Even if you happen to’ve never learn Frank Herbert’s Dune, you could effectively have encountered its adaptations to a variety of other media: comic books, video video games, board video games, television collection, and naturally movies, David Lynch’s 1984 version and Denis Villeneuve’s two-parter earlier this decade. However earlier than any of these got here Dune, the jazz-funk album by keyboardist and bandchief David Matthews. Launched in 1977 on the popular jazz label CTI Information, it devotes its total first facet to a 20-minute suite ostensibly impressed by Herbert’s novel, consisting of the items “Arrakis,” “Sandworms,” “Music of the Bene Gesserit,” and “Muad’dib.”
You’ll discover that the typography on the cover of Matthews’ Dune appears terriblely reminiscent of Star Wars, a movie that had come out the exact same yr. It’s not actually false advertising, for the reason that album closes with versions of each Star Wars’ fundamental theme and Princess Leia’s theme, supplemented by the theme from Douglas Trumbull’s Silent Running and even David Bowie’s “Area Oddity.” According to jazz historian Doug Payne, the concept was the thought of CTI founder Creed Taylor.
Taylor had originally employed Matthews as CTI’s chief arranger, the latter’s years of experience as James Brown’s musical director having promised the potential to imbue the label’s releases with disco enchantment. In addition to Matthews on the important thingboards, Dune additionally features heavy-hitting session players from the late-seventies jazz world like Randy Brecker, Steve Gadd, Grover Washington, Jr., Hiram Bullock, and David Sanborn. Followers of obscurantist hip-hop may recognize Matthews’ “Area Oddity” cover as a sample supply for MF DOOM’s “Rapp Snitch Knishes.”
Very like Bob James, his fellow masterthoughts of disco-inflected jazz, Matthews has created a physique of labor that lives on a hip-hop goldmine: his other samplers embrace Methodology Man, Pinkman, and The Notorious B.I.G. However it was in Japan that he discovered his most enthusiastic listenership. After leaving CTI in 1978, Payne writes, “Matthews went onto file a slew of information for manyly Japanese labels underneath a variety of guises including Japan’s number one promoteing jazz group, the Manhattan Jazz Quintet.” If you happen to visit Japan, you could effectively hear Matthews’ music playing in an area jazz bar.
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Primarily based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His initiatives embrace the Substack newsletter Books on Cities and the guide The Statemuch less Metropolis: a Stroll by Twenty first-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social webwork formerly generally known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
