Chasing Shadows

Joe Armon-Jones、Fatoumata Diawaraら参加!!UK発のアフロジャズ楽団が贈る現代最高峰のグローバル・グルーヴ集!!

英国を拠点に活動する9人組のジャズ・プロジェクト、ヌビヤン・ツイスト。アフロビートやエチオジャズが有しているマキシマムなグルーヴをジャイルス・ピーターソン以降の感覚でモダンに落とし込むプロジェクトとして、UKのみならず世界中から高い評価を得ている。2024年発表の『FIND YOUR FLAME』では御大ナイル・ロジャースに加え、エジプト80を率いるセウン・クティやUKグライムのMCを呼び込み、モダンズークからハイライフにUKダンスホール～ダブステップまで盛り込んだ。その折衷感覚とクラブユースを念頭に置いたサウンドは極めてUK的、その卓越した技術も含め最も注目を集めるジャズ・プロジェクトの一つだ。

そんな彼らが2026年に最新作を発表。先行トラックとなったオープニング曲はまさかの「Azimuth」、言わずもがなブラジリアン・メロウの代表格となるレジェンドの名を冠した肉感的な一曲よりアルバムは幕を開ける。本楽曲でフィーチャーされ、アルバム中で何度も歌唱を披露しているのはサウス・ロンドンに位置する芸術学校・Trinity Laban Conservatoireを卒業したばかりのエニオラだ。他にも表題曲ではマリの大スターであるファトゥマタ・ジャワラが参加。ラストの「Rhythm Of You」ではエズラ・コレクティブでも活躍するジョー・アモン・ジョーンズと共に、ダブの海へと深く潜っていく。ヌビヤン・ツイストの十八番であるアフロビートはもちろん、UKダンスホールの声としてミスター・ウィリアムズを招いた「Message」やネオソウルすらも吸収してみせた「Echoes」など、どこをどう聴いてもピースフル&ソウルフル。抗いがたい魅力に満ちた一枚です!!

Since their 2011 inception, Nubiyan Twist has embraced musical innovation and social justice without artifice. Chasing Shadows, their fifth long player, is a case in point. It confronts AI, rigged algorithms, social media dictates, and the prevalence of screens in our lives. The nine-piece band revels in defiant joy as musicians of many stripes celebrate playing together as something utterly human. The album is tightly arranged, composed, and performed, foregoing indulgent jams in favor of tightly arranged songs that last between three and five minutes. NT skillfully creates a hybrid weave of modern jazz, Afrobeat, reggae, hip-hop, and electronics. In this relentlessly creative musical stew, the bands lineup includes guitarist/bandleader Tom Excell, bassist Luke Wynter, pianist/keyboardist Lewis Moody, drummer Finn Booth, new vocalist Eniola Idowu, and a four-piece horn section that includes alto saxophonist Nick Richards, tenorman Denis Scully, baritone saxist Hannah-Mae Birtwell, and trumpeter Jonathan Enser. Further, they enlisted several important guests. Opener "Azimuth" commences with piano, bass, skittering, syncopated drums and percussion, and horns in a deep swinging Afrobeat groove. Idowu sings about trying to control racing thoughts and contradictory views with self-analysis, even as her protagonist struggles with sanity. The horns roar in the mix as piano and bird sounds hold the singer securely. "Red Herring," featuring the Pharcydes Bootie Brown, is a hard-swinging meld of hip-hop, neo-soul grooves, and futurist jazz-funk. Browns lyric serves as metaphor to misdirect greedy tech giants and purveyors of AI. The title track hosts Malian vocalist Fatoumata Diawara in a glorious evocation of motherhood and familial ancestry. The interplay between horns, Rhodes piano, drum kit, electric bass, and guitars frame her insistent singing as the tune moves across Afrobeat, funk, and dance music. "How Far" features rapper M.anifest with Idowu. Hip-hop and jazz production adorned in African-style guitar lines, syncopated rim shot snare, and jazz piano carry his rap, buoyed by Idowus backing chorus. The drummers rhythmic complexity in "Mlonje - Voices" is expanded by the poly-harmonic singing of the Zawose Queens amid driving guitar, an army of small percussion, and funky clavinet. Idowu shines on "Echoes," an elegant collision of junglist drumming, sweeping piano, electric keys, timbales, and horns underscoring her resonant, elastic phrasing above infectious, dubby grooves. "Body Flows" joins fingerpopping Afrobeats, R&B, and jazzy funk under Idowus singing and rapping -- sometimes trading fours with tenor sax -- in a yearning paean to the human spirit. Jazz and R&B piano legend Patrice Rushen guests on the instrumental "Threads." Interlocking rhythms and jazz bass bump under elegant pianism as horns add a knotty vamp under Rushens expansive lyric harmony. Pianist/keyboardist Joe Armon-Jones joins in on "Rhythm of You," a soulful, sensual lovers rock reggae tune with dubwise effects and jazzy syncopation. What makes Chasing Shadows such an achievement is Nubiyan Twists ability to command and combine so many styles and rhythms as an integrated yet seamless whole as the music confronts, integrates, and edifies the human spirit. ~ Thom Jurek