Jazz Codes cover

Jazz Codes

Released

This 2022 release is one of the most heartfelt and warm things Camae Ayewa, aka Moor Mother, has ever released. Based on a collection of poems written in tribute to artistic heroes and friends, it includes tracks named for trumpeter Woody Shaw, pianists Amina Claudine Myers and Mary Lou Williams, and saxophonist Joe McPhee, and features guest appearances from flutist Nicole Mitchell, pianist Jason Moran, and members of Ayewa’s free-jazz agitprop quintet, Irreversible Entanglements, alongside a slew of MCs and singers. The music is a dense and ever-shifting collage of samples, synth noise, static and vinyl crackle, and patiently thumping beats. This is a sonic essay about through-lines, history extending from the 1940s to the 2020s and beyond, all blended together, jazz and hip-hop and R&B and noise all one.

Phil Freeman

Suggestions
Dark Day cover

Dark Day

Fred Anderson Quartet
Escape the Flames cover

Escape the Flames

Binker & Moses
Ireti cover

Ireti

NikNak
Fast Last! cover

Fast Last!

Lester Bowie
In for a Penny, In for a Pound cover

In for a Penny, In for a Pound

Henry Threadgill Zooid
Elastic Wave cover

Elastic Wave

Gard Nilssen’s Acoustic Unity
Birth & Rebirth cover

Birth & Rebirth

Max Roach, Anthony Braxton
Painter's Spring cover

Painter's Spring

William Parker