Jazzwise Choices,
Jazzwise Editor's Choices - August 2021
Jazzwise Editor's Choice selections this month include young artists Matt Ridley and Michael Mayo, as well as the latest album by jazz fusion veteran John McLaughlin. Recommended Reissues/Archive picks included yet more unearthed music from Bill Evans - live recordings made during Dutch dates - as well as devotional music from Alice Coltrane and an expanded edition of Charles Mingus's classic Carnegie Hall performance.
Editor's Choices
"What stands out the most on Purest Form is the beguiling beauty of some of the textures, particularly ballads such as ‘Melting’ and ‘Eyes Wide Shut’, where Francies has chosen exactly the kind of disturbingly vaporous synth sounds to resonate with a voice as singular as that of Bilal."
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
"The multipartite ‘You and You’ perfectly showcases Mayo’s magnificent writing: a killer chorus hook, surprising harmonic shifts, and metrical sleights of hand at every turn. The stunning, a cappella vocal polyphony of ‘Stolen Moments’ sees Mayo channelling one of his major touchstones, Bobby McFerrin, using a looper pedal to create a rich, multilayered vocal tapestry."
Available Format: CD
"Other than his two reflective solo piano pieces, ‘Mila Repa’ and ‘Shade of Blue’, all tracks are the product of multi tracking. But you’d never guess ‘Lockdown Blues’ by McLaughlin’s group The 4th Dimension was made this way, such is the group interplay. Then there’s McLaughlin in straight ahead, 1960s mode, a style he grew up with and is a master of, here with an excellent contribution from Julian Siegel on tenor."
Available Format: CD
"[The Antidote] brings to light the bassist-composer’s earliest rock influences while not undermining his lyrical, memorable folk-y themes or sophisticated jazz sensibilities."
Available Formats: CD, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Recommended Reissues/Archive
"In the past few years, the full extent of Alice Coltrane’s talents has been coming into sharper focus, and this set of super-rare (previously available only as a series of cassettes distributed by Alice herself) music makes the picture crystal clear. She was a unique individual and a distinctive artist. Her journey from jazz pianist with a strong grounding in gospel to disciple of spiritual leader Swami Satchidananda and exponent of Hindu devotional song led her to create music of breathtaking beauty, shaped as she was by this life journey that is anything but conventional."
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
"Afro Bossa and Mary Poppins, together with The Symphonic Ellington, were easily the best albums of the Duke’s brief sojourn with Frank Sinatra’s Reprise label."
Available Format: CD
"The six tracks from November have previously been issued with less good sound on labels like Affinity, and all of this material shows Morell settling in well and Gomez going from strength to strength, not only when backing Bill but in some incredible melodic solos. Certainly a winner."
Available Format: 2 CDs
"The resulting series of improvised jam sessions, collected here for the first time, reveal how the amalgam of volatile styles the brothers ingested during their various sonic encounters fused together and caught fire. Kicking off with the loping ‘Reverse Coil Distinction’, the set shifts towards Roger’s more complex “The Transformation of Oz” with its forays into Zappa styled composition – where psychedelic rock motifs and clusters of modern composition collide and bounce off each other."
Available Format: CD
"The second half of the concert has three ex-Mingus sidemen returning for a jam session on two Ellington standards (‘Perdido’ and ‘C Jam Blues’), which was released on LP at the time. All great fun, especially the contributions of Roland Kirk, but the meat of the set is the unreleased first half featuring the then-regular front line of Adams and Bluiett with the addition of Faddis, who worked with Mingus in 1972 but had already moved into the NYC freelance scene."
Available Format: 2 CDs
"[The tracks] come from a unique, some say golden, period of British jazz where artists reframed their music according to their own musical vision, creating original and distinctive music that has provided the inspiration for subsequent generations and the current generation of jazz explorers behind the current Brit Jazz Explosion."
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
Joshua Lee - Jazz Content
