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Hard Bop: An Alternative Top Ten
by Chris May
Hard bop was the jazz centre of the world from the mid 1950s to the mid 1960s, producing many hundreds of immortal albums. Trying to whittle these down to a definitive Top Ten is fun--but it is a subjective and ultimately impossible exercise. In an attempt to dodge those hurdles, the list which ...
Blackmantis: Devil's Flower
by Chris May
Might there be a better time to sit down and listen to an album whose title evokes poet Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal, has track titles such as “Lament" and “Dead Leaf" and a PR pitch that talks about the “darker electronic side" of its composer's music, and comes with sleeve art redolent of a ...
Roy DeCarava: The Sound I Saw
by Chris May
The Sound I Saw Roy DeCarava 228 Pages ISBN: 9781644230107 David Zwirner 2019 Roy DeCarava was a jazz photographer, artist and Harlem local who captured everyday life in the Manhattan area with an insider's eye. Through a spare, striking use of natural light, DeCarava's exploration of the aesthetics of ...
Let Spin: Steal The Light
by Chris May
Formed in 2014, London's Let Spin is an electric quartet peopled by musicians who emerged around a decade earlier as part of a scene which was rather lazily dubbed “punk jazz" by British music journalists. The music was certainly loud, irreverent and in-your-face, but it was played by musicians who were conservatoire graduates, a demographic not ...
AACM: Together We Are Stronger
by Chris May
With the passing in 2017 of the pianist Muhal Richard Abrams and trumpeter Phil Cohran, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, formed in Chicago in 1965, lost the last two of the four musicians who organised its inaugural meeting. But with two succeeding generations of standard bearers stepping up to the plate, the AACM ...
Ed "Tenderlonious" Cawthorne: The Piccolo: Tender Plays Tubby
by Chris May
Saxophonist, flautist and vibraphonist Tubby Hayes, who died at the unconscionably young age of 38 in 1973, was that rare thing among the first generation of British hard boppers—a musician who was taken seriously by the hippest American musicians and audiences. He visited New York in 1961 and 1964 for seasons at the Half Note, and ...
Jon Hassell: Words with the Shaman
by Chris May
Jon Hassell is best known as the creator of Fourth World music, an acoustic-electronic blend of jazz, minimalism, drone, ambient, traditional African and Asian instruments and harmolodic signatures. Hassell has defined Fourth World as “serious music with transcultural appeal and a smile." He unveiled the concept on his debut album, Vernal Equinox (Lovely Records), in 1977. ...
Chip Wickham: Blue To Red
by Chris May
The marketing thrust accompanying Chip Wickham's third album emphasises an affinity between the disc and the late 1960s / early 1970s work of Yusef Lateef and Alice Coltrane. Certainly, Blue To Red ticks two boxes: Wickham puts aside his saxophone to play only flute and alto flute, whose seraphic tones were favoured by Lateef and Coltrane; ...
Strata-East: Seizing the Time
by Chris May
Operating on minimum finance and maximum passion, Brooklyn's Strata-East label was a pivotal platform for the spiritual-jazz movement that emerged during the Civil Rights struggle of the 1970s. Its closest contemporary comparator was Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Both were non-profit organisations. The AACM was non-profit by design. With Strata-East, co-founder Charles Tolliver ...
Zeñel: Extreme Sports
by Chris May
The coupling of jazz and dance music is hardly a new one and, contrary to the dictats of the jazz police, neither is it antithetical. Jazz began as dance music and enjoyed its most widespread popular success during the jitterbug-crazed swing era. But 21st century electronic dance music does present a unique challenge. By its nature, ...
