Black To The Future

Unique, modern, tribal, funky Jazz. If you liked 'Your Queen is a Reptile", pluck down your money on this with confidence....you'll love this one too! Funky!

Shabaka Hutchings, woodwinds; Tom Skinner, tuba; Edward Wakili-Hick, dr; others on vocals, sax, tpt.Black to the Future is another winner for multi-reed player Shabaka Hutchings reed-tuba-drums trio. It isn’t jazz, at least not straight ahead unadulterated jazz music, but rather a fertile and exciting mix of horn soloing over a percussive base of African-and Caribbean-rhythms and driving tuba riffs. The best cut on the album is the second one: “Pick Up Your Burning Cross.” The vocals, a women’s chorus and rapper Angel Bat Dawid, make it and the instrumental parts are exciting, a mix of jazz riffs and Hutchings’s solo propulsive drums and the best tuba backing I may have ever heard. The following “Think of Home” is reggae jazz, a slow, steady, swaying beat, more of a reggae slow swaying beat, tuba and sax playing the head in un son. Then the tuba takes the lead, great interplay between the tuba back line and Hutchings in front, soloing on multiple saxes. front, on multiple saxes? “Hustle” is another one, reggae-ish, with a rapper in front. The other songs are good too but though the trio uses its singers to effect, I prefer the cuts where the trio plays alone, with the exception of “Envision Yourself Levitating,” which is more of a dreamscape piece than a kicker. I could have done without the two collaborations with poet-rapper Joshua Idehen, which reminded me of the horrors of 60s jazz-poetry collaborations. But those are three songs out of eleven and even they are not bad, just not up to the level of the other eight songs, which are all between very good and superb.