YAZZ AHMED Schallplatten & CDs

Review: Yazz Ahmed's latest offering blends the melancholy of her Bahraini heritage with her expansive jazz vision. Tracks like 'The Pearl Diver's Tale' and 'Sandstorm' weave together traditional Arabic instrumentation with modern jazz structures, creating an immersive and dynamic soundscape. Collaborating with vocalists Natacha Atlas and Brigitte Beraha, Ahmed's compositions grow even more poignant, pulling from the sorrowful songs of Bahrain's pearl divers and the rhythms of women's traditional drumming. This 180-gram vinyl 2XLP marks a new chapter in Ahmed's career, combining English and Arabic lyrics to bring an entirely new perspective to her already unique sound.

Review: British-Bahrani composer and trumpeter Yazz Ahmed has long been one of the most unique artists within the UK jazz scene, frequently producing music that draws on the Arabic side of her heritage (she even went as far as commissioning a unique 'quarter-tone' flugelhorn in order to play 'blue notes' not found in Western jazz and classical music). Even so, A Paradise In The Hold - her first studio album for nearly six years - is a startling concoction. Drawing influence from ambient, dub and electronica as well as jazz and Arabic music, it features Ahmed's first compositions for voice. Frequently haunting, immersive, and quietly exotic, the album sits in a unique sonic space that's never less than beguiling and intoxicating. Award nominations await!

Review: Earlier in the year, British-Bahraini jazz musician Yazz Ahmed delivered her second album, a set so good that one critic (rightly) described it as "a modern jazz masterpiece". This surprisingly speedy follow-up is almost as good, and sees the masterful trumpeter and her musical accomplices guide us through a series of inventive original "fusion" compositions that variously fuse elements of big band jazz, Arabic musical culture, spiritual jazz, cinematic soundscapes, Afro-Cuban jazz and Blaxploitation-era jazz-funk. In other words, it's another strong set that confirms that looming superstar status of the effortlessly brilliant Ahmed.