By

Martin Schray

In July 2022, jaimie department was at Worldwide Anthem Studios in Chicago
to edit the uncooked materials for her new album. The tracks have been beforehand
recorded along with her band Fly Or Die throughout a residency on the Bemis Middle for
Modern Arts in Omaha, Nebraska. In Chicago, they added further
tracks to the originals and started with the fine-tuning. The album was
really virtually completed, with solely the blending, remaining tracks and art work
lacking. However a month later, jaimie department was discovered lifeless in her Brooklyn condo.
Within the months that adopted, her household (particularly her sister Kate), her
band (Jason Ajemian on bass, voice and marimba, Lester St. Louis on cello,
voice, flute and keyboards, and Chad Taylor on drums, marimba, bells,
timpani and mbira) and her collaborators at Worldwide Anthem received
collectively to proceed the work in her spirit. The result’s greater than a
message from the musical legacy. The band flies on these recordings additional
than ever earlier than and tries to observe new paths, particularly when they play
round traditions extra clearly than they’ve completed up to now. For department
clearly not solely needed to broaden her musical vocabulary but additionally to confide in
new types of enjoying.

When you placed on Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die (World Conflict), you suppose
it is a false urgent or that you simply’ve chosen the incorrect report. What you
hear is an organ that’s typical of a Robert Wyatt album, and this isn’t
the one oddity. Far more dominant than on earlier albums, for instance,
are the vocals, which department shares with different musicians. Fly Or Die (the
band) is augmented by visitor musicians. Daniel Villareal (congas,
percussion), Rob Frye (flute, bass clarinet), Nick Broste (trombone) and
Akenya Seymour and Kuma Canine (vocals) steer the music in new instructions
a number of instances. The result’s that the music has nothing to do with jazz in
the purist sense, however is a conglomerate of other music, calypso,
South African rhythms, people and zydeco.

Even although Fly or Die Fly or Die (World Conflict) consists of eight tracks,
the album is definitely one lengthy suite. Solely “World Conflict (Reprise)“ looks like
an addendum, an echo, an encore. The organ of the start is again on that
monitor, as are the vocals, and once more, the music is harking back to Robert
Wyatt. Nonetheless, other than the novelties, there are in fact acquainted
features we’ve discovered to like from earlier albums just like the monotonous,
driving rhythms, usually dominated by bass and cello, or Department’s distinctive,
barely smeared trumpet sound. That is finest exemplified by the 2 core
tracks, “Burning Gray“ and “Baba Louie“. The former is maybe essentially the most
typical Fly-Or-Die monitor on the albums to music, since particularly right here the
vocals come to the fore. department takes over herself, her fashion is a mixture of
singing and rapping, as she has hinted at on tracks like “Prayer For
Amerikka Half 1 & 2“ from the

Fly Or Die Dwell album. In line with the great previous soul dictum “Transfer Your Ass And Your
Thoughts Will Comply with,“ department needs to maneuver thoughts and physique. When the phrases in
“Burning Gray“ say that the future lives inside us and we must always by no means
neglect to struggle, she reminds us that preventing contains change. Furthermore,
the content material can also be mirrored within the type of the track, because it solely pretends
to have a transparent construction, simply to show right into a type of collective howl with
eerie overdubs, echos and dubs. Then once more, the groove isn’t utterly
misplaced within the course of; anger and joie de vivre aren’t mutually unique.
“Baba Louie“, the second central piece, brings the opposite novelty of the
album into focus – the visitor musicians. Along with the band, they lay
out a musical carpet harking back to Paul Simon’s Graceland, on which
department’s trumpet and the string devices can unfold out solos earlier than the
piece then tilts utterly and divulges a darkish, atonal facet.

On Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die (World Conflict) you’ll be able to hear that department
and Fly Or Die have been nonetheless having enjoyable in Chicago, mixing the chances
of the skilled studio with the recordings already completed in Omaha –
which makes her demise much more tragic than it already has been. What else
may she have made occur? Wasn’t she one of many few musicians who had a
imaginative and prescient for the way forward for this music past the elitist opinions that Jazz
means advanced harmonies for educated ears and rhythmically demanding themes?
department, nevertheless, often performed solely a couple of chords if it got here to
concord, both as a blues or people framework, from the USA or the
Afro-Caribbean areas. For her, Jazz meant not solely canon, however excessive
sensitivity and depth within the interaction. On this realization she was
distinctive. This album exhibits that after once more in an exemplary approach.

Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die (World Conflict) is obtainable on vinyl, as a CD
and as a obtain. You may hearken to the album and order it on the label’s Bandcamp web site.