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On a chilly spring night time in 2022, the jazz quartet أحمد [Ahmed] arrange at one finish of the lengthy, slender warehouse house of Glasgow’s industrial-chic Glue Manufacturing unit. Their muse and namesake Ahmed Abdul-Malik was there in spirit. The setlist consisted of just one track: the late jazz musician’s “Oud Blues,” which runs to about 4 minutes within the unique 1961 model. By the point أحمد [Ahmed] completed with it, they’d been enjoying for almost an hour.
Wooden Blues is a recording of that phenomenal efficiency—without delay a canopy track, an avant-garde improv session, and a driving, swinging jazz live performance. أحمد [Ahmed] have been honing the self-esteem for a decade: Each present, they select an Abdul-Malik composition and switch it inside out. Pianist Pat Thomas found the little-known bassist and oudist within the Nineteen Eighties and instantly acknowledged his significance. Born Jonathan Tim, Jr. in Brooklyn to immigrant dad and mom, Abdul-Malik modified his identify to claim his Islamic id and Sudanese lineage. His household was from the Caribbean, not Sudan, however he reached again additional, reclaiming his diasporic African heritage. As a bandleader, Abdul-Malik integrated Arabic devices—qanun, darbuka, a violin tuned to fourths and fifths—into his ensembles. His late ’50s and early ’60s albums like Jazz Sahara and East Meets West ushered within the new type of modal jazz alongside landmark recordings by Miles Davis and John Coltrane.
Thomas wished to revive Abdul-Malik’s music, to show a footnote right into a headline. Saxophonist Seymour Wright shared his curiosity and joined Thomas’s trio اسم [ISM], with bassist Joel Grip and drummer Antonin Gerbal, to kind أحمد [Ahmed]. Collectively, they’re one thing of a supergroup, every participant a star in a unique constellation of the European improvised music scene. They solely carry out stay, with no observe or advance planning. However from their separate cities—Thomas and Wright in London, Grip in Berlin, Gerbal in Paris—they’re all the time occupied with Abdul-Malik. After they play certainly one of his songs, all that considering comes out in a torrent of sound.
Wooden Blues is without delay thrillingly violent and fervently trustworthy in its transformations of Abdul-Malik’s materials, altering the unique past recognition but retaining its spirit alive. The recording begins with the viewers chattering as Grip performs the strolling bassline of “Oud Blues.” Thomas provides melodic piano prospers and Gerbal lays down a shuffling beat. Wright helps with brief percussive clicks from his saxophone, then extends these clicks into bursts, buying and selling licks with Thomas, who bangs on the keys with growing pressure. There’s a shift within the room because the viewers goes quiet. Piano and sax merge right into a single pummeling assault. Gerbal retains time with a gentle tom-tom pulse, and Grip carries the melody by means of the fray. The second can’t final lengthy, and shortly the band is propelled by a frantic rhythm, Thomas pounding the piano, Wright blowing with scary energy, the gang now shouting, screaming, dancing.
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