A well-designed lyric video surfaced for Camae Ayewa's (a.k.a. Moor Mother) "We Got The Jazz," a new single featured in her upcoming release  Jazz Codes Deluxe , which is an enhanced digital version of 2022's excellent Jazz Codes .  From the desk of Stereo Sanctity: “‘ We Got The Jazz ’ is me thinking about how mediocre a lot of popular music is, about its capitalistic structures and how those placements are bought and paid for,”  Ayewa said of the song’s meaning.  “I'm speaking about the whitewashing of who's allowed to participate in jazz, who is allowed to participate in poetry, and asking where the room for innovation is, now and in the future. It’s also me thinking about my jazz band, Irreversible Entanglements, and how we’ve toured the world destroying stages, uplifting audiences, and inspiring everyone on the jazz scene with or without recognition. I'm also speaking about my own influence on the culture.” Jazz Codes Deluxe will be released 5/19/23 ...

"Life got us confused? Where are we going?"  Speaking from personal line of sight, I find myself continually enamored with and challenged by the work of Camae Ayewa (Moor Mother). Following 2021's entrancing Black Encyclopedia of Air ,  Jazz Codes , Ayewa's 2nd LP for Anti-, has been announced with the lead single and video, "WOODY SHAW".  Following sprays of sonorous howls and a lovely red herring R&B set-up, "WOODY SHAW" takes a pause before shifting into a turbulent free jazz backdrop, a cyclical stand-up bass riff anchoring the otherwise discordant sax, drums, and vibraphone.  "Woody Shaw elevator outta town!" Ayewa speaks, "Life got us going up and down. Who's coming? Who's coming for our ratios?"  The video premiered on June 8th. Jazz Codes can be pre-ordered at ANTI- . Official release date is July 1st. All info and links were provided by Stereo Sanctity.  “It’s poetry that drives this album. The stories o...

Moor Mother Circuit City Don Giovanni Released: 9/25/20 After the first five or so turbulent minutes of Moor Mother’s Circuit City have elapsed, the poet asks, “You ever been robbed of your genius? And have your talent lay waste with bones ripped from its neck? Well, that’s circuit city.” Aggro-poetic stanzas, stern and convincing, cut through a mire of scribbling saxophone and whirling drums fills for the majority of Circuit City , a four-act work by Moor Mother, (or Camae Ayewa). Following a release earlier this year from her project Irreversible Entanglements titled Who Sent You? , and last year’s excellent Analog Fluids of Sonic Black Holes , Ayewa’s Circuit City was performed live as a play, this recorded version featuring her poetry set to free jazz, which provides her material an appropriate and cacophonous backdrop. “The way they house us,” Ayewa says in opening track “Act 1 – Working Machine”, “The way they make home a dream, a wish—anything but a human right.” Circuit Ci...

Unsane Sterilize Southern Lord Released: 9.29.17 Unsane has been mainlining stress, panic, fury, anxiety, and frustration since 1988, the grim layout of yesteryear NYC tapped, injected, and purged as the pen has scrawled line after line of lyrical catharsis, words to be later shouted over top an unrelenting mass of distorted, chugging uproar that’s been carried through eight studio albums. And #8 is Sterilize , which checks in on the band’s mid-90s output while opening new wounds, sludge-weighted hostility like “Factory,” the drum-n-bass muck of “No Reprieve,” and the seasick rhythmic lean of “Lung” still composed with intensity in mind. As the proliferation of noise rock bands like KEN mode , Helms Alee , Spectres , Pissed Jeans , and METZ continues to garner attention during what’s been a renewed focus on guitar-generated aggression for the last 10 or so years, (which has interestingly coincided with rock n’ roll’s so-called mainstream demise), Sterilize could certainly re...