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 where the DJ mixes DNA with the free-ranging musician, and where individual expression is sacrificed to the supremacy of the groove. Our overview starts of in Poland, with Marcin Cichy and Igor Pudlo, aka Skalpel, one of many great nu jazz outfit's signed to London'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 bass line. 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 "Gold Rush" 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 Nuspirit Helsinki, in Deep Cuts.

If you're charmed, mesmerized and propelled towards the dancefloor by a tune that's more than the sum of its many intricate and free-wheeling 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. Berlin-based Andrea Benini — aka Mop Mop — beguiles us with a meandering sax on "Jazzdancer" while Nuspirit Helsinki seduces us with the chilled atmospherics of "Subzero".

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 showboating 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 off-shoots of electronica, so you get to exercise your mind while you're moving your feet. From Atjazz to Wibutee, Fauna Flash to Earl Zinger, and all points between, this is the sound of nu jazz.