| Jazz |
Straight out of the last period of Miles Davis, this sublime double album is packed with international stars: “London Brew” is a 12-member group based in London, featuring Benji B, Raven Bush, Theon Cross, Nubya Garcia, Tom Herbert, Shabaka Hutchings, Nikolaj Torp Larsen, Dave Okumu, Nick Ramm, Dan See, Tom Skinner, and Martin Terefe. The group came together for a three-day recording session at London’s Church Studios on December 7th, 2020 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Bitches Brew.
The excellence of the artists featured on this double album envelops us in their inner world, without any concessions, delivering unparalleled sensory pleasure. Miles Davis’ works in his last period, where he played with rhythm, are extended here in a post-industrial style, upon which the instruments are placed. The tone is set on the last track of CD 1, “Miles Chase New Voodoo In The Church.”
Produced by Martin Terefe and Downtown Music UK Limited, the album reflects an emotional journey of the time, having been recorded during the pandemic after many months of isolation and inability to collaborate in person. Recorded in December 2020 at London’s Church Studios.
Miles Davis is a starting point upon which twelve talents have worked, on ultra-contemporary writing with an all-around sound research that ranges from the sound of a breath in a saxophone to the wildest unbridled rhythms, moments where the instruments rest on silence to better make the melodic proposals that follow come alive and spin. This album is so radical that it may not please everyone; it will certainly be appreciated by listeners accustomed to somewhat complex music or by musicians who can appreciate all its flavors. This is intelligent music, almost scholarly, that, like theater, requires an investment from the spectator/listener to feel all its effects.
London Brew is a first-rate album and group. In the concept, one can feel the classical influences of the musicians if one listens closely, here and there traces of concert performers, the very essence on which European jazz rests. For the rest, a prominent Anglo-Saxon vision allows this album to have a foot on both the American and European steps. It is undoubtedly unintentional, but it is also what makes it an absolutely brilliant album.
The editorial teams of Paris-Move and Bayou Blue Radio place this album in the category of “Indispensables”.
Thierry De Clemensat
Correspondent in USA
Bayou Blue News – Bayou Blue Radio – Paris-Move
PARIS-MOVE, April 23rd 2023
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