Jazz Articles
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Sun Ra: Nuits De La Fondation Maeght (Sun Ra)
by John Sharpe
Discoveries of lost tapes are often trumpeted as legendary or revelatory, but in the case of the greatly expanded Nuits De La Fondation Maeght, the hype feels entirely warranted. The release offers a comprehensive view of a pivotal moment in Sun Ra's career. In 1970, Sun Ra was invited to play at the prestigious private museum, Fondation Maeght, in southern France. The event was part of a concert series that starred other icons of the jazz avant-garde, ...
Continue ReadingFlock: Flock II
by Chris May
Flock is composed of five of the most venturesome musicians in British jazz. Reeds and woodwind player Tamar Osborn, drummers and percussionists Bex Burch and Sarathy Korwar, and keyboard players Danalogue and Al MacSween. Separately and collaboratively, they have since the late 2010s given us landmark genre-crossing albums in bands including Emanative, The Comet Is Coming, Vula Viel, Collocutor, Dele Sosimi's Afrobeat Orchestra, Upaj Collective and Kefaya. So the auguries look good for Flock's sophomore release, the ...
Continue ReadingIdris Ackamoor & The Pyramids: Afro Futuristic Dreams
by Chris May
Idris Ackamoor paints on a big canvas, in vivid colours. Listening to the 2023 episode of his multi-decade Afrofuturist odyssey, there are times when he and The Pyramids stir memories of Fela Kuti's Afrika 70 and Egypt 80 bands. At other times, it is Sun Ra's Arkestra. Next up could be an unplugged Funkadelic. And there are moments, when Ackamoor's tenor saxophone engages with Sandra Poindexter's violin, that one is reminded of Frank Lowe's partnership with Billy Bang.
Continue ReadingGigi Masin & Greg Foat: Dolphin
by Chris May
Dolphin is billed as a collaboration between a jazz musician, British keyboard player Greg Foat, and an ambientist-electronicist, Italian synthesizer player Gigi Masin. Depending on taste, you may find the album mellifluous and relaxing, or vacuous and inconsequential. Unintentionally but irrefutably, Foat and Masin's project highlights the unbridgeable disconnect between jazz and ambient. Jazz is intended to be actively listened to, to be met halfway and engaged with. Ambient is designed to hover in the background, without ...
Continue ReadingJuJu: Message From Mozambique
by Chris May
There are many historic albums among the fifty or so titles released by the Strata-East label in the 1970s. But few have acquired the quasi-mythological stature of 1973's politically charged spiritual-jazz masterpiece Message From Mozambique by Bay Area tenor saxophonist Plunk Nkabinde and his band JuJu. The only disc to come close is Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson's proto-rap classic Winter In America (1974). Yet while that album has always been readily available on LP and CD, Message From Mozambique ...
Continue ReadingFlora Purim: If You Will
by Ian Patterson
Everyone loves a great comeback, and, after a lengthy hiatus, Flora Purim obliges with If You Will, the Brazilian's first studio album since Flora's Song (Narada, 2005). Released to coincide with her 80th birthday, If You Will is a somewhat nostalgic celebration that polishes a few old gems from a recording career that began--under military dictatorship--with the groundbreaking Brazilian jazz album é M.P.M. (1964, RCA). The production values are excellent, as are the performances from Purim and the trusted collaborators ...
Continue ReadingBennie Maupin & Adam Rudolph: Symphonic Tone Poem For Brother Yusef
by Chris May
Had the multi-reed player Yusef Lateef still been alive in 2020, he would have been celebrating his 100th birthday. Sadly, Lateef passed seven years earlier. But 93 years is a good span for a jazz musician, especially one of Lateef's generation, who came of age in time to cut his professional teeth in swing bands. Lateef went on contribute to bop--he was a member of Dizzy Gillespie's band in 1949--and then to hard bop. In the mid 1950s, ...
Continue ReadingFlock: Flock
by Chris May
One of the strengths of the alternative jazz scene which has grown in London since around 2016 is the interconnectivity of its players. Everyone knows each other and ad hoc bands constantly come together. Flock is the latest such conclave and it is something of a supergroup. On this its first album--others are promised--the lineup is reeds player Tamar Osborn, keyboard player Danalogue, pianist Al MacSween, vibraphonist Bex Burch and percussionist Sarathy Korwar (check Additional Personnel below ...
Continue ReadingSun Ra: Lanquidity (2 x CD Edition)
by Chris May
When it comes to Sun Ra, the elephant in the room--or perhaps the intergalactic space frigate orbiting your sound system--is how many musicians in the band were bombed out on acid during a typical recording session? By all accounts, Ra ran a tight spaceship and drugs, mind expanding or numbing, were strictly off limits. Then again, Frank Zappa was a similarly sober micro-manager, but bandmembers' memoirs have revealed what anyone with ears has suspected for decades: namely that weed and ...
Continue ReadingNubiyan Twist: Freedom Fables
by Chris May
Guitarist Tom Excell's Nubiyan Twist is one of the more substantial groove-based fusion outfits orbiting the perimeter of Britain's alternative jazz world. The band combines soul, funk, modal jazz, hip hop, and West African Afrobeat and highlife in a dancefloor-friendly melange which is a whole lot of fun while also possessing some depth. Based in Leeds in the north of England, the ensemble inhabits a similar bag as London's Ezra Collective and Levitation Orchestra. Freedom Fables is ...
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