Blues Blood [2 LP] Immanuel Wilkins Artist

{|Blues Blood|} is the third {|Blue Note|} album from saxophonist and composer {|Immanuel Wilkins|}. Its title refers to a quote by Daniel Hamm, one of a group of young boys monikered the Harlem Six after being wrongfully accused of murder in 1964. They were severely beaten by prison officials while awaiting trial. This set poignantly reflects the racism and violence that continue in present-day society. Co-produced with {|Meshell Ndegeocello|}, {|Wilkins|}' quartet includes pianist {|Micah Thomas|}, bassist {|Rick Rosato|}, and drummer {|Kweku Sumbry|}. Guests include drummer {|Chris Dave|} and guitarist {|Marvin Sewell|}, as well as vocalists {|Ganavya|}, {|June McDoom|}, and {|Yaw Agyeman|}, with a guest spot by {|Cecile McLorin Salvant|} on the single Dark Eyes Smile. For the first time, {|Wilkins|} also makes use of minimal electronics. Set-opener Matte Glaze, co-written with artist {|Theaster Gates|}, opens with gentle piano chords that shift as three vocalists alternate the lyric delivery with a grooving bassline, sultry percussion, and the leader's buoyant alto sax all melding post-bop, gospel, and more. The New York-based singer {|June McDoom|} wrote the lyrics to Motion, a more dynamic journey. {|McDoom|} articulates the lyrics with limpid clarity while atmospheric electronics frame {|Wilkins|} and company moving across modern vocal jazz (think {|Annette Peacock|}), modal gospel, and avant pop as {|Rosato|} and {|Sumbry|} dance across the backdrop trading lines and beats. {|Ganavya|} appears on Everything. Its lyrics were also written by {|McDoom|} (she co-wrote six songs on this date). It offers spoken word from {|Esi Sumbry|} framed in flowing harmonies by {|Agyemen|} and {|McDoom|}. The entwined vocalists extend the airy, balladic qualities of Motion, but much more intimately when {|Ganavya|} begins singing and chanting in Tamil. {|Salvant|} appears on Dark Eyes Smile, a moody love song that frames the singer in lush harmonies and a subtle third verse that opens it wide to embrace the final bridge, where bird sounds and painterly synths frame the quartet. Afterlife Residence Time is an exercise in vanguard jazz that includes all four singers and {|Sewell|} on guitar. It emerges as an expressionistic, midtempo ballad though the band free themselves from restraint. They leave the singers behind and create a muscular dynamic that crosses fusion, blues, and jazz-pop. Moshpit is a dark and dirty instrumental. Its gritty groove sounds like {|Tom Waits|} searching for a rhythm track. {|Yaw Agyeman|} sings If That Blood Runs Fast, an abstracted experimental tune wedding Afro-futurist soul to post-bop and modal jazz with {|Sewell|} and {|Chris Dave|} joining the band. The closing title cut is a burning vocal number with all vocalists but {|Salvant|}. The music joins advanced rhythmic syncopation to vanguard jazz, post-bop, and exotic, gospelized blues. The singers keep it rooted in sacred swing. {|Blues Blood|} ups the ante of 21st century jazz and belongs in the company of {|Sonny Rollins|}' {|Freedom Suite|} and {|Duke Ellington|}'s {|Black, Brown and Beige|}. With imagination, taste, and resolve, the album explores social and historical connections with modern society as racism, violence, displacement, class struggle, and oppression still govern American life for many. ~ Thom Jurek