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Azar Lawrence: Elementals
by Chris May
Azar Lawrence sounds more like John Coltrane than John Coltrane ever did. Well, almost. Mid-period Coltrane that is, post Atlantic Records and the sheets of sound, when Coltrane starting to record for Impulse with producer Bob Thiele. The closeness of the resemblance is longstanding and uncanny, but it has not been a cynical pose designed to ...
Kamaal Williams: The Return
by Chris May
Cross-pollination of jazz and hip hop has spread fast during the 2010s. In-the-moment creativity and giving-the-drummer-some are powerful synergies. In the US, key players include Kamasi Washington, Thundercat and Christian Scott. In Britain, they include the extended family of musicians associated with reed player Shabaka Hutchings and the Brownswood Recordings label. Some of the British players ...
Sun Ra: God Is More Than Love Can Ever Be
by Chris May
Sun Ra is best known for the extensive archive of recordings he made with his Arkestra, and most Ra enthusiasts are probably first attracted to his work by the sui generis imagination he brought to arranging for large ensembles. These span the recalibrated swing-band tropes of Jazz In Silhouette (Saturn, 1959), a perfect choice for an ...
Svein Finnerud Trio: Plastic Sun
by Chris May
From the early years of Norwegian jazz, few albums have stood the test of time as well as the venturesome and subtly psychedelic Plastic Sun. It was the Svein Finnerud Trio's second disc, and was released on Sonet in 1970. Inexplicably for an album of such beauty, it has been a hard-to-find collector's item for decades, ...
Kimoko Kasai with Herbie Hancock: Butterfly
by Chris May
Reissues from Herbie Hancock's jazz-funk catalogue are always welcome, and few more so than Be With Records's vinyl-only edition of this long-neglected beauty. Recorded in Tokyo in 1979, it is comprised in the main of vocal versions of six Hancock originals and was singer Kimoko Kasai's fourth CBS-enabled collaboration with a leading US jazz musician--following Satin ...
Joe Armon-Jones: Starting Today
by Chris May
Something exceptional is happening in London in spring 2018. A succession of albums, recorded by an intimately connected community of around 60 young musicians, is taking jazz in ear-opening new directions. Hybridisation and genretic modification are the names of the game, but the scene also reaffirms the music's traditional building-blocks, among them the creativity of black ...
Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids: An Angel Fell
by Chris May
In 2016, California-based tenor saxophonist Idris Ackamoor relaunched his 1970s spiritual-jazz band, The Pyramids, and released a corking new album, We Be All Africans (Strut Records). In spring 2018, he has released another outstanding disc with another almost entirely new line-up. The only musician who is held over from We Be All Africans is violinist Sandra ...
Shamek Farrah: First Impressions
by Chris May
Launched by trumpeter Charles Tolliver and pianist Stanley Cowell in New York in 1971, the Strata-East label became synonymous with the black-consciousness informed spiritual-jazz movement which was perhaps the crowning glory of African American music during the 1970s. By the close of the decade, the label had released just shy of 60 albums, an impressive catalogue ...
Toshio Matsuura Group: Loveplaydance: 8 Scenes From The Floor
by Chris May
Loveplaydance is the latest chapter in a collaboration which started over 25 years ago between Tokyo DJ Toshio Matsuura and London DJ Gilles Peterson. At the time, Matsuura was a member of the mutant jazz and funk collective United Future Organization (U.F.O), and Peterson was running the post-acid jazz Talkin' Loud label, whose name was derived ...
Lalo Schifrin: Bullitt: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
by Chris May
Here is a treat for jazz fans, cinephiles and audiophiles. A 180-gram vinyl remastered-edition, manufactured with analogue-only technology, of Lalo Schifrin's original soundtrack for Peter Yates's 1968 thriller Bullitt, starring Steve McQueen as a jazz-loving San Francisco police detective. Schifrin began his career as a jazz pianist in his native Argentina and continued as ...
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