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Wadada Leo Smith: Fire Illuminations

By Dan McClenaghan
March 12, 2023
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Trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith fronts lots of different bands and puts out lots of albums. After a busy period when he released five boxed sets, totaling 27 CDs, here he debuts his new all-star ensemble Orange Wave Electric, with the download-only offering, Fire Illuminations. As the band name implies, the sound is electric, featuring three electric guitarists, two electric bassists and an electronicist, joining the leader's horn, percussionist Mauro Refosco and drummer Pheeroan AkLaff.

For comparison's sake—and using only the Wadada Leo Smith Songbook for comparison—the sound is closest to the trumpeter & leader's guitar-heavy 2017 album Najwa (Tum Records, 2017), or the tune "Angela Davis" on his Spiritual Dimensions (Cuneiform Records, 2009). Going outside Smith's work, it could be lined up alongside Miles Davis' underappreciated On the Corner (Columbia,1972). The difference between the groundbreaking Davis set and Fire Illuminations in large part comes down to focus. The Davis album was muddled, all over the place—as fine work as it was. Smith's focus is clear, uncluttered and hard-driving, with slashing guitars, deep grooves, and wavering electronics, with Smith, as he always, blowing his unwavering horn in new surroundings, blowing between steely clarion calls and muted, subdued, human voice statements which sound like deep cosmic secrets revealed.

The studio—as it did in On The Corner—plays a role. This music was recorded in a series of sessions, using different configurations of the line-up, before it went into post-recording, editing and curation—the use of the studio as an instrument. The results are five expansive, groove-centric tunes that bristle and burn with electronic energy and a twenty-first-century momentum.

Guitarists Nels Cline, Brandon Ross and Lamar Smith interweave; bassists Bill Laswell and Melvin Gibbs, in concert with percussionist Mauro Refosco and drummer Pheeroan AkLaff, lay down solid foundations, and electronics master Hardedge spreads the modernistic icing on the cake on the two longest tunes, enhancing rather than overwhelming the soundscape or calling attention to himself.

Groove is the plan of the day, but the sound slips into Alice Coltrane-like astral reveries at times too, as on the fifteen- plus minute opener "Ntozake," featuring all nine players, and composed by Smith for the late playwright Ntozoke Strange—best known for her play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf (1975)—adding to a long line of past tributes to people whom Wadada Leo Smith admires—Angela Davis, Rosa Parks. Ornette Coleman, to name a few. Here he tips his hat twice to the late boxer Muhammed Ali, on "Muhammed Ali's Spiritual Horizon" and "Muhammed Ali And George Foreman's Rumble In Zaire Africa." The latter is a pared-down—one guitar (Nels Cline), two basses affair, with aKLaff's drum set and Smith's trumpet in the ring reacting to each other's moves in an intense, aggressive, cosmic dance. The former features a quintet line-up—Lamar Smith replacing Cline on guitar—which bubbles along on a jumble of aKLatff's percussion and a spacy guitar & two bass backdrop.

A fifteen-plus minute bow to Tony Williams—the drummer who, at seventeen, shook the drumming world with his work in Miles Davis' Second Great Quintet, starting with E.S.P.(Columbia Records, 1965)—features the whole nonet. It gear shifts between tight, muscular rhythms and heavenly introspections.

Wadada Leo Smith has been an unconventional, prolific and wonderfully creative artist for decades. Many of us first met him in 1979 on Divine Love (ECM Records), an odd, spare, sparkling gem of a record. At 81 years old his creative juices still roll on a high boil on Fire Illuminations, perhaps his best and most engaging album.

Track Listing

Ntozake; Muhammed Ali's Spiritual Horizon; Fire Illuminations Inside Light Particles; Tony Williams; Muhammed Ali and George Foreman's Rumble in Zaire Africa.

Personnel

Wadada Leo Smith

trumpet

Nels Cline

guitar, electric

Brandon Ross

guitar

Lamar Smith

guitar, electric

Bill Laswell

bass

Melvin Gibbs

bass, electric

Mauro Refosco

percussion

Pheeroan AkLaff

drums

Hardedge

electronics

Additional Instrumentation

Nels Cline: electric guitar (1, 4, 5); Brandon Ross: electric guitar (1, 4); Lamar Smith: electric guitar (1-4); Mauro Refosco: percussion (1-3); Hardedge: electronics: 1, 4).

Album information

Title: Fire Illuminations | Year Released: 2023 | Record Label: Kabell Records

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About Wadada Leo Smith

Instrument: Trumpet

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