Jazz Articles
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Idris 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.
read moreGigi 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 ...
read moreJuJu: 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 ...
read moreFlora 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 ...
read moreBennie 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, ...
read moreFlock: 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 ...
read moreSun 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 ...
read moreNubiyan 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 ...
read moreSun Ra Arkestra: Swirling
by Ian Patterson
Though Sun Ra departed Earth in 1993, his music has continued to thrive, first under the stewardship of John Gilmore and, since 1995, by the remarkable Marshall Allen who turned 96 in May 2020. A live Arkestra show still contains many of the elements that have been present since the 1950s and '60s-- color, pageantry and music boasting the entire history of jazz. There have also been some extraordinary continuities in the personnel of the band, with several members present ...
read moreSun Ra Arkestra: Swirling
by Chris May
Saturn moved into the ascendant in October 2020 when the Sun Ra Arkestra under the direction of alto saxophonist Marshall Allen released its first studio album in over twenty years. Swirling presents new arrangements of both well-known and more obscure Ra tunes, played by a fifteen-piece lineup which includes band veterans and relative newcomers. It is a welcome addition to the Arkestra's near seventy-year catalogue. When Ra passed in 1993, tenor saxophonist John Gilmore, an on-off band ...
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