After a decade under Van Gelder’s roof, Donald Byrd decamps for sun-kissed LA to record Ethiopian Knights, an album that rests comfortably in the improvisational sweet spot where Mwandishi and Peter Green’s End of the Game converge; acknowledging the gravitational pull of early 70s jazz funk but reveling in the turf that lies at its edge.
Category: Jazz
Gary Peacock/Ralph Towner :: Oracle
The recently reissued Oracle, a collaboration between bassist Gary Peacock and recently deceased guitarist Ralph Towner gives us a look at two legends in deep midcareer. Originally released in 1995, it shows two restless musicians, each with their own highly developed, distinct musical language, looking to mix things up. Though more
Peacock-forward, its seamless mix of carefully spontaneous playing and freewheeling composition serves as a fitting farewell to Towner, and reminds us that the great ones never stop evolving, long after their so-called “classic” eras have ended.
Herbie Hancock Septet: Live at the Boardinghouse January 16, 1973
Recently, a previously unheard Sextant tour FM broadcast from SF’s legendary Boarding House emerged. It’s well worth your time. This group is especially good when they stretch way way way out. And they certainly do that here: most of the performance is made up of a 40+ minute spiral through “Hidden Shadows.” Everyone gets a chance to shine, of course, but let’s give it up for the rhythm section of Buster Williams and Billy Hart, who hold things down and lift things up simultaneously, letting the prog-funk-jazz mutant grooves spin and swirl all around the room. Unreal!
David Bowie’s Blackstar Jazz
Released 10 years ago today, David Bowie’s Blackstar marked the artist’s most intensive and rewarding collaboration with jazz musicians in the span of his six decade career. To commemorate the album’s anniversary we dive into how his work with Maria Schneider, Donny McCaslin and other players shaped his final record.
Gene Ammons :: Nice an’ Cool (1961)
True to Moodsville’s curation, Nice ‘an Cool is nothing if not a “mood album,” the overall unity of the quartet eclipsing any one section of the arrangement. The band keeps dynamics to a gentle hush; Ammons plays his melody lines straight, keeping embellishments to a bare minimum. Still, the ear can’t help but single out Ammons’ tenor sax. His tone is unmistakable: deep, rich, and warm. He doesn’t so much play notes as he breathes his soul into them, tinting each legato phrase with a lifetime’s worth of dreams and regrets.
Eberhard Weber on ECM: Primary Colours
ECM may exist without Eberhard Weber, but it wouldn’t be ECM as we know it. From his 1973 debut through decades of collaboration, Weber’s ECM catalog is difficult to absorb, with offshoots that aren’t for every taste. Still, it’s a body of work that rewards exploration. Here’s one path among many.
Miles in ‘65: The Journey to the Plugged Nickel
1965 could’ve easily been the end of the road for Miles Davis. Having spent much of the year laid up in a NY hospital, he returned to the stage with a quintet whose virtuosity had grown formulaic. En route to a two-week run at Chicago’s Plugged Nickel, drummer Tony Williams hatched a plan for a renewed language. “What if we made anti-music?” The results, documented on the newly reissued Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel, changed the landscape of modern jazz.
Steve Tibbetts :: The Aquarium Drunkard Interview
Close, guitarist Steve Tibbetts latest album, might be his most rewardingly mysterious yet. In conversation, Tibbetts balances consideration with openness, talking about his Buddhist practice, having lunch with Joe Boyd and Leo Kottke, working as a nurse and a record store clerk, the Grateful Dead, the wonders of fellow ECM artists and much more.
Dexter Gordon :: Ballads
Ballads finds Dexter Gordon at the apex of his career, doing what he does best: playing ballads. The collection is filled with choice cuts that find Gordon and company locking into sleepy pockets where each phrase is given room to dally in the space between beats. Gordon’s tone is sultry and warm, as if his tenor sax had polished off a few glasses of scotch before each take. When he takes the lead, there’s nothing provocative or flamboyant happening — he knows that the key to ballads isn’t the number of notes in any given measure, but the quality and character of each one.
Makaya McCraven :: Off the Record
On his first proper offering since 2022’s career highlight In These Times, jazz drummer and composer Makaya McCraven compiles a set of four new EPs into one for Off the Record. Hence the package’s namesake, each set of songs takes the organic improvisation from various previous live recordings. There’s an aural alchemy in McCraven’s post-production wizardry, the fervent compositions feeling like fresh studio iterations as much as previous live experiences culled from the archives; each set uniquely featuring a different live lineup with plenty of the musician’s collaborators and International Anthem labelmates.
Phil Yost :: Bent City
… Bent City is a spectral album unfolding a multi-tracked mirror house of sonic fantasias, with each wondrously bizarre corridor becoming an entire dimension unto itself. It’s a mesmerizing work of “sound-on-sound” composition, Yost’s intricate method of weaving home-recorded tape loops together, which allowed him a canvas for improvisation á la Sandy Bull, using “various combinations of soprano saxophone, flute, electric guitar, bass, maracas and tambourine.”
Ramsey Lewis :: Them Changes
For anyone who frequents their local record store, the term “cheap heat” is likely a familiar one. Often its own section, the cheap heat bin usually contains copies of iconic records in dubious condition, lesser-known titles by major artists, and maybe most importantly, overlooked records that either never fully caught on, or for one reason or another, never found their audience. The problem with some of these titles is that while the cheap part is generally accurate, the ‘heat’ is sometimes over-promised. Not the case with Ramsey Lewis’ 1970 funky soul jazz gem Them Changes, a record we’ve never seen priced higher than $10 that burns hot.
Door of the Cosmos: Sun Ra’s On Jupiter and Sleeping Beauty
Between 1978 and 1982 Sun Ra parked his roving musical spacecraft at New York’s Variety Arts Studios for a series of rigorous and inspired marathon sessions between frequent gigs in the city. On the heels of their stellar Lanquidity reissue, Strut continues their deep dive into this phase of Ra’s career with the twin 1979 masterpieces On Jupiter and Sleeping Beauty, offering a fresh glimpse at some of the most revered and beautifully spacious music the Arkestra ever cut.
Mal Waldron :: Candy Girl
A rare 1975 Mal Waldron session with the Lafayette Afro Rock Band finally gets a proper reissue, clarifying some of the album’s many mysteries and deepening its still-ambiguous message. Playing electric piano, the always laconic Waldron gives lots of space to the funk band, space that’s not taken up in the traditional sense. Instead, the songs explore relentless repetition and intense stasis, forming ruts so deep they become portals to different worlds, or at least altered frames of reference.
Chicago Underground Duo :: Hyperglyph
The throughline of their vast body of work is Rob Mazurek and Chad Taylor’s commitment to the Chicago Underground project, the origins of which date back to 1998. Sometimes morphing into Chicago Underground Trio, or most recently as Chicago Underground Quartet with guitar player Jeff Parker and saxophonist Josh Johnson on 2020’s jazz-centric Good Days, Mazurek and Taylor inevitably return to each other as simply Chicago Underground Duo with Hyperglyph.