JAZZ
BY ANDY COWAN
Jake Long ★★★★
City Swamp
NEW SOIL. CD/DL/LP
Maisha drummer/composer’s dystopian jazz suite harks back to electric-era Miles Davis.
Reassembled from extended improvisations with a clutch of top-drawer UK instrumentalists, the four winding tracks here move beyond the spiritual jazz Long’s band Maisha are bracketed with. Billed as a meditation on London’s regeneration, there’s a compelling beauty to opener Ideological Rubble as rippling keys and percussive clatters ride an indomitable bluesy groove, before a tender breakdown shifts the direction of travel. While Binker Golding and Nubya Garcia play with artful restraint amid Celestial Soup’s abstractions, the many-splendored Silhouette and slow-building Swamp are funky from the off, pulses like ticking bombs as small motifs slowly move into focus, guitarist Shirley Tetteh in captivating form. City Swamp taps unashamedly into ’70s fusion, but there’s nothing retro about Long’s richly textured, expansive compositions.