The Chicago native and veteran bandleader Kahil El’Zabar guides his Ethnic Heritage Ensemble and special guests on a rhythmic tour de force in celebration of the legendary jazz trumpeter Don Cherry. Locating the middle ground between his British roots and the Occitan part of his family in the southern French department of Aveyron, the percussionist and sound artist Sébastien Forrester crafts collages out of the Highland bagpipes and cabrette with a focus on trance and timbre. Westside Gunn jumps on a trap beat produced by his son, and between the dexterous flute of Ousmane Ba and xalam of Jango Diabaté, the engineer and multi-instrumentalist Arouna Kane bounces ideas back and forth with the Swedish producer Karl Jonas Winqvist as a diverse array of musicians from Senegal come together under the guise of Wau Wau Collectif.
Following the acclaimed nine movements of Promises alongside the recently departed Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra, the shapeshifting electronic producer Floating Points collates all of his singles from this year into a staggered and cordial four-track extended play, between elegiac strings and keys Haru Nemuri deconstructs the writhing and pleading ‘Inori Dake Ga Aru’ from Shunka Ryougen, and Richie Culver recalls the utter normalcy of his birthplace on the shores of an English seaside town, where lighthouses flash and oil rigs sparkle. The Anoice co-founder Yuki Murata performs her songs in front of an empty concert hall as part of a quartet, while adorning a purple wig amid pandemic strains and rising violence against Asian women on the streets of New York, the pianist Eri Yamamoto still professes her love of vibrant colour.
From a visionary moment on the island of Syros in the Aegean Sea to the reductive process of editing all that guttural sprawl on the Cycladic outcrop of Ano Koufonisi, the Kranky stalwart Christina Vantzou issues a fifth album which feels like her first full of glottal groans, glittering eddies of modular synth, and languorous silences. From bustling Honolulu the guitarist Jessica Ackerley finds a sort of shelter from the storm, inspired by the sinuous waves and pulsing frequencies of the Pacific Ocean. And from Oslo to Austin, the trio of Andreas Røysum on clarinets, Christian Meaas Svendsen on double bass, and Kresten Osgood on drums come together for the first time on an improvisation whose datestamp crosses the Atlantic for the indomitable heavy free jazz label Astral Spirits.
Playlists: Spotify · Apple Music · YouTube
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Ethnic Heritage Ensemble – ‘Don Cherry’
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Westside Gunn – ‘FlyGod Jr’ (feat. DoeBoy & DJ Drama)
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Floating Points – ‘Someone Close’
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Andreas Røysum, Christian Meaas Svendsen, and Kresten Osgood – ‘#3’
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Sébastien Forrester – ‘Rappel’
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Christina Vantzou – ‘Tongue Shaped Rock’
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Eri Yamamoto Trio – ‘Colors Are Beautiful’
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Wau Wau Collectif – ‘Mariage Forcé’
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Haru Nemuri – ‘Inori Dake Ga Aru (déconstructed)’
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