Nu Jazz

You might prefer to call it jazztronica, or even future jazz, but if it's exotic, experimental, and you find yourself wanting to bust a move or two, you're most likely caught up in the capacious net of nu jazz — a scene in which the DJ mixes DNA with the free-ranging musician, and where individual expression is sacrificed to the supremacy of the groove. Our overview starts off in Poland, with Marcin Cichy and Igor Pudlo, a.k.a. Skalpel, one of many great nu jazz outfits signed to the U.K.'s Ninja Tune label, here blending beats and static crackles into the remixed "1958," and Tokyo-based Jazztronik (Ryota Nozaki) spinning and sampling through the hugely infectious "Samurai."

Things get complicated and simplified, with our Nu Jazz Next Steps.

Nu jazz has found its niche in the fecund creative middle-ground between the digital and the organic realms, so that on a track like "Scribble Paper" Sweden's Little Dragon — whose members collaborated with Gorillaz on Plastic Beach — can bridge the gap between an atmospheric synth wash and a single, old-school standup bassline. Multi-instrumentalist DJ/producer Kevin Yost overlays a big, thick backbeat with a trumpet part that repeats like birdsong on the Jazz Room remix of "Jazz Is," and with "Northern Girls" the wildly inventive Belleruche sets up a framework of cuts and snippets over which singer Kathrin deBoer can drape her vocal magic.

Our nu jazz map covers Fila Brazillia and Floating Points Ensemble, in Deep Cuts.

If you're charmed, mesmerized, and propelled towards the dance floor by a tune that's more than the sum of its many intricate and freewheeling parts, chances are you're listening to nu jazz — and we continue our overview of the scene with Tape Five, who merge elements of funk into the insta-party electro-swing of "The Smurf" from Tonight Josephine!, while Fila Brazillia slips a sly sense of humour into the mashed beats and samples of "Big Saddle" from 1996's very fine Mess. Floating Points Ensemble, masterminded by Sam Shepherd, blends Eastern and Western elements on "Post Suite," and Intelligent Jazz takes the sax in a fresh direction on "Bionics."

On the giant family tree of jazz, nu jazz shows up as acid jazz's electronic cousin, with strong blood ties to jazz house and a niece/nephew relationship to jazz fusion. Rooted in the pioneering electronic instrumental work of Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis, the boundlessly experimental genre really flowered in the late '90s and early '00s, fertilized by the creative explorations of downtempo musicians and freethinking dance music/techno producers, and centred around the structure and melody of the songs rather than the skills of the individual players. These tracks are all about the groove, but at the same time they offer a far more expansive musical palette than most offshoots of electronica, so you get to exercise your mind while moving your feet. From Atjazz to Wibutee, from Fauna Flash to Juno® Award-winners Fond of Tigers, and all points between, this is the sound of nu jazz.