Articles by Gareth Thompson
Surya Botofasina: Ashram Sun
by Gareth Thompson
In the early 1980s, Alice Coltrane built an ashram on fifty acres in the Santa Monica hills. A space for musical practise and Hindu studies, it closed in 2017 and was burned down by wildfires a year later. As a child, Surya Botofasina grew up there with his mother amid mountains, veggie food, peace lessons and devotional chants. For this album, he returns in spirit to the childhood home that still inspires him. Ashram Sun was produced by ...
Continue ReadingLady Blackbird: Slang Spirituals
by Gareth Thompson
In the aftermath of George Floyd's killing in 2020, the relatively unknown Marley Munroe dropped a cover of Nina Simone's 1966 song “Blackbird." Having adopted the title into her new stage name of Lady Blackbird, she took sombre pride in seeing this version chime with a fiercely engaged Black Lives Matter community. This came purely by zeitgeist chance after decades of endeavour to establish herself. “Blackbird" was also a taster for her 2021 debut album Black Acid Soul ...
Continue ReadingLee Underwood: California Sigh
by Gareth Thompson
Lee Underwood's late father played trombone in a big band at the University of Colorado. Underwood recalls, “Whenever he thought of those days, my dad would close his eyes, purse his lips, and extend his right hand as if still playing this beloved trombone." Lee himself became a high-school jazz pianist, but caught his break as a guitarist, playing for Tim Buckley throughout the singer's turbulent and tragic career. Buckley's untimely death in 1975 saw Underwood pursue a ...
Continue ReadingByron Asher's Skrontch Music: Lord, when you send the rain
by Gareth Thompson
The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 was the most destructive one in American history. Seven states were affected and the political fallout saw Herbert Hoover reach the White House by 1929. The saxophonist Byron Asher believes another political action was the development of New Orleans jazz, early in the twentieth century, in direct resistance to the racism of Jim Crow Louisiana. On his rootsy reflective debut, Byron Asher's Skrontch Music (Sinking City Records, 2019), he sought to represent these twin ...
Continue ReadingMazz Swift: The 10000 Things: PRAISE SONGS for the iRiligious
by Gareth Thompson
The writer and critic Amiri Baraka (1934-2014) spoke of free jazz in terms of an essential and spiritual Blackness. Further, he described a return to collective improvisation as the “all-force put together." More vitally he suggested that free jazz reinforced the valuable memories of a people while at the same time creating new forms. This reasoning and sense of the “all-force" might apply to Juilliard-trained violinist Mazz Swift, who blends old praise and protest songs, electronica and mindfulness into their ...
Continue ReadingJoy Guidry: Amen
by Gareth Thompson
Along with the soprano saxophone, the bassoon in the right hands and mouths can invoke whatever spiritual visions one places faith in. Maybe it lies in the promise of divine warmth, conjured by Eastern or Indian reed instruments with similar qualities. As often noted, the word “oboe" sounds like something a bassoon might emit. With a softer tone than its imposing size suggests, the bassoon has also been lumped in with humorous clownish noises. Resembling a strange undersea plant, its ...
Continue ReadingIsaiah Collier: Parallel Universe
by Gareth Thompson
The direct-to-disc recording equipment in Haarlem's Artone studio resembles a vintage control room for time travel, or maybe the record deck in a cyberpunk loft. And yes, that's Haarlem, not Harlem, though one could be excused for mixing them up here. This is where Isaiah Collier came to record Parallel Universe, a valiant and affirmative album full of joyful noises. Musicians who trek to Artone cut their work onto acetate from single-take live performances. But anyone expecting a simplified version ...
Continue ReadingThandi Ntuli: Reclaiming The Rainbow
by Gareth Thompson
Thandi Ntuli is in her music room at home in Johannesburg. It is late afternoon and sunlight bursts through narrow windows onto some boho chic furniture. Ntuli brushes a cloth over her laptop screen and comes into focus, beaming a smile of welcome, wearing a long orange dress. “I'm right in the city," she says. “There's a lot of energy, people moving by and most of our main transport passes through here. During the week it's very hustle and bustle, ...
Continue ReadingRami Atassi: Dancing Together
by Gareth Thompson
The Chicago-based guitarist Rami Atassi went on a south American journey with his wife to explore Mexico and Colombia. Amid the daily background music, he heard different styles and rhythmic foundations than those he was used to and took percussion lessons locally. All this later began seeping into his solo work. A Syrian-American, Atassi founded the Cosmic Dance Band in 2022, blending sounds of the Middle East with jazz harmony and modern sonics. This group and its combined ...
Continue ReadingThe Saxophones: To Be A Cloud
by Gareth Thompson
The monk and Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh had a saying, “I have arrived, I am home." Hanh's writing was an influence on this third album from husband-and-wife pairing The Saxophones, namely Alexi Erenkov and Alison Alderdice. Hanh's use of clouds as a metaphor for impermanence became a keystone for them, but his thoughts on going home surely chimed with Alderdice who returned to the bays of Inverness, California where her family have lived for generations. It was here with ...
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