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Robert Glasper: Canvas
by Chris May
Of the three dozen albums released in Blue Note's 180gm vinyl Blue Note 80 reissue series, Robert Glasper's 2005 debut, Canvas, is the only one recorded in the twenty-first century. Almost all of the other releases were recorded during Blue Note's 1950s and 1960s belle epoque. It is a singular distinction and an appropriate one, for ...
Freddie Hubbard: Open Sesame
by Chris May
Blue Note's two 180gm vinyl-reissue series--Blue Note 80 and Tone Poet--continue on their enigmatic going on erratic, but mostly magnificent paths. Tone Poet is billed as the audiophile option but, on a fairly limited sampling of both series, there seems to be little, if anything at all, separating the two in audio terms. The key difference ...
JZ Replacement: Disrespectful
by Chris May
Visceralism and virtuosity, the two qualities which define this momentous debut album by JZ Replacement, make an unbeatable combination. They are also a necessary one. Without a degree of virtuosity, eloquence is constrained by lack of vocabulary. Without a degree of visceralism, technical facility is at worst mechanistic, at best purely cerebral. Bring the two qualities ...
The New York All-Stars: Live Encounter
by Chris May
Some things live forever and take-no-quarter hard bop is one of them... If you time travelled back to New York City circa 1958 and wandered into the Half Note or Five Spot, Live Encounter contains the sort of music you might have heard. Tough, emotionally-rich jazz with no-fuss head arrangements, extrovert horn solos and a propulsive ...
Hailu Mergia: Yene Mircha
by Chris May
While Mulatu Astatke is the musician most widely associated with the creation of Ethio-jazz, fellow keyboardist Hailu Mergia is among other significant figures. Astatke is best known overseas because he was the most outward looking of Ethio-jazz's first generation, studying at London's Trinity College of Music and Boston's Berklee College of Music and making his first ...
Tina Brooks Quintet: The Complete Recordings
by Chris May
Mosaic Records' spring 2020 release The Complete Hank Mobley Blue Note Sessions 1963-70, the second of the label's box sets devoted to the copiously recorded (and rightly so) Hank Mobley, prompts thoughts of another of Blue Note's singular hard-bop tenor saxophone stylists. Unlike Mobley, Tina Brooks was woefully under-recorded, making just four albums under his own ...
Alison Rayner Quintet: Short Stories
by Chris May
The Alison Rayner Quintet's third album is good medicine. Despite the sad events which inspired it, about which more in a moment, Short Stories tells its tales through strong melodies, sinewy rhythms and luminous solos, is by turns tender and exuberant, has an uplifting narrative arc, and simply makes you feel better for listening to it. ...
Moses Boyd: Dark Matter
by Chris May
As half of the ferocious semi-free duo Binker and Moses with tenor saxophonist Binker Golding, and with a string of guesting and producing credits of biblical proportions, drummer Moses Boyd is among the most prominent of the cohort of London rebels who are reinvigorating British jazz. He emerged, alongside Golding, in singer Zara McFarlane's band in ...
Shabaka & the Ancestors: We Are Sent Here By History
by Chris May
Reed player Shabaka Hutchings became the first British musician to sign to the iconic (for once the word is justified) Impulse! label when his band Sons of Kemet did so in 2018. It was a deal for which his management could rightly be proud. It was also an affirmation which Hutchings felt deeply, for in the ...
Rebecca Nash: Peaceful King
by Chris May
You can judge a book by its cover, and likewise an album. Sometimes. Too often, striking content fails to follow striking packaging. British keyboard player Rebecca Nash's Peaceful King, however, proves to be as beautiful as its artwork and graphic design. It joins a handful of other more or less recent, promise-fulfilling albums, from which Binker ...
