Nathan Haines: Back in the groove

Nathan Haines had to break a few self-imposed rules of jazz to make his new album, 5 A Day, writes Lydia Jenkin.

Nathan Haines is marking a few milestones this summer. It's been 20 years since his first record Shift Left was released; he's becoming a father for the first time; and he's releasing his 10th album (which is also his third in three years), 5 A Day.

After the serious jazz statements of 2012's A Poet's Embrace and 2013's Vermillion Skies, 5 A Day presents more dance-oriented, beats based tunes, inspired by his return to London this year, and many nights spinning tunes as a DJ.

"I feel like it's an accumulation of the last 10 albums I've done - I've tried to bring all the elements of all of them together on this one," he explains, sitting down for an afternoon beer in Kingsland, where he'll be based for the summer with his wife Jamie, who helped to spur the initial ideas for the album.

"We were DJing a lot in London. We were both resident DJs at Chiltern Firehouse, which is this kind of ridiculous 'cooler than cool, you can't get in if you try to' type place, and Jamie started saying that she wanted this album to be a record that she could play out, in a DJ set. And I realised that I wanted to make a party record, or a record that you could put on that you could dance to."

That doesn't mean the jazz elements are gone, just that it's a little more modern.

"It was great to do those two jazz records - they were great for my career over in the UK and Germany, and it was wonderful to be able to do those and then take a step back. It was very liberating. But this is more getting back to the records I've always made."

He calls it a modern British soul record, very urban, very electronic, with production techniques that make it as warm and appealing as Daft Punk or Pharrell, while also referencing Haines' heroes like Sly and Robbie, J Dilla and Steely Dan.

"It's a very British record with a few New Zealand sensibilities I think. Having Tama Waipara [as a guest vocalist] on there was amazing, and Kevin Mark Trail [who was one half of The Streets], who actually now lives in New Zealand. He's amazing."

Early on he contacted one half of UK production duo 4hero, Marc Mac, and asked him to send him some beats, along with P-Money, and enlisted long time friend and collaborator Mike Patto as co-producer and co-engineer.

With Patto came his wife, vocalist Vanessa Freeman, who has worked with Haines many times, and Haines contacted aforementioned Trail and Waipara, plus recruited his brother Joel on guitar and London jazz luminary Ernie McKone on bass.

"I think it felt a bit like the old hip-hop crews where they've got this extended family, and they all do everything together and really trust each other, and if something is rubbish you can tell someone that."

The extended group gave them the chance to highlight things like group vocals (listen to Count On Me for some almost chant-like vocals), and to break a few self-imposed rules of jazz.

"We had to unlearn a few things, because both myself and Mike are very 'learned' jazz musicians, for want of a better phrase, we get deep into the building blocks of harmony and so on, and there's elements of that in the record, but we didn't want that to get in the way of it being a really fun record."

Indeed there's a joyful element that has soaked into the album almost by osmosis, with Jamie being pregnant throughout recording and Haines considering his impending fatherhood.

"It felt more adult than anything we've done before, but it also felt more intuitive. There's that raw feeling, I think it's important to be able to trust that initial burst of instinct."

The other key factor Haines was looking for was attitude - a little bit rock 'n' roll and aiming to sound sly and edgy, rather than conventional and mature.

"That attitude thing is really important to us. Mike's father was a very famous British jazz musician who made it big in America with Spooky Tooth, so Mike grew up with a lot of rock 'n' roll guys around. And I grew up with the jazz scene here with my dad introducing me to guys like Tommy Adderley and crazy cool musicians. There was always this mystery around those guys; it seems a shame that that's been a little bit lost from the idiom.

"I don't know when jazz records became so straight. Jazz used to be on the edge of society, now everything is so straight. Not that I'm advocating a lifestyle of drugs and alcohol, it's more of a mental approach, an attitude.

"But at the same time I am distancing myself more and more from the 'J' word, even though I play saxophone, and I have a deep love for jazz. I wouldn't mind if my records were filed under electronica or soul instead of jazz. For me this record is a very electronic record - there's no live drums on it, they're all programmed."

Rest assured there will plenty of live musicians (including live drumming) when they head to the Tuning Fork in Auckland next Thursday night to celebrate the album release.

"I don't want to do backing tracks, so we'll play most of the record, but we'll also be playing stuff from other albums. We'll have Cherie Mathieson taking Vanessa's place for the night, along with my brother Joel, Kevin Field on keyboards, as well as another keyboard player Michal Martyniuk, a young guy who I met while I was teaching at university. Mickey Ututaonga will be on drums and Marika Hodgson on bass. I always thought it was very clever how Miles Davis surrounded himself with young new musicians," he laughs, "so I'm doing a bit of that.

"P-Money is going to DJ beforehand, and we might do some covers like Trouble Man by Marvin Gaye and things like that. We'll mix it up.

"It'll be a party, it'll be a celebration."

Who: Nathan Haines
What: New album 5 A Day, out tomorrow
Where and when: Performing at The Tuning Fork on Thursday December 4, with an eight-piece band featuring guest vocalists Kevin Mark Trail and Tama Waipara.

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