Mama You Can Bet＜限定盤＞

A secondary recording alias tends to be evanescent, a means to serve a creative impulse that deviates from the expected by dabbling in a specific sound. For Georgia Anne Muldrow, Jyoti -- a name given to her as a youngster by family friend Alice Coltrane -- isnt some whimsical alter ego. While the musician has conducted a deeper exploration of avant-garde jazz and electronics as Jyoti, thereby reducing the funk and hip-hop elements inherent in her birth-name work, the results have been just as personal and evolutionary. Jazz, after all, is in her blood and enabled a connection with her father, Ronald Muldrow, a guitarist who helped Eddie Harris push the idiom forward. Titled in honor of her equally artistic mother, Rickie Byars, Muldrows third Jyoti LP follows Ocotea, a spaced-out and meditative introduction, and Denderah, which was like an avant-jazz beat tape. Its composition is equally distinct. First, the set incorporates a pair of Charles Mingus recordings radically remixed -- or Geemixed, as Muldrow would say -- after Muldrow was commissioned by Jason Moran and the Kennedy Center for a live celebration of the giants music. Theyre as funky and thick-bottomed as anything Muldrow has made entirely on her own. The musician also breaks from the past Jyoti releases by incorporating her singing voice. On the opening title song, over a complex knot of drums, bass, and piano, she consoles and encourages her mother. The heady and downcast ballad This Walk attempts to purge negative mental chatter. Accompanying herself sparingly with piano and aggrieved by hostile conditions in the West, she gazes with longing at Africa on Orgone. Another development is the presence of another musician, Lakecia Benjamin, whose saxophone enlivens Ras Noise (Thukumbado). Muldrow is otherwise in one-woman ensemble mode, moving back and forth between delightful acoustic vignettes like Skippin and Trippin, percussive vamps like Swing, Kirikou, Swing!, and gentler contemplative pieces such as Quarrys, Queries and Ancestral Duckets. As crucial as any of Muldrows better-known creations, this proves that Jyoti is more than a side project. ~ Andy Kellman