jazz albums
Album review: Black Flower – ‘Magma’: a perfumed souk of North African psych jazz from the Lowlands quintet
THE WORLD of Belgian Eastern jazz outfit Black Flower is a well-woven and beautiful one; the quintet this week unveil their sixth full-length album for Ghent’s rather groove-obsessed Sdban Ultra imprint, with whom they’ve released two of their past three albums this past five years. Through this arch, if you will, to enter their aural …
Album review: Claude Cooper – ‘Myriad Sounds’: taut, essential Bristol jazz breaks and cinematic LSD groove
CLAUDE COOPER: a jazz breaks legend in his own lifetime, should he even exist; for who CC is remains a complete mystery. Certainly to me. Certainly to you. One physical single, early last year, “Tangerine Dreams” / “Two Mile Hill”, the initial orange vinyl pressing of which is, lemme tells ya, already ker-ching and anyhow …
Album Review: Chelsea Carmichael – The River Doesn’t Like Strangers
Engineered at London’s iconic RAK studios by Will Purton and recorded with Eddie Hick (Sons of Kemet), Dave Okumu (The Invisible) and Tom Herbert (The Invisible; Polar Bear), The River Doesn’t Like Strangers from start to finish is jazz mastery at its finest. Produced by Shabaka Hutchings and released via his Native Rebel Recordings, a new label …
Album review: Spiritczualic Enhancement Center – ‘Carpet Album’: filmic, psychedelic and enveloping – travel deep, travel wisely
IT’S ONE of those sentences you hear periodically when chewing the fat about the music: “Ooh no, though, I really don’t like jazz”. Which, each to their own, live and let live, vive la difference without question; but, which, you imagine may be based on some particularly untethered, free-associating inversion of the style, say, Coltrane’s …
Album review: Scrimshire – ‘Nothing Feels Like Everything’: expansive, opulent soul-jazz with a real beating heart
ALBERT’S FAVOURITES is a label bringing the sounds of the South London scene to the world with heart; genuine heart, and care, and soul, in all iterations of that word. One only need look at the label’s name, and the tribute it pays. I’ve written about this before but it is worth reprising, since it …
Album Review: South African be-bop trailblazer Kippie Moeketsi’s Blue Stompin receives long-awaited reissue
Over forty years on since its original release in 1977 those intrepid sound seekers at We Are Busy Bodies have just re-issued, in partnership with Rashid Vally’s seminal South African Jazz label As- Shams /The Sun, Kippie Moeketsi/Hal Singer’s ‘Blue Stompin’. The album’s title track and centrepiece highlights an intriguing jazz intersection from the two …
Album Review: Tony Glausi – Everything At Once
Raised in Portland, Oregon and currently based in New York City, Tony Glausi is widely known for his accomplishments as a trumpet player. But with his latest album Everything At Once, which is out now via outside in music see’s Glausi shift into roles of bandleader, producer, songwriter, and singer. “Coming out of high school …
Album Review: ISQ – ‘Requiem for the Faithful 2.0’ – The Remixes
There’s something to be said about the mere act of dancing, post-covid. Let’s just start with that. Whether you’re into club culture or not, we’ve all had a burning desire to dance, with other people. That free flow ecstatic waltz into movement, that enables us to feel human again. Enter ISQ. A powerhouse of a …
Album Review: Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp – ‘We’re OK. But we’re lost anyway’
Is it a band, is it a group, is it a collective or an ensemble- no it’s the one and only Orchestre Tout Puissant Marcel Duchamp, the multi-European makers of the most essential music that may just have passed you by.Revolving around the mercurial bassist/composer Vincent Bertholet and emerging from the Geneva avant music scene …
Album review: Peace Flag Ensemble – ‘Noteland’: intelligent, warm and melodic jazz improv from Canadian collective
LADIES and gentlemen of the more recherché musical persuasion: introducing a new act to especially intrigue the weird jazzers among you, Peace Flag Ensemble, an experimental collective drawn from various points across the verdant central Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The quintet are set to release their first venture into long-playing recordings this coming Friday, June …