Jairus Sharif - Water & Tools - VINYL LP

P. Vasks - Violin Concerto Distant Light / Musica Dolorosa [COMPACT DISCS] date 03/01/2005

On her expansive new album Water Made Us, Chicago musicianand poet Jamila Woods shines anew as she asks the question, what does itmean to fully surrender into love? Across Water Made Us, Jamila embracesnew genres, playful melodies, and hypnotizing wordplay, as she wadesthrough the exhilarating tumult of love's wreckage and refuge. While 2017's HEAVN saw Jamila celebrating her communitywithin a lineage of Black feminist movement organizing, and 2019's Legacy!Legacy! Reframed her life's experiences through the storied personas of iconicBlack and brown artists, Water Made Us is self-revelatory in an entirely newway, making this her most personal album yet. Made together with LAbased producer McClenney, and boasting features from longtime friendsand Chicago natives such as Saba and Peter CottonTale, Water Made Us isa sprawling and intimate portrait of self-reflection, cleverly designed to echothe different stages of a relationship the early days of easy compromising,flirtatiousness, and fun; the careful negotiation through moments of conflictor hurt; the grieving of something lost; and the tender realization at the end ofit all that the person who is gone never really leaves, but stays with you as youfind yourself ready to try again, refreshed and reassured. The album's title - taken from a line in album highlight InchGoodNewsInch - is a subtle reference to the famous Toni Morrison quote InchAll waterhas a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was.Inch It'sthis sentiment - of memory, place, and returning - that acts as a pillar for thealbum's arc. Water Made Us reminds us that at it's best love is a warm, stillocean. Deep, shimmering, and endless in it's wonder. And at it's worst love canbe a riptide that takes us so far away from ourselves we can hardly find ourway back, hardly even remember how to swim. And yet Jamila surrenders tothis surf - eve

Taking inspiration from hawala, a system of informal money transfers made to certain countries impacted by a lack of currency or unstable contexts. Megarbane spins this concept on it's head, reimagining it as an artistic exchange spanning cultures, generations, and geographies. This spirit of creative movement is embodied in the album's amalgamative nature, featuring contributions from an international lineup of artists, including London-based jazz vocalist Sahra Gure, Italian-Tunisian singer LNDFK, Neapolitan pianist Dario Bassolino, Berlin beatmaker and violinist FloFilz, and an 18-piece orchestral arrangement by Swedish composer Sven Wunder. Recorded across multiple locations, from Beirut to Brooklyn, Stockholm to a rural French commune, the album's sonic journey mirrors it's thematic premise. Musically, the track list of Hawalat travels through a varied journey of textures and temperaments. The album's opener, Hanadi, is a percussive, Somali-inspired groove with wordless vocals and soaring saxophone lines. Tracks like Al Dollarji and Al Bahriye encapsulate Megarbane's signature Mediterranean sound, while Helia, performed with the Stockholm Studio Orchestra, showcases his cinematic sensibilities. Jana, an homage to the late Malian kora master Toumani Diabaté, sees Megarbane transform his guitar into a kora-like instrument, staying true to his commitment to experimentation. Following Marzipan (2023), which took a look inwards at the heart of Lebanon, Hawalat expands further outwards, exploring themes of diaspora, exile, and artistic migration. InchAs much as Marzipan was a portrait of Lebanon from the inside, Hawalat picks up where it left off,Inch Megarbane explains. The album avoids nostalgic recreations of the past, instead situating itself comfortably in the present with a sound that is both timeless and contemporary. Through Hawalat, Megarbane reaffirms his pla