A wonderful return by the pioneering UK-based jazz quartet after 2018’s acclaimed Your Queen is a Reptile, here with fuller compositions and arrangements, and featured vocalists including Kojey Radical, Moor Mother, Angel Bat Dawid, Joshua Idehen and D Double E. There is strong balance between powerful lyrics, fuelled by the murder of George Floyd and pertaining mostly to this and wider race issues, history and politics, alongside that buzzing dance groove created by the brilliant Shabaka Hutchings on sax and clarinet, Theon Cross on tuba and the double drumming partnership of Tom Skinner and Eddie Hick. Opening track Field Negus with Joshua Idehen is a passionate buildup into Pick Up Your Burning Cross also traverses into a frenetic pace with Moor Mother and Angel Bat Dawid. Perhaps the highlight is Hustle with the lyrical delivery and infectious momentum of Kojey Radical with Lianne La Havas adding soft lilts of backing vocals , but there are many delights, from the shuffling, syncopated rhythms of instrumental Think Of Home, For The Culture with D Double E, or the various intercrossing musical elements of In Remembrance Of Those Fallen, from high- pitched woodwind twitterings, the moving slower saxophone solo and underpinned by that solid tuba and percussion, the fabulous rhythms of Let The Circle Be Broken, or the polyphonic, otherworldy mix of flute fantasia and freeform saxophone on Envision Yourself Levitating, another reminder of how this brilliant quartet continue to push the frontiers of jazz to new places, mixing anger and joy, modal and free jazz, African rhythms and modes, Caribbean dub and Middle Eastern timbres. Out on Impulse!
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