Blue Note Re:Imagined＜限定盤/Smoky Clear&Blue Vinyl＞

UKジャズ、ソウル、R&Bシーンで最も注目される新星たちによる重厚なラインナップでブルーノート・レコードの輝かしい保管庫の音楽の新鮮なテイクを録音された2020年オリジナル・リリースの人気コンピレーションが新たなカラード・ヴァイナルで登場。

In the jazz world, it is an established tradition for musicians from one generation to pay recorded tributes to their forebears. Blue Note, the musics best-known label, has issued similarly approached outings over the decades. Who can forget Us3s double-platinum Hand on the Torch, Madlibs Shades of Blue, or French electro mavens St. Germains quadruple-platinum sample-delic Tourist? Blue Note Re:Imagined is a 16-track anthology that features the current generation of Englands jazz renaissance players dialoguing across time and distance with the labels catalogue. Some of these artists, including the Ezra Collective ensemble and saxophonists Shabaka Hutchings and Nubya Garcia, are globally well known, but other names will register as new. Jorja Smiths Rose Rouge covers and completely revises the St. Germain tune from Tourist, but its only fair, since the original sampled the hell out of Marlena Shaws Cookin with Blue Note at Montreux album. Smith is a soul singer with a pedigree in jazz phraseology and a smooth, authoritative delivery. Led by James Rudolph Cresswicks rumbling double bassline, she accents the R&B and slows down the skittering drum and bass loops considerably. Ezra Collective learned Wayne Shorters Footprints while they were still teens. They deliver it with creativity and taste as drummer Femi Koleosos syncopated hip-hop shuffle meets lithe, summery horns and Joe Armon-Jones expertly layered piano and electric keyboards. (Another Shorter take is on set closer Speak No Evil. Sung by Emma-Jean Thackery, it makes use of Detroit techno and jazz house.) Skinny Palembe go even further afield with their steamy revisioning of Andrew Hills Illusion. The original contained dissonant strings and a syncopated snare playing counterpoint to the pianists skeletal melody. Here, detuned snares and tom-toms, haunted keyboard ambience, and dubby Afro-funk guitars meet spooky group-chanted vocals (think Dr. Johns I Walk on Gilded Splinters) in a journey to another spiritual reality. Ishmael Ensemble transform McCoy Tyners Search for Peace, into a blissed-out exercise in trip-hop dreaminess. Nubya Garcia doesnt take many liberties with Joe Hendersons A Shade of Jade outside of production. One of her prime influences, she stitches together his finger-popping hard bop, reverbed drums, and spacey effects; it sounds like it was composed yesterday. Nottingham R&B and soul singer Yazmin Lacey dug deep into the labels catalogue for her supper club reading of Dodo Greenes sultry, smoky jazz ballad, I’ll Never Stop Loving You. Hutchings read of Bobby Hutchersons Prints Tie makes indelible the connection between the vibraphonists hypnotic modal groove and 70s Krautrock, underscored by a glorious bass clarinet solo. While not everything on Blue Note Re:Imagined works, most of these updated versions successfully recontextualize the originals with an unfettered vision of a new, expanded jazz language. ~ Thom Jurek

クロスオーヴァーな盛り上がりを見せるUKシーンの才能溢れる面々がブルーノート名曲を再解釈したカヴァー企画盤。ジョルジャ・スミスによるサン・ジェルマン"Rose Rouge" をはじめ、ジョーダン・ラカイによるドナルド・バード"Wind Parade"のヴォーカル・ヴァージョン、エズラ・コレクティヴが超絶クールに料理したウェイン・ショーター"Footprints"など、いずれも名門の系譜に新たに名を連ねるに相応しい仕事っぷりです。
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