Makaya McCraven: In These Times

Makaya McCraven makes the old new again with the soulful and cinematic LP In These Times. The eleven-track record has been on hold since 2015, aging like fine wine, while the Chicago-based artist has been finding success with other projects. McCraven returns to the record in strong form, deploying his signature percussive chiaroscuro to draw high contrast beatscapes and ambitious improvisation out of the jazz ether.

Title track and opener “In These Times” lays down a statement of purpose at the start. McCraven uses samples and Reichian repetition to build up a shimmering mood that will sustain the listener through the entire album. Like the head of a jazz number, the song sets down a homebase for future explorations on the album. But instead of giving us a melody, it establishes a certain philosophy of sound, which leans on strobic, percussive repetition interlaced with old school music hall textures.

In These Times continues the artist’s tradition of subverting tradition. “The Fours” is diabolical. In fits and starts, the song worms its way into an elusive rhythm that draws its patterns like fractals retreating into the infinitesimal. If you read the instrument list – horn, harp, skins, etc. – you might expect a more classic sound. But McCraven is full of surprises. The soul of the track shares more than you might think with the glitch aesthetic. A little bit Aphex Twin, or Gay Against You, digested along with the jazz greats.

In “Dream Another” McCraven takes a go at road trip music, rejiggered for the urban landscape. Forget the wide open highway burner jams into the endless horizon. Instead, McCraven gives us short turns, streetlights, kids playing on street corners. You can picture the grainy 16mm footage shot out the window of a beige Mercury Cougar on the prowl, capturing impromptu moments of city life. Shades of Scorsese. “Dream Another” is a song in search of a celluloid print, full of tension, drama, grit. The same could be said for the album as a whole.

Strong fantasy elements are in play throughout. “This Place That Place” flashes the lustrous sound washes of a Star Trek offworld soundtrack. The drummerly aspects of the drumming are pronounced in a more agent-oriented manner. The individual choices of the drummer become more obvious and emphatic as the composition races toward its fantastic conclusion – a kind of trip through hyperspace with a sudden arrival. “The Calling” follows on its heels; it plays like a cooldown postlude, flashing an arch horn solo that celebrates the destination planet.

One drawback to McCraven’s use of samples is that the human element is sometimes effaced beneath the monotonous consistency of sound clips that never falter. You can’t lean into a sample, or pull back on it, in the same expressive way that a musician can with ax in hand. McCraven’s compositions are expressive enough as a whole so that you don’t notice what you’re missing. But when the personality of the player is emphasized, as with the drumming on “This Place That Place,” you are suddenly reminded of what is most cherished about the jazz tradition. It’s that distinctive and individual soul that shines through each musician’s physical embrace of their instruments. In These Times uses samples, sure enough, but never forgets that you can’t button push your way through jazz.

There’s a singularity and expressivity of mood that is more profoundly realized on In These Times than other notable LPs from Makaya McCraven. Whereas his Universal Beings and In the Moment pushed to establish the musical worth and relevance of his signature beats-forward approach to jazz, his new album is less dogmatic. Perhaps that’s why it baked so long in the oven. Did McCraven need to forge his own musical identity out in the wilderness before returning to the fold? But they say you can’t go home again. What the artist brings back with him to this album after many years of offworld exploration has changed the ground rules for what counts as jazz. Your ears will tell you that it’s a change for the better.

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