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: 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!