Azita - Enantiodromia - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Actress, real name Darren Jordan Cunningham, known to friends as Daz, returns with a new album, now on Ninja Tune and a new music system called AZD (pronounced InchAzidInch), a chrome aspect journey into a parallel world. An artist who has always preferred to make music than to talk about it, in AZD he has achieved another remarkable landmark, one which is as resistant to interpretation as it is demanding of it. The album is themed around chrome - both as a reflective surface to see the self in, and as something that carves luminous voids out of any color and fine focuses white and black representing the perfect metaphor for the bleakness of life in the Metropolis as suggested by Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate. Take lead single, InchX22RMEInch (pronounced InchExtremeInch) which elegantly plays between the lines of Oriental classic rave and Balinese warehouse Techno machined in a Rotherhithe lock up welding the grooves into a seamless cracked joint. At the other end of the spectrum is InchFaure in Chrome,Inch a byproduct or development from his collaboration with the London Contemporary Orchestra, in which he InchrepatternsInch aspect of Faure's Requiem into a piece which sounds like the very institution of classical music being encased in electronic ice and scanned through a high frequency bandwidth. In between are gems like InchRunner,Inch a personal re-soundtracking of Blade Runner Inch and InchFalling Rizlas,Inch an alienated music-box ballad. It's a remarkable piece of work, that harks back both to Actress' previous productions and to earlier iterations of the (broadly conceived) InchtechnoInch project without being beholden to anything but Cunningham's forward-facing, individual and disembodied vision.

Sure, you could call it a supergroup, but Aziza is much more than that. The quartet brings together four of the most insightful and influential voices in modern jazz to form a true band, one with a wholly distinct and intriguing sound of it's own. Bassist DAVE HOLLAND, saxophonist CHRIS POTTER, guitarist LIONEL LOUEKE, and drummer ERIC HARLAND are all renowned bandleaders in their own right, and together offer a staggering breadth of experience and depth of inspiration. Holland is a universally respected, Grammy-winning 2017 NEA Jazz Master inductee whose storied career includes work with Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea, Gary Burton and John McLaughlin, as well as his own groups from CIRCLE to PRISM. Chris Potter's ceaseless originality has established him as one of the leading saxophonists of the last couple of decades, whether leading his electric group Underground or playing with artists like Pat Metheny, Dave Douglas or Paul Motian. Lionel Loueke has forged a unique bridge between the musical tradition of his native Benin and a highly individual take on contemporary jazz guitar, creating an utterly alluring and exceptional blend that has attracted admirers from Terence Blanchard to Joe Lovano to Herbie Hancock. Eric Harland's deeply felt and dynamically sophisticated approach to the kit has made him one of the most in-demand drummers of his generation, leading to fruitful partnerships with Charles Lloyd and Kurt Rosenwinkel as well as his own group VOYAGER and the collective quartet James Farm with Joshua Redman, Aaron Parks and Matt Penman.

Zanias - Ecdysis [COMPACT DISCS] date 02/16/2024