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Arbenz / Krijger / Osby: Conversation #9: Targeted
by Chris May
This mind-bending album skewers any notion that modern-day organ trios are all unimaginative bores churning out reheated cliches lifted from Blue Note and Prestige albums of the 1950s and '60s. With that stereotype in mind, one would hesitate to apply the term “organ trio" to the collaborative group on Targeted. But its instigator, ...
JuJu: 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 ...
Gard Nilssen's Acoustic Unity: To Whom Who Buys A Record
by Chris May
In July 2019, Gard Nilssen will be Artist-in-Residence at the prestigious, future-facing Molde Jazz Festival. It will be a busy week for the Norwegian drummer, composer and sonic adventurer. As well as guest appearances, he will perform with several of his bands--SpaceMonkey, an electronica/dance music mash-up he co-founded five years ago; Bushman's Revenge, which may be ...
Sultan Stevenson: Faithful One
by Chris May
It is rare for a debut album by a young musician to merit four stars, but Faithful One, by the 22 year old London pianist and composer Sultan Stevenson, deserves every shining one of them. An alumnus of the community programme Tomorrow's Warriors, in his liner note he singles out the Warriors' founders, Gary Crosby and ...
Nubya Garcia & Shabaka Hutchings Meditate Together On Bitches Brew
by Chris May
New releases from London doff the hat to two 20th century American masterpieces. Both of the new albums feature tenor saxophonists Nubya Garcia and Shabaka Hutchings, playing alongside each other and kicking up a storm alongside other luminaries of the London scene. The double album London Brew (Concord) is to be released on ...
Basie All Stars: Live At Fabrik Vol. 1
by Chris May
Such are the glories of his band's recorded legacy from the 1930s through the 1950s, that the mere mention of Count Basie's name will trigger a Pavlovian response from his fan base. Like no other, the Count Basie Orchestra epitomised big-band swing at its most sublime; reefer fuelled, riff based, loose and louche Kansas City jazz ...
Pharoah Sanders Quartet: Live At Fabrik
by Chris May
One reason Pharoah Sanders was such a special artist was the prismatic nature of his music. When Sanders lit on to a new avenue of investigation, he did not in the process reject what he had been doing up until that moment. Instead, he wove the new perspective into the existing structure, enriching rather than replacing ...
Graham Collier: Down Another Road @ Stockholm Jazz Days ’69
by Chris May
In 1969, when the composer and bassist Graham Collier took his sextet to Stockholm Jazz Days to give a live performance of their album Down Another Road (Fontana, 1969), the presence of a British band onstage at a European jazz festival was exceptional. The idea that British musicians would one day have their names on the ...
Vivienne Aerts: Typuhthâng
by Chris May
Typuhthâng is a luminous, exquisitely crafted suite of music and an album on a mission. The mission is twofold: to mark International Women's Day with a recording performed and engineered by women, for everyone, and to provide financial support to The Femmes de Virunga, a cacao farming collective of 1,500 women in Virunga State Park in ...
Fela Kuti: Army Arrangement
by Chris May
Fela only occasionally used outside producers on his albums. Mostly, the results were good: EMI producer Jeff Jarratt's Afrodisiac (EMI, 1973), British dub master Dennis Bovell's Live In Amsterdam (Polygram, 1983) and keyboard player Wally Badarou's exceptional Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense (Philips, 1986). But on one occasion it was spectacularly bad: avant-funk bassist Bill Laswell's ...
