Brian Jackson: Jazz Is Dead 8

Brian Jacksons name may not be as readily recognizable as former musical partner Gil Scott-Herons, but it is impossible to overstate his importance in the jazz-funk pantheon. For a decade between 1971s Pieces of a Man and 1980, their final co-billed outing together, Jackson served as co-composer, architect, arranger, and musical director for the Midnight Band, all while playing keyboards, flutes, drums, and contributing background vocals. In writing music to suit his partners voice and musical character, he created a sound that intersected jazz, funk, soul, poetry, and polemic with earworm hooks, sophisticated melody, and massive grooves. Though Jackson has appeared on many recordings since, JID008 is his first date as a leader since 2000s wonderful Gotta Play. Further, this was the first album recorded for JID back in February 2019. Label heads Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge cite Jacksons work ethic and creative inspiration as a primary influence in developing the blueprint for the Jazz Is Dead aesthetic. This quartet includes Jackson on Fender Rhodes, monophonic synthesizer, and alto and C-flutes, with Malachi Morehead on the trap kit, and Muhammad and Younge playing various basses, guitars, clarinets, and saxophones. The vibe across these eight jazz-funk songs is gauzy and atmospheric but in the cut. Opener Under the Bridge offers a martial snare, fingerpicked electric guitar, and Muhammads rolling bassline guiding the flow. Jackson waxes modal on alto flute above the Rhodes. He punctuates the slithering groove with synth flourishes while dialoguing with Younge and Muhammad. Combined, they expertly layer four separate lyric ideas on top of one another. First single Mars Walk and the succeeding Young Muhammad are deeply funky exercises anchored by wrangling basslines and rolling drum breaks. On the former, Rhodes and synth entwine along a humid, reverb-laden vamp, while guitar haltingly puts forth a pointillistic harmonic plank. The latter resembles a soundtrack cue. Jackson offers a spidery, swirling clavinet to meet Younges grand piano as cracking snares, organic percussion, reverbed, droning clarinet, and a walking bassline push it all forward. Jackson plays only the alto flute on Nancy Wilson, which unwinds like a lost outtake from John Barrys score for Midnight Cowboy. Muhammads bass delivers harmonic counterpoint from the jump as the flute solo provides a master class in harmonic economy. Baba Ibeji contrasts a sunny Rhodes with a skeletal funk vamp as the quartet plays incremental harmonic extensions. Closer Ethiopian Sunshower threads post-bop and Latin jazz through a startling array of Afro-Cuban and Brazilian rhythms provided by Morehead. Layered flutes, alto saxophone, and electric bass assert a lush, bossa-inspired melody in a daisy chain of cadences. On first listen, Brian Jackson JID008 sounds almost amorphous in its deliberately articulated indefinition. Those notions are quickly dispelled with repeated spins. What ultimately emerges is a canny, somewhat impressionistic aural portrait balanced by intricate, multivalently charted lyricism, framed in gorgeous, spacious textures and an imaginative, meaty, seductively rendered beat vocabulary. This is one of the finer entries in the Jazz Is Dead series. ~ Thom Jurek