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Donald Edwards Quintet: The Color Of US Suite
by Chris May
This is an album one really wants to love but ends up applauding more for its intention than its realisation. Drummer Donald Edwards has composed a suite which addresses the race hate which besmirches America and which, observed from the other side of the pond, seems to have become more bitter and entrenched with the passing ...
Xhosa Cole: K(no)w Them, K(no)w Us
by Chris May
When tenor saxophonist Xhosa Cole won the BBC Young Jazz Musician of the Year prize in 2018, Britain was introduced to a young player with formidable technique and a solid grasp of the post-John Coltrane African American tradition. Cole was then little known outside Birmingham, his hometown in England's Midlands, and he had developed independently of ...
Sun Ra Arkestra: Heliocentric Worlds 1 & 2 Revisited
by Chris May
Heliocentric Worlds 1 & 2 Revisited presents in their entirety, newly and luminously remastered, the two albums which on release by ESP Disk in 1965 led, if not to actual commercial breakthrough for Sun Ra—who had been recording, obscurely, under his own name since the late 1940s—then at least to a heightened level of visibility for ...
Charlie Parker: Remastered Highlights From His Peak Years
by Chris May
Charlie Parker's recorded legacy has been repackaged, reissued, reshuffled and refried so often that newbies and connoisseurs alike are spoilt for choice. Parker's oeuvre has not been meaningfully remixed, however, due to the technical constraints attached to late 1930s through early 1950s recordings--but much of it has been remastered, sometimes with excellent results. Not one of ...
GA-20: Try It... You Might Like It! GA-20 Does Hound Dog Taylor
by Chris May
The movement for analog-era authenticity is in full bloom on this loving tribute to Chicago bluesman Hound Dog Taylor. A substantial portion of the five-page press release that accompanies Try It... You Might Like It! GA-20 Does Hound Dog Taylor is devoted to the array of vintage guitars and amplifiers collected and employed by the Boston-based ...
Albert Ayler: New York Eye And Ear Control Revisited
by Chris May
The development of so-called free jazz in New York during the first half of the 1960s was topped and tailed by three landmark recordings: Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz (Atlantic, 1961), John Coltrane's Ascension (Impulse, 1966) and Albert Ayler's New York Eye And Ear Control (ESP, 1966). Of the three discs, only New York Eye And Ear ...
Charles Mingus: An Essential Top Ten Albums
by Chris May
Charles Mingus was rarely a happy man and yet his music possessed a power to uplift listeners unlike that of most other composer / bandleaders before or after him. It still has that power in 2021, four decades after his passing and on the eve of his hundredth anniversary in 2022. In his personal life, too, ...
Joe Harriott: Chronology: Live 1968 - 69
by Chris May
One of not-for-profit archive label Jazz In Britain's first releases in early 2020--then only on vinyl, but in summer 2021 reissued on CD—the Jamaican-born alto saxophonist and composer Joe Harriott's Chronology Live 1968—69 is also of interest for the spotlight it throws on another player who moved from his homeland to London in the 1950s, the ...
Kris T Reeder: Jazz Mix 12
by Chris May
British trombonist and sound designer KT Reeder's Jazz Mix 12 does not make for easy listening and nor, presumably, is it meant to. It is, however, strangely compelling, as is the music of any artist who has rejected compromise and commerciality regardless of the financial consequences. Such courageous souls are determined to pursue their muse, and ...
Slowly Rolling Camera: Where the Streets Lead
by Chris May
You might imagine jazz musicians are well suited to run record companies, for risk taking and creativity are fundamental to both activities. Mostly, however, musician-led labels have unhappy histories. Either the musician is not from the top drawer and their A&R skills suffer accordingly; or they lack the administrative skills to run a business enterprise effectively. ...
