Jazz Articles about Julien Dyne

About Julien Dyne

Album Review

The Circling Sun plays spiritual jazz with reverence and a sense of reverie. Formed in Tāmaki Makaurau (the Māori name for Auckland, New Zealand), the seven- member ensemble crafts rich tapestries that stretch to the stars with feet planted firmly on the dancefloor. Their sophomore full-length album, Orbits, finds the collective coming into its own, expanding the sonic spaceways they first explored on Spirits (Soundway Records, 2023). Finn Scholes' vibraphone is a tone setter for much of the ...

Album Review

Lucien Johnson: Ancient Relics

Read "Ancient Relics" reviewed by Chris May

by Chris May
March 7, 2024

The astral jazz of Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane is among the most mimicked jazz to be heard in 2024. Mimicked as in superficial, cynical, clichéd, travesty. So it is a rare pleasure to come across an album as singular and substantial as New Zealand-based tenor saxophonist Lucien Johnson's Ancient Relics. The album is the follow-up to Wax///Wane (Deluge, 2020), another sextet affair with a similar lineup and the same bassist and drummer. It was a promising disc ...