2 hours ago
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From Los Angeles
Recommend if you like Miguel Atwood Ferguson, Shabaka Hutchings’s flute music, the Coltranes
Up next Debut album And So It Is released 13 February
For woodwind players, breath is everything: the lifeforce of artistry, the thing that furnishes sound with personality. But a few years ago, the Los Angeles saxophonist Aaron Shaw realised he was becoming increasingly breathless. In 2023, aged 27, he was diagnosed with bone marrow failure, meaning he wasn’t producing enough oxygen-carrying red blood cells. A change of approach was required.
Shaw had risen quickly. He studied with Kamasi Washington, worked alongside Herbie Hancock and Anderson .Paak, and tutored André 3000 in music theory. Shaw works regularly with LA bandleader Carlos Niño, and played on his 2024 new-age jazz album Placenta and last year’s collaboration with poet Saul Williams. In turn, Niño has produced and played percussion on Shaw’s forthcoming debut album And So It Is, which has something of the West Coast jazz haze you find in both Niño’s and Washington’s music. But Shaw’s sound is actually a lower, darker fog, which he navigates with quiet caution.
Shaw mostly plays tenor saxophone and alto flute on the record. It is easier for him to play the latter – less breath is required – yet he persists with his original instrument, floating, Lester Young-style, over the top of Chick Corea’s Windows to the Soul, and battling through long sustains on Heart of a Phoenix. Throughout the record you hear a young musician coming to terms with the end of one musical road, and cautiously feeling around for what comes next. Intimate loops and unexpected flourishes on flute provide optimistic notes on this remarkably open record. Hugh Morris
This week’s best new tracks
Kim Gordon – Not Today
To date Gordon’s solo career has been so abrasive and noisy that to hear her singing, quite forlornly, over warmer, racing synths rather than her usual industrial clatter is genuinely disarming. LS
Morgan Nagler – Grassoline
“I know Jesus ain’t gonna save me / And if he does that’d just be crazy,” the LA songwriter sings in an instantly indelible ode to green, all shambolic, endearing twang. LS
Raf-Saperra – Butcher’s Scale (ft Benny the Butcher)
Streatham Hill’s finest heads to the US, blending his Punjabi flow and instrumentation with boom-bap beats and a Benny the Butcher guest verse; Ghostface Killah is among the other guests on his new EP. BBT
Wu Lyf – Tib St Tabernacle
The Mancunian rockers amassed cultlike fans in the 2010s, and this return could summon them all over again: it’s an 11-minute anthem that goes from spirited march to pell-mell gallop. [Not on Spotify: stream here] BBT
Elsas – Niño
Part of Sampha’s live band and a session player with the likes of Little Simz and Jockstrap, the Spanish musician has released a solo debut that melds blown-out metallic percussion with holy vocals – Rosalía comparisons inevitable. LS
Sunn O))) – Glory Black
Peppy little chorus, sassy accompanying TikTok choreo … kidding! The Seattle band’s return is, of course, 10 minutes of hefty guitar that purrs like a snoring dinosaur, albeit with a surprise minimalist piano interlude. LS
Beau Wanzer – Shitty Cough 17
Lurching as if from a barrel of molten bitumen, this is a dark and monstrous track from the outsider dance producer’s new EP, powered by a distorted dembow beat and demonic declarations. BBT
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