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Archie Shepp: Blase And Yasmina Revisited
by Chris May
The three albums tenor saxophonist Archie Shepp recorded in Paris for BYG Records during one week in August 1969 tend to get overlooked in the slipstream of the dozen or so he made in the US for Impulse earlier in the decade. More is the pity, for as Blasé And Yasmina Revisited so resoundingly attests, the ...
Cecil Taylor: Mixed to Unit Structures Revisited
by Chris May
This story has been revisited before, in the context of an Albert Ayler review, but good stories bear repeating, particularly when they are instructive ones. So here it is again... During a May 2021 interview with All About Jazz, the reed player Shabaka Hutchings was asked to name six albums which had made a more than ...
Nathaniel Cross: The Description Is Not The Described
by Chris May
Trombonist Nathaniel Cross is a key presence on London's alternative jazz scene, just like his brother, Theon Cross, who plays tuba in Shabaka Hutchings' Sons Of Kemet. Until now, however, Nathaniel has probably been better known among his fellow musicians than with the general public, for he has been most active behind the scenes as a ...
Christopher Kunz & Florian Fischer: Die Unwucht
by Chris May
Saxophone and drums duos--usually that means tenor saxophone and drums--got serious in the mid 1960s, when pianist McCoy Tyner and bassist Jimmy Garrison would lay out during performances by John Coltrane's classic quartet to allow Coltrane and drummer Elvin Jones to pursue their mutual shamanistic muse together. One such occasion is preserved on One ...
The Luvmenauts: In Space
by Chris May
Toronto quartet The Luvmenauts' In Space is a well-crafted assemblage of new millennial library-going-on-soundtrack music. It has echoes of the mid 1960s and early 1970s rock 'n' funk produced by library labels such as KPM and Music De Wolfe, and has intersections, too, with the work of BBC Radiophonic Workshop composer Delia Derbyshire, not least in ...
Mike Gibbs: Revisiting Tanglewood 63: The Early Tapes
by Chris May
With British jazz in 2021 in better shape than ever before, record companies are being emboldened to revisit their tape libraries and reissue historic but long deleted albums. At the same time, recently formed specialist labels such as Jazz In Britain are making available club and radio broadcast recordings which have never been released before. The ...
Julian Siegel Jazz Orchestra: Tales from the Jacquard
by Chris May
Reed player Julian Siegel has been an important part of the London jazz scene since the late 1990s, when he cofounded Partisans, a high-energy quartet completed by guitarist Phil Robson, bassist Thad Kelly and drummer Gene Calderazzo. The band is pretty much beyond category, although it is usually billed as jazz-rock. Unlike normative jazz-rock outfits, however, ...
Julian Lage: Squint
by Chris May
Before discussing guitarist Julian Lage's album, some food for thought... A credible argument could be put forward to say that the jazz piano trio reached its pinnacle of perfection with Bill Evans' Village Vanguard performances of June 1961, with the trio of bassist Scott La Faro and drummer Paul Motian, and that trios led by guitars, ...
Ferg Ireland Trio: Ferg Ireland Trio
by Chris May
Bassist Ferg Ireland is a young London lion whose recent credits include pianist Ashley Henry's Beautiful Vinyl Hunter (Sony, 2019) and tenor saxophonist Alex Hitchcock's AUB (Edition, 2020), stonking albums both. On his own-name debut album, Ireland is joined by drummer James Maddren, who is probably best known for his work with the ...
Marion Brown: Why Not? Porto Novo! Revisited
by Chris May
Alto saxophonist Marion Brown was part of the band on John Coltrane's Ascension (Impulse, 1965), though you would not guess it from Why Not (ESP, 1968). Like fellow Ascension alumnus, tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders' contemporaneous Tauhid (Impulse, 1967), Brown's album inhabited an intensely melodic section of the 1960s' New Thing. As were Sanders' own-name ...
