new release round-up,The Ones That Got Away - An Alternative End of Year Round-Up!by Barney Whittaker As scrupulous as we are here in the jazz department, even we possess a tendency to overlook certain albums that come our way. This could be for any number of reasons, from difficulty in finding the right words to say at the time, or perhaps even the pure scale of the release — something we'll get to later! In any case, please enjoy some of the best albums from 2023 which we unfortunately didn't have a chance to recommend the first time round, but hopefully will have redressed the balance here. Owing to John McLaughlin’s comment that Shakti is “very much a live band” perhaps explains why this is the group's first original recording under its name in 46 years. Born in the mid-1970s out of the deep artistic and spiritual connection bonding British guitarist and Indian tabla player Zakir Hussain, Shakti’s cross-cultural musical conversation dissolved boundaries with uncommon passion, grace, and dexterity – awakening subsequent generations of musicians to the possibilities of such hybrids in the process. Available Format: 2 Vinyl Records Bela Fleck, Zakir Hussain & Edgar Meyer featuring Rakesh Chaurasia The latest album from this quartet, also featuring Hussain, not only showcases the group’s breathtaking abilities as instrumentalists, but underscores the wide range of influences at their command. Across a dozen songs, the band glides easily between the cerebral complexity of Indian rhythm and the gut-level groove of a funky bass line, sounding equally at home with the rigours of raga. Available Format: CD Miguel Atwood-Ferguson has worked with everyone from Flying Lotus to Stevie Wonder and Wayne Shorter to Quincy Jones. He has appeared on over 600 recordings and played over 2,500 concerts in the past couple of decades. Given how prolific he has been, it might not be a surprise that the first instalment of his new album is 52 tracks deep and over three-and-a-half hours long. Talk about a magnum opus! Available Format: 3 CDs When news emerged that the legendary first lady of Canadian folk had been immobilised by a brain aneurysm, it was feared that she would never perform again. But to the delight of many, including the rapturous audience gathered at last year’s Newport Folk Festival, all consternations were put aside when Mitchell, now 80, graced its stage for the first time since 1969. For her performance, Mitchell was joined by a stellar group of musicians (credited as "the Joni Jam") including Brandi Carlile, Wynonna Judd and Marcus Mumford. Available Format: CD Kassa Overall is a Grammy-nominated musician, emcee, singer, producer and drummer who melds avant-garde experimentation with hip-hop production techniques to tilt the nexus of jazz and rap in unmapped directions. On his kaleidoscopic Warp Records debut, Kassa engages with themes of race and mental illness, pushing his subversive vision further with an all- star roster of collaborators including Danny Brown, Wiki, Lil B, Shabazz Palaces, Nick Hakim, Laura Mvula, Theo Croker and more. Available Format: CD I Came From Love is a tapestry of the Black experience that explores ancestry, the legacy of slavery, what it means to exist in an unjust society, and Okumu’s own family history. Rather than release solely under his name, Okumu has chosen the moniker ‘Dave Okumu & the 7 Generations’, which he sees as “my actual ancestors, the ancestors of others, my musical ancestors, and my descendants”. Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC A 12-movement suite composed, arranged, and inspired in part by dialogue from Edward O. Bland’s 1959 film The Cry of Jazz, the album is a wide-ranging treatise on the African-American story from one of its most astute narrators. Drawing a through line to today’s vibrant avant-garde, Requiem For Jazz picks up the liberation work laid out by Bland’s film, taking the message of joy and suffering within the Black classical tradition into a contemporary setting, with the final movement featuring Marshall Allen and Knoel Scott of the Sun Ra Arkestra. Available Format: CD Immersed in the communal, ceremonial and healing qualities of music, this record is the next epoch from the multidisciplinary artist and follows his acclaimed solo eponymous debut. Recorded live with an ensemble of 13 musicians, On the Romance of Being consists of 8 movements that sonically sprawl across post-gospel, spiritual jazz, black classical and the ancient music of the Nguni and Ndau peoples and elicits a sincere conversation between the erotic and spiritual. Available Format: CD There is Only Love and Fear is a vignetted voyage via oceans, dwellings, and landscapes by Berlin-based, British-born composer, percussionist, producer, and instrument maker Bex Burch. Over 12 dream-like instrumental incantations, Burch creates a delicate and elegiac atmosphere. The fluid sonic whole is woven together by the physical and spiritual resonance of her xylophone, and the autobiographical sounds she recorded in her journeys between. Available Format: Vinyl Record Born from a mutual admiration, together these heroes in their respective fields have created something more than the sum of its parts. An exquisitely crafted, silky blend of kosmische, jazz, vintage soundtrack vibes and ambient, Dolphin takes you to a balmy sundown place of peace. Both artist’s signature styles are here, but blended with such smooth liquidity that the pairing seems like the most natural no-brainer ever. Available Format: CD Flutist, vocalist and composer, Naïssam Jalal has created a unique and vibrant musical jazz which fuses compositions of great melodic richness, undulating grooves, Middle Eastern music and a certain modal lyricism evoking in turn the nomadic Yussef Lateef, Don Cherry and the mystical jazz of John Coltrane. Composed outside of any tradition, it is the fruits of his imagination that have drawn these rituals that we hear in Healing Rituals. Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC Barney Whittaker from www.prestomusic.com
Edited by snobb - 04 Jan 2024 at 8:32am
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Topic: An Alternative End of Year Round-Up!(presto)
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