MOOR MOTHER Schallplatten & CDs

Review: Camae Ayewa AKA Moor Mother has long talked about wanting to work with an orchestra, applying her verbal Afro-futurism and free-jazz experimentation to the classical domain. She recently did just that, delivering a grandiose live interpretation of her ninth album, The Great Bailout, alongside the London Contemporary Orchestra. It makes perfect sense: while the album itself is not fully orchestrated, it's a conceptual work dissecting the British slave trade, slavery and colonialism. Musically, there are two central focal points: her spoken word vocals and the beautiful singing of Lonnie Haley. These two vital voices weave in and out of sound worlds rooted in dark ambient, lo-fi hip-hop beats, free jazz instrumentation, out-there samples and clandestine aural textures. It's naturally raw, moody and weighty, but more importantly it's also a genuine masterpiece that deserves your attention.

Review: Moor Mother (Camae Ayewa) delivers her latest album of import, The Great Bailout, using ironic economic terminology to satirise the British slave trade and its subsequent elision by the history books. A collaborative project that expands her original experimental hip-hop horizon, the likes of 'GUILTY' and 'ALL THE MONEY' hear new instrumental contributions from both canonical jazz artists and fresher faces, be they Lonnie Holley in the former camp and Mary Lattimore and Alya Al-Sultana in the latter. Moor Mother's revision is critical, calling out hidden ballasts such as the V&A Museum as purveyors of historical violence, while indulging a well-thought-out palette: no sound or texture is used here without careful thought as to its signification, whether wateriness to evoke the sense of drowning, or muted cacophony to recall the storms endured by victims of the trade in ships' hulls.

Review: Every once in a while you encounter a record so startling it stops you dead and leaves you there. We'd say that about Moor Mother's latest record, but that would be an understatement. A direct message to the powers that be and long have been, it's an attack on British and European colonialism, institutions and legacies, with one resounding point: enough is enough, account for your actions. Largely focused on two feelings in sound - one of reflection, sorrow, heartache, hopes and dreams, the other far more electronic and programmed, and more mechanical in its noises - you can't help but see how this perfectly reflects the conflict between imperialist ambitions and human needs. Dark beats, and centuries of context to draw on lyrically, labels like industrial hip-hop, grime, spoken word, ambient, and experimental don't really cut it.

Review: If you thought Moor Mother's 2021 album Black Encyclopaedia of the Air was good - and it was a genuine triumph - wait until you hear this follow-up. In summary, Jazz Codes takes her impossible-to-pigeonhole personal style - a mixture of smoky trip-hop beats, heady ambient sounds, jazz instrumentation, thickset aural textures, crackly samples, soul vocals, spoken word monologues and trippy effects aplenty - and takes it to the next level. While the album features a dizzying array of guest vocalists and musicians (a complete list of which would run to several pages of A4), it never sounds like anything other than a Moor Mother album. It's her widescreen Afro-futurist vision, executed to perfection. Don't sleep!

Review: Camae Ayewa is an omnipresent force these days. Even if she released just one or two things a year, her presence as Moor Mother is powerful enough to cut through the noise. But we've been spoilt recently, with the 700 Bliss album with DJ Haram still ringing in our ears. But here Ayewa runs the show on her own, although not without considerable input from the likes of Black Quantum Futurism, Mary Lattimore, Keir Neuringer, Orion Sun, Jason Moran, Melanie Charles and well, a whole lot more. Sonically, the album plays out like a thick stew of Black music, from jazz, blues, neo-soul and beats to free and spiritual jazz, running a full spectrum of emotion from darkened depths to exuberant highs. At this point there's no doubt the quality of the music when Moor Mother is attached to it, and this album more than lives up to the expectation.

Review: Camae Ayewa is an omnipresent force these days. Even if she released just one or two things a year, her presence as Moor Mother is powerful enough to cut through the noise. But we've been spoilt recently, with the 700 Bliss album with DJ Haram still ringing in our ears. But here Ayewa runs the show on her own, although not without considerable input from the likes of Black Quantum Futurism, Mary Lattimore, Keir Neuringer, Orion Sun, Jason Moran, Melanie Charles and well, a whole lot more. Sonically, the album plays out like a thick stew of Black music, from jazz, blues, neo-soul and beats to free and spiritual jazz, running a full spectrum of emotion from darkened depths to exuberant highs. At this point there's no doubt the quality of the music when Moor Mother is attached to it, and this album more than lives up to the expectation.