AHMED - Super Majnoon [East Meets West]

"أحمد [Ahmed] -- the quartet of Pat Thomas, Antonin Gerbal, Joel Grip, and Seymour Wright -- make music of heavy rhythm, repetition, and syncopation set deep into an understanding of jazz and the obscure depths of its history. Across the two LPs which make up Super Majnoon [East Meets West] the group work and rework the music of the late musician Ahmed Abdul-Malik to create a stamping, swinging, relentlessly propulsive record where profundity and physicality root right back to ecstatic feeling. Abdul-Malik was a NYC bassist, oudist, composer, educator, and philosopher who fused aspects of American, Arabic, and East African thought, ethics, meanings, and beliefs in open and experimental ways to make vital, forward leaning jazz. [Ahmed] reimagine the notes of Malik as they push for the trajectory of free jazz to emerge from the clichés and cloy neo-classicisms of current "improvised music". Melodies respirate, swell, escalate, and combust in a driving jazz which yes is technical, yes is