Joan Wasser and her long-time collaborator’s brilliant, beautiful, dark, and perfectly paced blend of funk-afro-jazz with vocals, bass, piano, strings, horns, and stored sessions from the great departed afrobeat drum pioneer, borne out of the 2019 Africa Express collaboration. The album is not about lockdown, but was put together by Wasser during it. Lengthy, atmospheric opener The Barbarian entrances the listener with a seemingly endless sequence of falling chords. Take Me To Your Leader is inspired by the impressive New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern. Get My Bearings addresses directly how to come to terms with Allen’s death in 2020, Enter The Dragon has a gorgeous strings coda, mirrored by lovely brass on Geometry of You, a song reaching for poetic understanding of quantum physics but intertwining emotions and mathematics. Perfect Shade of Blue is a fabulous catchy piece of trumpety funk,. The album is filled with memorable, profound, intelligent, reflective lyrics, and in particular The Love Has Got Me has a meta-music element: “Have you ever been inside a song/ That really changed thе way you feel? That really changed the way you / Look at thе world forever? Find the sound that moves you to forget all of your / Troubles and you must hear it again so you can breathe. ‘Don't you wonder sometimes ’bout sound and vision?’ This is a song that I play when I must find a way to carry on. Out on Play It Again Sam.
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