In the spring of 1971 the release of What’s Going On saw Marvin Gaye switch things up with a song cycle written from the perspective of a Vietnam War veteran, who returns to the United States to find a country in the throes of poverty, racial enmity, drug addiction and environmental degradation. A clarion call for the vulnerable, heartsick and downtrodden through soulful vocals, unhurried jazz and funk grooves, the singer turned songwriter and producer said ‘I was very much affected by letters my brother was sending me from Vietnam, as well as the social situation here at home. I realised that I had to put my own fantasies behind me if I wanted to write songs that would reach the souls of people’. Now taking What’s Going On and the groundbreaking song ‘Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)’ as a cue, this week ANOHNI returns to announce her first album in seven years, reshaping her band in a recurring memory of the gay rights activist Marsha P. Johnson, regarding climate collapse, the consequences of capitalism and fears of an apocalyptic future within a wider purview. From the frontal assault of Hopelessness the singer instead seeks succour for those on the front lines of environmental activism, repeating the refrain ‘It Must Change’ on the opening track to My Back Was A Bridge For You To Cross over plaintive guitar and propulsive percussion which combine to provide a sense of sustainable uplift. ‘The truth is that I always thought you were beautiful in your own way. That’s why this is so sad’ she sings, more than a few crumbs for our collective comfort, embracing immanence as a process of doing as well as dwelling.
Bringing to bear all of his experience as part of Afro-Cuban ensembles, the New York Art Quartet and briefly as an additional drummer under Albert Ayler, serving as the culmination of his years as a bandleader in the loft jazz scene which burnished fellow arch experimenters Sunny Murray and Rashied Ali, the live album Bäbi by the percussionist Milford Graves stands as a towering, caterwauling and incandescent free-jazz classic. Now the Black Editions Archive has unearthed a series of sessions which led up to that iconic release, the last of which was held in his studio-workshop in Queens just nine days before the Bäbi dates, on 11 March 1976 where Graves was accompanied by Arthur Doyle on tenor saxophone and fife, and Hugh Glover on the klaxon and vaccine, a rudimentary Haitian single-note trumpet.
From a converted Victorian Dovecote at Snape Maltings in Suffolk to the Salish Sea or the bluffs and beaches of seaport Seattle, the composer and dauntless violinist Laura Cannell issues a siren call to kindred spirits and fellow travellers on an album of duos and remixes which features old and new collaborators including Lori Goldston, Kathryn Tickell, Rakhi Singh, Kate Ellis, Nik Colk Void and Gazelle Twin. Over serrated blasts of saturated electronics, the scratchings and scrapings of shell-less tunable rototoms, and the primal screams of the Welsh noisemaker Elvin Brandhi, the producer Ziúr turns her eyes in the direction of the Kampala upstart Hakuna Kulala, offering a panacea for our post-pandemic slumber in the form of communal release.
Reinvigorated by the rediscovery of Keyboard Fantasies, whose soothing reveries were reimagined by the likes of Julia Holter, Blood Orange, Kelsey Lu and Arca in the waning days of 2021, the songwriter Beverly Glenn-Copeland unveils his first studio album in almost twenty years with a love call to Africa, expressing his sense of spiritual kinship with the African diaspora through the storytelling capacity of the djembe drum. Interwoven from a three-day improv session and three years of post-production which introduced textural provocations on flute, violin and pedal steel, as Slowspin the Pakistani artist Zeerak Ahmed inhabits the centre of sonorous streams and celestial quivers, anticipating ecstasy, elaborating ancestral memories and bearing the burden of loss through ravishing vocals in English, Purbi, Farsi and Urdu.
Eli Keszler issues a double album of live recordings from Sonar Festival in Barcelona and a performance at Pace Gallery in Manhattan which saw the sinuous percussionist collaborate with the acclaimed audiovisual artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. Kedr Livanskiy returns to the dancefloor, Namian Sidibé unspools another side of Malian praise songs with her cousin Jules Diabaté on acoustic guitar, while as The End the quintet of Sofia Jernberg, Mats Gustafsson, Kjetil Møster, Anders Hana and Børge Fjordheim close the freeform theatrics of Why Do You Mourn with a languidly flowering cover of the Sudan Archives rumble ‘Black Vivaldi Sonata’. With Ben Street on bass, Billy Hart on drums, and his mentor the saxophonist George Garzone, the flautist Joe Melnicove explores the headiness of life as a working artist, as tracks by Wiki, Hannah Jadagu and Curtis Stewart add a world-weary vigour and embraceable lustre to the latest roundup of best new music.
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Milford Graves, Arthur Doyle, and Hugh Glover – ‘March 11, 1976 I’
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Ziúr – ‘Eyeroll’ (feat. Elvin Brandhi)
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ANOHNI and the Johnsons – ‘It Must Change’
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Kathryn Tickell & Laura Cannell – ‘Our Perceived Distance’
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Beverly Glenn-Copeland – ‘Africa Calling’
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Kedr Livanskiy – ‘With Love K…’
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Eli Keszler – ‘Barcelona Part V’
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Namian Sidibé – ‘Nadjan Ka Fala’
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