Off the Record draws on ten years of Makaya McCraven performances in Los Angeles, Berlin, New York and London. The Chicago drummer gathers four EPs into one release, returning to live recordings as material for editing. These sessions were events with particular musicians; they also become something he can reconsider in the studio.
PopUp Shop returns to his 2015 Los Angeles debut at the Del Monte Speakeasy, with guitarist Jeff Parker, vibraphonist Justefan and bassist Benjamin J. Shepherd. Techno Logic includes Theon Cross and Ben LaMar Gay. Keeping the session identities visible lets the listener follow who was playing before considering what McCraven subsequently changed.
In HHV, Stephanie Grimm describes the newer People’s Mixtape sessions as a meeting between established collaborators and Jeremiah Chiu’s synthesizers. Janne Oinonen’s Best Fit review places the whole release closer to the improvisational source material of In the Moment than the more tightly composed In These Times. The collection can accommodate both the changing band and the producer returning to its recordings later.
The twenty tracks include Venice, Imafan, Sweet Stuff and Lake Shore Drive Five. Techno Logic, The People’s Mixtape, Hidden Out! and PopUp Shop retain their separate names within the collection. That structure preserves a way into the different sessions, even as the edited recordings become part of a larger album.
McCraven describes the finished recording as an altered version of the shared experience. He is not promising to reproduce exactly what an audience heard. The editing is another stage of his work as a musician. Keeping the session details alongside it gives us something more interesting to follow than a live recording presented as an untouched document.