Photo: Alex De La Hidalga

Drummer, composer and producer Max Jaffe has a new album on the way and we are a little late picking it up, but clearly, we’ve been missing out. Entitled You Want That Too!, it arrives on November 21st through Colorfield Records. Now based in the west coast, Jaffe’s move to LA, after years immersed in the NYC music scene, flows through the new album.

You Want That Too! was recorded at Pete Min’s Lucy’s Meat Market Studio, and features a stellar lineup of collaborators, including Jeff Parker, Meg Duffy, Gavin Gamboa, Daniel Rotem, Shelley Burgon, Spencer Zahn, and Logan Kane. A record about exploration and connection, it embraces a wide range of influences and sounds, including space jazz, glitch-funk, and experimental textures. For Jaffe, the album is both a fresh start and a continuation of his musical journey. He comments:

“My previous record, Reduction of Man, was like an elegy to my twenties in pre-pandemic NYC. I didn’t realize as I was making it, but once it was done, it felt like a capstone on something I’d started building years prior. And then in the three years of figuring out how to get it to listeners, it felt like it got covered in ash. Now, I’m building a fresh foundation on top of that Reduction ash with You Want That, Too!. It’s not a complete fresh start — I am still, for better or worse, me — but it’s a new story.”

Jaffe’s second single from the album, ‘S-NARE’, is a perfect teaser for what’s to come. A wild, dynamic, infectious and drum-heavy track, it draws on the energy of early Warp Records and Jaffe’s work with Sensory Percussion. Jaffe expands:

“Early Warp Records and my work with electronic drum sensors (ie.. Sensory Percussion) inform this drum freakout of a track. At Pete’s urging, I leaned hard into the kind of drumming that hooked me on to the instrument: immediate, hard, and driving.
The drums are an instrument of crowd control, and the snare has a loaded history of leading militaries into bloodshed. “S-NARE” leads with love but it can draw blood too.”

Listen to ‘S-NARE’ below and check out the previous single, ‘In Green’, straight after. You’re in for quite a treat.