Gnawa

' Once Bill Laswell's Axiom was a subdivision of Island Records. After Island was sold by Chris Blackwell - the bright teeth guy who went around earth in a balloon and nowadays sells space hops - to Polygram in 1989, AXIOM had to close down (it was not enough commercially interesting and too much "experimental" for Universal), even if more than 20 records had been released and that some of them sold well (Praxis) or had been highly awarded (Sonny Sharrock, Henry Threadgill) by jazz magazines. With Blackwell's desire to move away from music and more into the motion picture realm, Axiom has effectively shuttered operations. Attempts to buy the back catalog from Island/Universal have so far yielded no results.' editorial.review@discogs.com

Stephan Micus - Nomad Songs (2015) {ECM 2409}
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© 2015 ECM Records | ECM 2409 | 471 4325
Jazz / International Jazz / Ethnic / Minimalism / Neo-Classical

In his journeys all over the world Stephan Micus seeks to study and understand traditional instruments, the sounds that they produce and the cultures that brought them to life. He then composes original pieces for them, combining instruments that would never normally be heard together, chosen from different cultures simply for their character, texture and sonic beauty. Nomad Songs is his 21st album for ECM; he plays nine different instruments, but emphasizes two he hasn’t used before: The first is the Moroccan genbri, a lute covered with camel-skin, played by the Gnawa in Morocco.

People are familiar with rai or some of the more traditional music to emerge from North Africa and the Middle East, but lately there's also been an undercurrent of more adventurous music – hip-hop and electronica. The roots still shout loud and proud, but the sounds (often made by artists who've moved to Europe or the U.S.) are as hard and modern as anything, anywhere – for example, the rap of Clotaire K or Mafia Maghrebine, the edgy, skittering rhythms of U-Cef, or the powerful trance of Gnawa Impulse. And this compilation makes the ideal introduction, from the pounding beats of "A Muey A Muey," which was a revelation and breakthrough when it first appeared, to the contemporary remix of Ali Slimani's "S'Habi." The full range of the music gets an airing here, and for anyone with an urge to explore the lesser-known (for now) areas of Maghrebi music, this is the starting point.

After the excellent “Boomerang” album released in 2016, critically acclaimed in France and around the world, Itamar Borochov once more exhibits what he can do best: putting forward his talents as an experienced melodist and a musician inhabited by a dominant spirit. Though his hard bop past may come out at times in the structure of his compositions, this new journey proposed by Itamar Borochov (trumpet), his brother Avri (contrabass), Rob Clearfield (piano) and Jay Sawyer (drums) transports us into a space so deep and so dense that we find ourselves sucked up by all these calls from the tradition and this so modern music.