In 2019, Gilles Peterson asked London-based jazz drummer/producer Jake Long to assemble a band to back American saxophonist Gary Bartz at the first We Out Here Festival. He chose Maisha, his forward-thinking electric jazz and improv group. Following the wildly successful show, the parties booked a recording studio to deliver the raw, darkly vibrant Night Dreamer Direct-to-Disc Sessions. Long’s 2020s project is Your Brother’s Keeper. It consists of himself on drums with Maisha veterans Ali MacSween on piano, electronics, and modular EFX, trumpeter Axel Kaner-Lidstrom, double bassist Twm Dylan, percussionist Tim Doyle and top-flight saxophonist Chelsea Carmichael. While collective interplay and improvisation are central tenets in this record’s purpose, it’s not…
Tag Archive: Brownswood
This jazz-rooted, seven-piece London combo first whetted the palettes of forward-looking music connoisseurs with their 2019 self-titled EP, and became word-of-mouth sensations on the strength of their 2022 full-length debut Could We Be More. Now, in a development sure to please the thousands of new ear canals currently ingesting Kokoroko’s entrancing, groovy sounds, Tuff Times Never Last leapfrogs genres even more gracefully, weaving Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat and the larger Black music diaspora through shimmering threads of pop, R&B, and neo-soul.
The glorious highlife guitar noodlings and cresting horns of the group’s earlier work are as effective as ever on songs such as the sumptuous “Idea 5 (Call My Name)” and the yearning, slap…