Roy Ayers JID002

Album review

Like a sea snake, Roy Ayers regularly breaks the surface. In 1980, the great jazz-funk vibraphonist who had fallen a little out of memory, reemerged in duet with the godfather of afro beat, Fela, for the enormous Music of Many Colors. During the 90s, the Californian once again dusted off his mallets to support young British soul brothers of the acid jazz scene. Most notably during that period, rappers sampled copiously from his catalogue (including the famous 1976 track Everybody Loves the Sunshine) to make him, alongside James Brown, the most sampled artist in the world! Once more, it takes two “youngsters” to lead him, at the age of 80, out of retirement for this short but fruitful album of pure 5-star, retro, soul’n’jazz’n’funk groove: producer and multi-instrumentalist Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad lead producer for A Tribe Called Quest. With a kind of ethereal galaxy groove, Younge is a unique musician, a fan of vintage soul and funk sounds and old school hip-hop. Down in his well-worn recording hideout, he creates music for rappers (Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg and Wu-Tang Clan) and soul stars, pens film soundtracks and produces a ton vintage-flavoured sounds like those heard in this retro-modern soul and irresistibly cinematographic recording from his Linear Labs studio in Los Angeles. Finally, it is worth noting that these three men are also joined by a brass partnership from the long-forgotten seventies, trombonist Phil Ranelin and saxophonist Wendell Harrison. © Marc Zisman