What Is Nu Jazz? A Beginner's Guide

Nu jazz — sometimes written as "nujazz" — is a genre that emerged in the late 1990s by fusing traditional jazz harmony and improvisation with electronic production, breakbeats, downtempo grooves, and ambient textures. It isn't a rejection of jazz tradition so much as an expansion of it, pulling the music into the digital age.

What Makes It Different from Jazz?

Traditional jazz is typically acoustic — upright bass, drum kit, piano, horns. Nu jazz keeps the harmonic vocabulary (extended chords, modal scales, improvisation) but swaps out the rhythm section for programmed beats, synthesizers, and sampled textures. The result feels like jazz but moves like electronic music.

Key differences:

• Rhythm: Breakbeats, drum machines, and looped patterns replace live swing drumming
• Texture: Synth pads, ambient drones, and processed samples sit alongside acoustic instruments
• Structure: Tracks can be more repetitive and groove-based, closer to electronic music than a jazz standard
• Production: Studio techniques — layering, effects processing, sampling — are central to the sound

Key Artists to Know

If you're new to nu jazz, these names are good starting points:

• Jazzanova — Berlin collective, pioneers of the nu jazz club sound
• St Germain — French producer blending deep house with jazz samples
• The Cinematic Orchestra — Orchestral jazz meets trip-hop and ambient
• Amon Tobin — Brazilian-British producer pushing jazz-influenced bass music
• BadBadNotGood — Younger generation bringing jazz chops to hip-hop and experimental
• Nils Petter Molvær — Norwegian trumpet player fusing jazz with ambient electronica
• My Evil Robot Army — NullRecords' own blend of space jazz, experimental electronic, and nu jazz

Subgenres and Neighbors

Nu jazz sits at an intersection. Nearby genres include:

• Acid jazz — Raw, funk-heavy, more groove than atmosphere (Jamiroquai, Brand New Heavies)
• Future jazz — Heavier on electronic production, closer to IDM
• Space jazz — Cosmic, ambient-leaning jazz with synthesizers and reverb-heavy textures
• Lofi jazz — Lo-fidelity recordings emphasizing warmth, tape hiss, and mellow grooves
• Jazz-hop — Hip-hop beats with jazz samples and improvisation

Where to Start Listening

If you want the electronic side, start with Jazzanova's In Between or St Germain's Tourist. For something more ambient and textured, try The Cinematic Orchestra's Every Day. For space jazz with an experimental edge, check out My Evil Robot Army's catalog — particularly the Space Jazz Album and Oscillator Overthruster.

All MERA albums are available as DRM-free lossless downloads from the NullRecords Store.