Lost In This Mysterious Vibe // Composer Reacts to Jaga Jazzist - Kitty Wú

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:02]Hello and welcome back to another episode of Critical Reactions with your host Brian.

[00:00:09]We're going to wrap up this week's theme of jazz appreciation looking at the band Jaga Jazzist or maybe Yaga Jazzist.

[00:00:19]I don't know.

[00:00:20]Uh we have had them on the channel before and they are absolutely bonkers within the jazzy somewhat jazz fusion area.

[00:00:29]I remember being really blown away the last time we checked them out. I'll put a link up there if you're interested in that. Let's dive into this track though.

[00:00:36]It's called Kitty Woo.

[00:00:38]Let's see what they're bringing to the table today.

[00:00:43]>> [music] >> Already I can't find one. That's a good start.

[00:00:52]>> [music] >> There we go.

[00:01:06]Not where I thought it was on the bells actually.

[00:01:12]>> [music] >> Ooh. Ooh.

[00:01:17]>> [music] >> Really wild harmonies.

[00:01:30]Is this microtonal?

[00:01:32]>> [music] >> Or atonal actually maybe.

[00:01:46]>> [music] >> The percussion here is interesting.

[00:02:02]Very electronic.

[00:02:07]>> [music] >> I love the rumble on [music] the snare.

[00:02:12]I don't know why it feels like a second instrument. It almost feels like it's layered on.

[00:02:23]>> [music] >> Geez, this is a mysterious track. [music] Vaguely familiar, but nothing like I've heard before.

[00:02:46]There's so much space [music] on it.

[00:02:47]Like there's there's room to fill if they wanted to and they just are not.

[00:02:55]>> [music] >> Okay. Okay.

[00:03:04]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Okay, we're not going into that triplet feel then.

[00:03:41]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> So, these dyads mostly constant harmony with [music] each other, but this synth in the center is way off.

[00:05:03]>> [music] >> I think it's what it is because it's the same line that the sax was playing [music] at the beginning of the track.

[00:05:11]It's the part that seems the most out of place harmonically.

[00:05:18]All right, I I know I know that the main like sell of this channel is it's the analysis. I I don't think I'm up here making really wild faces, and I don't think I'm too entertaining from that perspective.

[00:05:34]Maybe sometimes.

[00:05:36]Uh yesterday I had a video that I'm sure it was quite entertaining uh as far as we just physically reacting to the music, but I think most people just come here cuz they want to hear my thoughts on the music. Try to explain it and and give some insight into what the artist might have been trying to do.

[00:05:53]I I think I'm going to disappoint people today. I have no idea what this song is is aiming for, what it's trying to do.

[00:06:05]And I think a lot of that comes down to just how unusual it is. Like, I don't want to put it in the avant-garde jazz category. I don't think it's quite that experimental. A lot of what's going on here uses traditional music theory. It's just kind of used in ways that a little less common, a little less usual.

[00:06:29]And it makes it difficult to discern what it's trying to say.

[00:06:35]Like, if someone's speaking to you in a language you're familiar with, but the syntax isn't right, the speech cadence, the emphasis on specific syllables, it's all a little a little off. It ends up feeling more alien because it's kind of in this uncanny valley where you should be able to understand it, but you can't. Very different from something that you have no relationship to at all. And that's what this kind of ends up feeling like.

[00:07:04]It's the musical equivalent of the uncanny valley.

[00:07:09]Everything in here kind of makes sense, but it it really doesn't. And that's what I I kind of touched on during the reaction itself when I had mentioned that, you know, parts of this feel familiar. It's not that I've heard this song or something like this song before, but it's simply that I I should understand these qualities, these building blocks, these musical devices.

[00:07:35]And I kind of do on the periphery of my ear.

[00:07:40]That's a weird phrase.

[00:07:42]Like, it makes sense until I actually look at it and listen into what it's doing and then I'm like, what? What is this? Something's not right here. I don't get this at all. And it's this really bizarre area.

[00:07:56]And I think the first section that really hit me like this was harmonically at the beginning of this track.

[00:08:04]It feels harmonically solid but it it doesn't.

[00:08:12]And my first guess was microtonality but maybe not by a large margin. Maybe just some instruments slightly tuned down a little bit.

[00:08:23]Instead of tuning the saxophone to be perfectly in line with like a 440 hertz C, what if it was a 420 hertz C? What if it was a 415 hertz C? You know, just a little flatter than you would expect. Makes the entire instrument just a little flatter. You're not really playing with microtonality in the sense that you are creating various intervals that don't quite match the typical 12 tone intervals that we use.

[00:08:58]Um but instead all of your notes are just a hair bit flatter than they would be.

[00:09:07]Still using the same note intervals as 12 tone but not at the typical intervals typical range, the pitch itself that you would normally tune towards.

[00:09:21]I don't think that's accurate though.

[00:09:26]Maybe my my second guess was atonality and that there wasn't a core key to this track that all the notes are being used simultaneously just not in a way that leads to a chromatic flavor. Uh the the chromatic key is one that uses all of the notes.

[00:09:44]This would simply be that the Uh generally what you would get when you're creating something atonal is that you might have a a specific honing in of specific notes at various intervals. So, you might focus on these seven notes and then these seven notes and these seven notes. And you might change this every bar, half of a bar, two bars, just in order to never allow it to feel like it is ever locked into one specific emotional mode.

[00:10:18]But that it never quite feels like everything is at play all at one time, which would give it that chromatic feeling. I don't think that's entirely right, either, though. And I think it really boils down to the fact that I don't know what's going on. I don't think I've ever heard this before.

[00:10:35]Which isn't entirely true.

[00:10:39]I kind of don't want to post this up because this is one of my earliest works in my resurgence of getting back into music making. And it was something I did in 2021, maybe, when I started the composition jam.

[00:10:56]But uh another artist and I, I'm completely blanking on her name, released a bunch of her stems and asked uh people to remix her music. Um and that was the very first composition jam we ever did was to make a remix of this. I thought that was a good way to introduce people to it because the purpose of the composition jam wasn't just to get people who made music to make music. It was also to invite anyone to make music. And starting with pre-made stems sounds like a really good way to introduce people into the world of music creation.

[00:11:29]Um anyways, uh the saxophone in here sounds almost exactly like the way that I ended up formant shifting the vocals in my rendition in my remix of this.

[00:11:40]I'll I'll put a link up here. Like I said, it's it's a rough work. It was the first time I I played around with production of any kind.

[00:11:47]Um Let me just give credit where credit is due. That artist is Elise Trouw. Um and she's phenomenal at live looping. Um but yeah, I'll I'll leave that link up there.

[00:12:02]Y'all can check that out.

[00:12:04]Um but yeah, there's parts of this that really reminds me of of my remix of that. And it's weird, too, because I think that's where part of the familiarity came in.

[00:12:14]But I also can't place harmonically where this sits.

[00:12:19]Um so I I can't really give much info about that.

[00:12:24]When it comes to the rhythmic side of things, this is equally as frustrating.

[00:12:32]Uh right off the bat, we had the bells that introduced the track. And I think it started off with a pickup note, which are notes that exist before the first bar.

[00:12:44]It's kind of a weird way to visualize it cuz you would expect the first notes to be in the first bar, whether there's a rest there or not. But the way it's typically written in sheet music is that if you have notes that aren't on a downbeat to start a song off, they're in an invisible bar zero.

[00:13:01]They exist prior to bar one. And I think that's what happened because once the drums came in, I locked in, oh yeah, dude, 4/4. Very easy to understand this.

[00:13:10]But where the drums were at, their accents, where one landed with the drum part, it just was really awkward at where it was within the bell part.

[00:13:22]And I think that's what made the bells so awkward to understand rhythmically.

[00:13:27]this concept of awkward rhythmic devices persisted throughout this entire track and anytime that I felt like I began to understand what they were trying to accomplish with the rhythmic devices in it.

[00:13:41]They threw me for a loop. For instance, uh that one time when we had a triplet feel on the bass kick, I think it was or maybe a synth and I locked in and I was like, "All right, here's our triplet."

[00:13:52]And then they just abandoned it. We had six beats of that triplet feel and then it never came back.

[00:13:59]Uh that threw me for a loop. There's a lot of places in here with spaciousness, a lack of layers.

[00:14:06]Those sections kind of make it difficult to follow along with the track rhythmically unless the melody is presenting something with a a cadence or a pulse at the heart of it and that was not always the case either such as with the bells at the beginning.

[00:14:20]So, it it's just really difficult to follow along with this track and groove with it um and anticipate where it's going.

[00:14:28]It just kind of does whatever it wants whenever it wants rhythmically which kind of pairs well with this ambiguous harmonic component to it.

[00:14:41]The melody, I guess, kind of lines up with a lot of the harmonic components.

[00:14:44]It's primarily that saxophone that threw me off on that, the saxophone melody which threw off the harmonic components. I don't have much to add there either, but I I do walk away from this track with a reaction to it.

[00:15:01]It's a a reaction video, I suppose.

[00:15:04]No, it's you know, there's definitely music out there where I listen to it and I just throw my hands up. I don't get it and I walk away. I I like I have nothing to add to it, but I I did have an experience listening to this track.

[00:15:19]There is something infectious about it because it is mysterious.

[00:15:27]I think this comes through even despite the harmonic elements that I can't place, despite the rhythmic elements that I can't place.

[00:15:36]It still feels ominous. Not Mhm, no. Mysterious.

[00:15:43]It's not ominous. There isn't uh a danger lurking here.

[00:15:48]But there is something new.

[00:15:50]Something fresh. Something that makes you curious.

[00:15:55]And I think that's what really stuck with me throughout all of this. I was always wondering what's around the corner both because uh technically it is full of surprises. Rhythmically, melodically, harmonically, I couldn't anticipate where this was going, but also because some of the instruments did use traditional music theory to create harmonies that felt mysterious, that evoked the feeling of mystery.

[00:16:29]And I suppose also curiosity.

[00:16:32]This may be where the title comes in. I have no idea what Kitty Woo means, but curiosity and cats tend to go hand in hand, and this song made me very curious.

[00:16:47]But I love the feeling that there is hidden information at hand, and I have to do work to uncover it. There is plenty of this track that sits on top of this baseline mysterious vibe that's pushed the song into its own areas, but I think when you focus on just these instruments it certainly feels like something that would work well in a type of mystery or thriller kind of atmosphere, maybe like a film or a radio drama or something. Um what do they call them nowadays? Is this a a podcast story?

[00:17:25]Uh audiobook. Okay, there we go.

[00:17:28]>> [laughter] >> Can it be an audiobook if there isn't a book it's based off of?

[00:17:32]I don't know. I'm going to stick with radio shows. Just going to show my age a little bit, I guess.

[00:17:38]Radio dramas. Um but I really love that feeling because it's not something we get to hop in on the channel. It's not even something I find too often on my own. It feels like uh a vibe, a flavor that is typically associated with multimedia, with film, with radio dramas.

[00:17:58]Uh a a more traditional storytelling format to go along with it. It is sonic texture to accompany words.

[00:18:10]But here it's isolated within an audio format.

[00:18:16]And I love that. It's just not something you hear too often in pop, in rock, in metal, in jazz, in anything, really.

[00:18:27]And I am a sucker for it. It is it just captures me. It pulls me in. I'm like, "All right. What are we doing here?

[00:18:34]What's the puzzle? What should I think about?" And it it gives me all these clues. And I think that's the best part about it is that the baseline foundational harmony is very much mystery and then everything else is puzzle pieces. What is the harmony? What is the rhythm? And it just makes me want to listen to it again and again and again until I figure it out.

[00:18:58]I was locked into this as as confused and lost as I was. Uh bands and and tracks have certainly put me in this position before and I just have no interest in returning to it. It's just too avant-garde, too experimental, too out there for me, but this track reels me in and invites me back and I accept. Not reluctantly, but excitedly, ready to dive in again and see if I can understand anything else even just a little bit better on that second listen.

[00:19:35]At least that's my response to Yaga Jazzist.

[00:19:41]Jagga Jazzist? How do you pronounce this?

[00:19:44]Jazzist makes sense because this is jazz adjacent, but Jagga doesn't sound right.

[00:19:49]I feel like that should be Yaga.

[00:19:51]Yaga Jazzist? No, that doesn't work.

[00:19:53]Anyways, someone let me know how to pronounce this band. Uh their track Kitty Woo. Uh what did you think of this? Is there anything that stood out to you? Anything that you'd like to add on to what I said or correct me on? Do you have your own take, perspective, or opinion on this? Let me know. Put all of that as well as anything else you'd like to into the comments section below.

[00:20:12]Above that in the description box you'll find a link to Linktree. Takes you here.

[00:20:16]find links to my music, ways to support the channel, a link to the Discord server, and so much more. Above that, if you could, like, subscribe, and ring the bell. I greatly appreciate all three of those. That wraps it up for today. I'll be back tomorrow though, 5:00 p.m.

[00:20:29]Eastern Standard Time, 9:00 p.m. UTC as usual. Until next time, remember to be critical, not cynical, of the music you listen to, and have a fantastic morning, afternoon, or evening, whenever you choose to watch my videos.

[00:20:45]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Mhm.