Shortly before New Year’s Eve, there is actually only a list of the most personally heard jazz albums of the past year. But if there is a phenomenon, it has to come up first. The core of a new wave of unfamiliar sounds in jazz was the surprise success of the mammoth work “Promises” (Luaka Bop), which Coltrane’s companion and brute saxophonist Pharoah Sanders with the electronics producer Floating points and the London Symphony Orchestra recorded in nine contiguous movements. The album literally struck a chord with the world. The calm that they created with a magical chord as a basic motif, gossamer fragments of saxophone and echoing surfaces, was the perfect deceleration on a planet that pandemic, climate and economic crises have thrown off the rails.
Pharoah Sanders, Floating Points “Promises”
(Photo: Label)
That’s why a whole stack of albums came into focus in the wake of the American review portal Pitchfork in the absence of genre boundaries as “Ambient Jazz” labeled. Even if, for example Esperanza Spaldings scientific search for the healing power of music on her album “Songwrights Apothecary Lab” is sometimes more reminiscent of the music of Joni Mitchell. Or remixing Alice Coltranes Ashram chants “Kirtan: Turiya Sings” (impulses) is ultimately a meditation in Sanskrit on Spartan organ chords, which is primarily used for the rapture. Alice Coltrane’s spirit also hovers over the spiritual jazz bonds of the younger generation, especially in the current renaissance of the harp in jazz. There were really great new albums from Brandee Younger (deeply rooted in R’n’B), Amanda Whiting (as the center of a traditional post-bop trio) and Nala Sinephro (most likely in the ambient room). The most amazing harp album, however, was “Nanodiamond” by the electro producer and harpist Sissi Rada. It moves very confidently between the latest minimalist currents of contemporary pop, free jazz and what Brian Eno established as ambient. He’s also a fan and produced a song for her. All in all, that sounds wonderfully unusual and new. That’s why the album fits so well into the program of Mathias Modica’s cryptox labell, which has set out to publish European jazz, which eludes the usual currents and allows the ostinato to be the only common thread, as you can hear on the sampler “Kraut Jazz Futurism Vol. 2”.
So, now here are the top 20, which are arbitrary in selection and order:
Lady Blackbird “Black Acid Soul”
(Photo: BMG)
Lady Blackbird “Black Acid Soul” (BMG). This voice! Glamor and emery velvet with a quartet that holds back radically in order to give the new diva the big stage.
Lonnie Smith “Breathe” (Blue Note). Few could make the Hammond organ blaze like this. Especially live. The two Hippie hit song with Iggy Pop on his last album were a (for him last) Gift.
James Francies “Purest Form” (Blue Note). The Texan found this year new forms of force on the keyboards. And ways, older gentlemen like Pat Metheny (on his “Side-Eye NYC” album) and the heavy athletes of the tenor saxophone Chris Potter (on “Sunrise Reprise”) from the reserve. Then the spirit flashes from Weather Report which is currently shaping many who were not even born when they were already dissolving again.
Emma-Jean Thackray “Yello” (Movementt). An amazing kaleidoscope of London jazz and funk ideas from the trumpeter who can do a lot more than just her instrument.
Web Web “Web Max”
(Photo: Compost)
Web Web “Web Max” (Compost). The hip-hopper Max Herre has forced the all-star quartet around the pianist Roberto Di Gioia as the fifth man to simplify. A win. That sounds like a jam session in Detroit around 1976 and sometimes like a martial arts soundtrack by Ennio Morricone.
Kenny Garrett “Sounds from the Ancestors” (Mack Avenue). A wonderfully warm and contemporary soul jazz album that does not carry its historical treasure trove of quotes, but understands it as a root system.
Renee Rosnes “Kinds of Love” (Smoke Sessions). The pianist with the high-speed intellect has found an equal sparring partner in saxophonist Chris Potter. Post-Bop as a heavyweight championship.
Bill Charlap Trio “Street of Dreams” (Blue Note). A piano trio is playing Standards in touching perfection. That’s how it works with conservatism.
Charles Lloyd & the Marvels “Tone Poem” (Blue Note). In the 60s, Lloyd was a superstar who shared the stage with his quartet with the rock stars of his time. A little of that spirit lives on in his Amerikana band The Marvels on, to which the guitarist Bill Frisell belongs and who can really shine on the third album without a guest singer.
Andrew Cyrille Quartet “The News” (ECM). The wonderfully harmonious old work of the drummer who, together with Cecil Taylor, once tore down all the limits of music theory. With the always charming guitarist Bill Frisell.
James Brandon Lewis “Code of Being”
(Photo: Label)
James Brandon Lewis “Code of Being” (Intakt Records). A new colossus on the tenor saxophone. He knows how to appreciate freedom and how to control it. His best album so far. And he gets better with everyone.
John anger “The New Masada Quartet” (Tzadik). The hyper-productive composer and godfather of the far too neglected 80s avant-garde, in his new quartet with the guitarist Julian Lage, has the old form of his “stop and go” outbursts.
John Wright “South Side Soul” (Jazz Workshop). A forgotten one Grand Master of Backbeat at the piano with an album from Chicago from 1960 that has been lost for far too long and that keeps you in suspense from beginning to end.
Art Blakey “First Flight to Tokyo”
(Photo: Blue Note)
Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers “First Flight to Tokyo” (Blue Note). The birth of the hard bop grounded the nervousness of modern jazz in the blues. At these concerts in Tokyo in the winter of 1961, Blakey pushed hard on the drums. Trumpeter Lee Morgan and saxophonist Wayne Shorter prove that they were geniuses at a very young age.
Pharoah Sanders “Africa” (Music on Vinyl). The 80s are notoriously neglected not only by music history, but also by re-releases. Fortunately, someone re-released Sander’s album with a rhythm section that masters walking bass swing. On “Africa” in 1987 he showed everything he can do, from the ballad “Naima” by his mentor John Coltrane to the highly political primal scream therapy of his own “You’ve got to have freedom”.
Irreversible entanglements “Open the Gates” (International Anthem). If there is one group that carries on this tradition of political, impetuous “fire music”, it is them Irreversible entanglements about the poet Moor Mother. Pure anger and a mixture of punk and jazz that congenially transports you.
Malcolm Jiyane Tree-O “Umdali” (Mushroom Hour). For some time now, the South African jazz scene has been quietly reminding us who invented it all. The trombonist and pianist Malcolm Jiyane Tree-O With his band he brings the warm harmonies and reclined grooves with which South African jazz grew up in a present that draws from half a century of jazz and soul history.
Native soul “Teenage Dreams” (Awesome Tapes from Africa). And then there was the discovery of the year from South Africa. Another phenomenon is hidden behind this. And what one. A whole genre called Amapiano has established itself between the townships around Johannesburg and the Cape in recent years, with an irresistibly hypnotic beat in the field of tension between jazz and house and ambient and jive and … style limits? Does anyone else need it?
A playlist to listen to the records in this column is available on Spotify here.
