronic divide between Blue Note dwellers and dance floor enthusiasts, who all rallied around a (non)chalant masterpiece which finds the ideal balance between optimism and resignation. It's a tightrope manifested in Navarre's production style, which is rhythmically complex yet scans as appealingly simple to the ear. "Montego Bay Spleen"'s echoed dub lurches like something off a Holy Tongue record, while opener "Rose Rouge" and "Latin Note" bring the kind of intoxicating, fidgety freak-out reserved for the best virtuosos—and underpinning it all is the reliable pulse of house music. This is an album that can soundtrack a winding afters or the most spectacular Carrie Bradshaw crashouts. Chic. - Rachel Grace Almeida

Beginning in the late '90s and 2000s, a cross-Atlantic exchange reconfigured the soulful bones of Brazil's samba into the rolling rhythms of Britain's drum & bass. What emerged was Sambass, a collision of two genres from respective nations with similar backgrounds: both samba and drum & bass began as homegrown sounds developed by working-class communities of African descent. Monster hits like DJ Marky's "LK" boomed, but few embodied the spirit of both lineages better than brother duo Drumagick. Their track "Easy Boom" borrows generously from "Take It Easy My Brother Charles," an oft-reinterpreted Jorge Ben classic that makes the deep conversation between Brazil's musical past and present within sambass explicit. And if that's not jazz enough, check out this live performance, featuring a five-piece outfit they often performed with. - Benny Sun

Karriem Riggins. Amp Fiddler. Carl Craig. As the nucleus of an electronic jazz offshoot, you're already off to a flier. Once you add prestigious players like Art Ensemble of Chicago's Jaribu Shahid and Herbie Hancock’s righthand man Bennie Maupin to the mix, it's a wrap. "Think Twice" is The Detroit Experiment's big hit, and rightly so, shooting the sharpest Donald Byrd sample since Main Source to house immortality. (Amp, double booked, actually missed that session, plus the royalties.) For a trio whose work could comfortably populate this entire list, the endurance of this one-and-done project is all down to versatility. Across downtempo, space-funk, gospel and the odd cornball freestyle, the trio vamp with the best of them. - Gabriel Szatan

Among the numerous electronic remixes of jazz classics that record labels commissioned throughout the aughts, most were callously regurgitated as landfill club tunes that did no justice to either the original legend or the typically talented remixer. Few had such a strong grasp on the original material as François K, who was tasked with reworking Nina Simone's reinterpretation of one of The Beatles' most popular tunes. The New York artist's remix, an arrangement that strips away everything but Simone's vocals, manages the impossible feat of being equally tender and lush as the original. The High Priestess of Soul's vintage tenor, placed front and centre, sounds evergreen on this digital backdrop, a calm sea of swelling synths upon a minimal house groove. - Benny Sun

Madlib, one of hip-hop's most inventive producers, has sustained a steady output of jazz releases that equals his calling card as a rapper. The seventh installment in his audacious 2010 Medicine Show series, comprising twelve records released in twelve months, finds Madlib reconvening Yesterday's New Quintet, the fictional ensemble in which he plays every instrument under a rotating cast of alter egos. #7: High Jazz reads like a walkthrough of the '70s fusion continuum with nods to Stanton Davis's buoyant Ghetto Mysticism, Azymuth's breezy Brazilian funk and Herbie Hancock's Rhodes-inflected reveries. The Madlib sensibility he honed from the start of the century—jazz's unruliness tamed for the beatmaker's grid—served as an important precursor to the LA beat scene, which inherited and formalised the approach for an electronic audience. - Chloe Lula

Since he poked his head out from the crowd in 2013, Anthony Naples has graduated from outsider house's resident poster boy to connoisseur of excellence. It all started with his breakout "Mad Disrespect," the first track ever released on Mister Saturday Night, the treasured Brooklyn party he regularly attended. In a mid-'10s era of pretty forgettable filter house (sorry!), Naples stood out for his uncomplicated faith in soul: here, you'll find no exaggerated low/high pass. He simply lifts one of the best cascading piano riffs of all time (Roy Ayers and Wayne Henderson's "No Deposit, No Return"), a quirky but somehow functional Pharrell vocal sample and a frictionless 4/4 swung beat. No nonsense, just mad respect, actually. - Rachel Grace Almeida

I don't think you can credibly talk about the dots connecting electronic music and jazz without discussing the contributions of two masters specifically: Theo Parrish and Tony Allen. One could argue that there are very few individuals who have worked as tirelessly to dissolve all boundaries between the genres than Parrish and Allen. The pair's collaborations on record and in live performance are ideals of alchemy, and this offering is particularly special because it brings maestros Eska and Dave Okumu, into their orbit; simply la petite cerise sur le gâteau. - Kazim Rashid

Unlike Juan Atkins staple "Jazz is the Teacher," which underscores the metaphorical lineage between jazz and techno, a much more literal interpretation of the relationship can be found in South African dance music. Over time, the line between deep house, amapino, gqom and jazzy chops has become essentially indivisible. Groove specialist DJ General Slam, a Soweto-born producer and founder of Gentle Soul Recordings, is given extra thump here by amapiano mainstays MFR Souls; the subtle beds of synths and strings on "When Jazz Meets House" might even call to mind to the luscious depth of Kerri Chandler. Peals of saxophone glide over the rhythm, in a manner reminiscent of the pulsing soul jazz of Freddie Hubbard or Idris Muhammad. - Benny Sun

By its tenth entry, Moritz von Oswald's project had become a shifting proposition, less a fixed group than a recurring ritual for improvised electronics. Dissent convenes the Basic Channel architect with Laurel Halo on piano and synths and Heinrich Köbberling on drums, and the chemistry is patient rather than combustible. What von Oswald brings from his dub techno lineage is the treatment of the studio itself as an instrument, where delays hang suspended and reverb tails linger as long as the notes. But it's in the record's final stretch that the three fall into effortless formation, tracking each other's smallest gestures, moving closer to a murmuration than to a trio. - Chloe Lula

Three years after Space 1.8 established Nala Sinephro as a singular composer on Warp's roster, Endlessness expanded her palette without diluting it. The ten "Continuum" pieces move as a single breath: harp arpeggios circle over modular pads, Nubya Garcia's saxophone and Sheila Maurice-Grey's flugelhorn drift in and out like weather systems. Sinephro's collaborators come from the young London jazz scene (Kokoroko, Ezra Collective, Sons of Kemet), but her own compositional practice sits closer to the deep-listening tradition of Pauline Oliveros or Laraaji than to jazz orthodoxy. It's a rare record that sounds at once like ambient music and like a rigorous through-composed suite, without ever forcing the reconciliation. - Chloe Lula

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you need to convince someone that modern techno still has soul, this is the record to play them. Fireground makes house and techno that oscillates between the colourful dexterity of Robert Glasper's jazz and the tough Neapolitan techno lineage they hail from. They have a long string of great tunes, but "Marea" is one of their best. The Bill Summers-inspired drum programming, the keys carrying the lead melody and an outstanding second keyboard part that opens out into an extended, utterly dazzling solo. RIP Roy Ayers, you would have loved Fireground. - Fahad Akinsanya

"The sound of surprise." Whitney Balliett, The New Yorker's jazz critic, coined the phrase in 1959, and it's one answer to the question of what lifts jazz from good to great. SML's Spontaneous Music Live may be its purest test case. The title is self-explanatory, but the LA quintet take jazz's improvisational streak somewhere further: they don't rehearse, rarely prepare a set, and across three albums have never tracked a note in a studio. The first two were live performances chopped into something punchy and post-produced. Here they hand over the raw material, with two tracks cut from live recordings during a three-night performance. It blossoms into cacophony—drums, saxophone, bass, guitar and glimmering synths all cresting around each other—before thinning out again, the surprises rolling through in continuous, unpredictable motion. - Bella Aquilina