Last week, New Elementary jumped into LEGO® Icons 10312 Jazz Club's
new parts, along with designer insights. Now we're looking at the completed build and features of next year's musical Modular, which is released at midnight tonight. If you're buying it (or anything from LEGO.com) and have appreciated our work in 2022, please consider using our affiliate links. We may earn a small fee, or a medium one if you've really got a lot of sets to get your hands on!
USA |
UK |
Australia (other countries can change region in the page footer).
At three stories tall and dressed in nearly the three primary colours, this Modular Building splits into four pieces. Just like mozzarella and basil, the combination of jazz club and pizzeria make a delicious pairing.
Products in this article were provided by LEGO®; the author's opinions are their own.
LEGO® Icons 10312 Jazz Club
US$229.99/ £199.99/ 229.99€/ AU$349.99
2899 parts
1 January 2023
Buying from LEGO.com? Please consider using our affiliate links, we may get a commission: USA LEGO Shop | Australia LEGO Shop | UK LEGO Shop.
The music venue and restaurant aren't the only businesses housed in this historical-looking building. Let's take a quick look through each floor before examining the details:
Unboxing 10312 Jazz Club
Naturally, this structure is built from bottom-up. Inside the box, 15 numbered bags guide construction through 420 steps with five bags for each level. About half of the bags are inside a smaller white box which also protects the 32x32 light bluish gray baseplate, and the enveloped instructions which are printed with white backgrounds on the covers.
The LEGO Group now offers an explanation for the shift to white backgrounds on their instruction booklets:
"The redesign of building instruction covers is connected to our move to paper-based bags in our boxes. A lighter background print ensures ... the appearance of the paper-based bags is not impacted by potential ink marks caused by friction between building instructions and bags during transportation."
We're still waiting on broad usage of paper bags and it's possible we won't consistently see paper bags until 2025. The decision to depart from the decades-long practice of using plastic bags was announced in 2019 and even though the recycling bin is anxiously awaiting 100% of my LEGO refuse, it's nice to know the LEGO Group is considering secondary effects like ink transfer.
Minifigs in 10312 Jazz Club
The Jazz Club is well-patronized and staffed by a complement of eight minifigures. Some Modular Buildings have contained as few as three minifigs, while 10312 Jazz Club is tied with 10224 Town Hall, second only to the nine figures in the massive
10255 Assembly Square.
Half of the cast include new clothes and some new heads, so they've been showcased
in our earlier parts review. The four figures below add to the three musicians sporting new sparkly blue waistcoats and an elegant black dress, and the magician with a new semi-formal jacket.
Each minifigure gets a little background info on their instructions page. The delivery scooter driver is given masculine pronouns in the booklet, although as Jamie Berard shared during our parts review, builders are free to make up new stories for the characters.
One story I'm making up for the pizza chef is that he's LEGO City's senior sauce and sausage sage — let's say he's the same gent from the classic
6350 Pizza to Go. The tailor resides in a shop above the pizzeria and the woman on the right is the jazz club's owner. Her flavor text calls back to Andy Sax (of
Boutique Hotel bulletin board fame), stating "she was one of the first to recognise the talent of the saxophone player from the LEGO 10255 Assembly Square."
Building 10312 Jazz Club
Starting at the ground floor, a diagonal stage ten modules wide at the front makes just enough room for a jazz trio or a magician and her bunny co-star.
Two bricks with vertical handles (28917) hover over the stage giving connection points for a brick-built curtain to hang or be removed to accommodate chonky adult hands. Looks like the club proprietor is saving a spot for Andy Sax since his signature instrument is onstage, though surely he wouldn't mind other minifigs borrowing it if they clean up the mouthpiece after the show.
All the trimmings of an upscale club are here: golden wall lamps, a nicely tiled floor, and drinks for every table. Once those drinks start flowing our patrons are sure to need a visit to the tiny bathroom tucked under the stairs.
Inside the pizzeria, there's just enough room for a wood-fired oven, a pizza assembly station and a cash register. A fire made of two Trans-Orange cheese slopes burns inside the oven and removing them allows for enough room to slide a pizza into the arched oven.
Apart from some windows on the upper floors the only detail on the back of the building is a door leading to a woodshed for the pizzeria's oven. Four modules of otherwise unused baseplate leave room for building an alleyway scene or expanding the businesses backwards.
Last year's modular building
10297 Boutique Hotel featured intriguing geometry to make the best use of its two visible faces, but not every building can be on a street corner. The straight left and right sides of the new Jazz Club are intended to butt up against two other buildings, as such they lack any noteworthy details. The main walls make for repetitive — maybe even uninteresting — building, but the spells of laying 1x4 bricks are interspersed with a diagonal entryway and some SNOT building next to it.
The tailor's trademark lavender door opens into the central stairway, leading the way to the boss' office and the dressing room.
The Jazz! Concert poster is a sideways panel piece depicting a suspenders-wearing trumpeter just like one quarter of 21334 Jazz Quartet. The instrument gripped by this cartoon minifig is a real LEGO element, a Metalized Gold/ Chrome Gold trumpet or bugle (71342) though you'd be forgiven for not recognizing it. It came in just a dozen sets from 1996–2003, mostly in the Western and Time Cruisers themes. This set would have been an opportunity to re-introduce the trumpet piece in Warm Gold/ Pearl Gold, but the upright bass better fits the style of modern minifig accessories.
Speaking of the upright bass, it's got its own case. A bass case!
At minifig scale, it certainly can't open but it does nicely suit its accompanying instrument. The bassist himself is equipped with a neck bracket to attach the case like a backpack. The "just on top" hairstyle might have been chosen since the instrument case would interfere if his hair were larger.
The "JAZZ CLUB" sign attaches with four clip-handle connections centered above the diagonal box office and entrance.
The second floor is host to the jazz club owner's office, a hallway, and the tailor's shop. The floor cutout in the office is an attention-grabbing feature which lets the boss watch the show from her private balcony or listen in from the comfort of a swiveling teal chair. Her furniture is well-decorated with a curved desk, gramophone and vintage telephone.
Next door more detailed furniture awaits. The tailor's sewing machine is foot pedal powered.
Bolts of fabric, a floor lamp, and a dress form I didn't quite photograph before Christmas holiday fill the rest of the room. A second-story chimney vent uses the reintroduced 2-module-wide curved top window (6408578 | 30044) to warm the room.
The second floor is designed to be a single module, though it's simple to break away the tailor's shop by removing two 1x2 dark bluish gray tiles from the top layer and pulling apart two Technic pin connections.
The top floor extends the Dark Red half of the building only, while the hallway opens to a rooftop greenhouse.
Like the magician, the very tippy top of the building has one last trick up its sleeve.
An inverted roof spire is connected with two round 1x1 "inkwell" bar tiles (31561) supporting vertical clip plates. A bar runs through the center of the spire, inverting the build direction at the very end with an upright 1x1 cone.
With a handful of interesting build techniques like this, a large collection of minifigures, and a charming building style, 10312 Jazz Club maintains the high bar set by the Modular Buildings collection. The straight-sided placement limits how much detail can be included in the exterior, though smart use of the space inside and a staggered colourful front give the Modular enough intrigue to not appear boxy.
Editor: Chris Baginski
READ MORE: TobyMac examines the even-more-colourful LEGO® Friends 41732 Downtown Flower and Design Stores
Help New Elementary keep publishing articles like this. Become a Patron!
Huge respect goes to all our patrons, especially our 'Vibrant Coral' tier: Antonio Serra, Beyond the Brick, Huw Millington, Big B Bricks, Dave Schefcik, David and Breda Fennell, Richard Selby, Gerald Lasser, Sue Ann Barber & Trevor Clark, Baixo LMmodels, Markus Rollbühler, Elspeth De Montes, Megan Lum, Andy Price, Chuck Hagenbuch, Jf, Daniel Church, Amy Hays, Wayne R. Tyler, Timo Luehnen, and now Lukas Kurth of StoneWars has raised his pledge to Vibrant Coral! Thank you all for supporting us.
LEGO® Shop at Home
USA: FREE SHIPPING every day on orders over $35!
UK: Free delivery when you spend £50 or more at LEGO!
Australia:
Discover the latest promotions and offers on LEGO.com
All text and images are © New Elementary unless otherwise attributed.
199.99€? Which country? I see 229.99€ (DE) and thought Lego had aligned prices across Europe last year.
ReplyDeleteNot completely sold on this one yet. Buildings less than 20 studs wide tend to look awkwardly crammed to me, and the pizzeria is no exception. I'm tempted to extend it with the help of, say, parts from Heartlake city restaurant, but shouldn't have the time to try anytime soon.
Anyway, when building only with the parts in this set, is there any obstacle to building a mirrored version of it (Pizzeria left, jazz club right)?
Fixed, thanks for spotting!
DeleteJazz club and not a single African-American)))
ReplyDeleteI see why the default yellow minifig skin tone isn't fully representative of all skin tones - it's just not that dark. We have some comments on the subject from Jamie Berard in the parts review for this set:
Deletehttps://www.newelementary.com/2022/12/lego-icons-10312-jazz-club-new-parts-in.html#:~:text=%22In%20a%20Modular,of%20the%20buildings.%22
In short, he hopes the hairstyles included let Black builders identify with some of the minifigures. Replacing yellow minifigs with only natural skin tones might be controversial as well, but I'd be in favor of it personally.