Audiovisual Ohlsen Overkill

You know the annual sermon: What an impossible task! So hard to decide, so many other albums would have deserved to be featured here, this is only a snapshot and could look very different a couple of weeks from now, blabla...

And I'm already making these AOTY lists easier by only ranking the first three albums on a podium. Last time I sorted the rest by genres, but this year my process just naturally went into an already more stylistically balanced direction without me having to overthink it. So here you just have places twenty-five to four, no matter what style of music, just on alphabetical order, before we get to the three at the very top.

As always my criteria for consideration are that it must be a full (so no EP), new (not reissued) studio (not live, which can sometimes be debatable) album, it must have been released in 2025 and I must own a physical copy of it! I know, the last point isn't fair and rules out quite a bunch of great digital releases, but hey, how am I supposed to put those on a photo like above?

But enough with the introduction, no honourable mentions (because selecting those would be the next impossible task), so here we go!

Two very different album highlights of the year got great accompanying releases providing alternative takes on their music.

I actually could have extended this review to three releases, since there's also the longer "Plus" version of Clipping.'s AOTY contender "Dead Channel Sky", but even though I love the result it still bothered me to putchase the whole digital album twice, so I'm not feeling like dedicating a review to it yet. And of course it would be too much of a stretch to sell that one as Jazz.

Not a problem for the artist of our first EP here, because who could possibly be more Jazz then Yazz? 

There were two indicators to be confident that this EP by the British-Bahraini trumpet player and composer would be worthwhile:

1. Very few releases of 2025 come close to Yazz Ahmed's stunningly beautiful Jazz Fusion collection and interpretation of Persian tales on "A Paradise In A Hold".
2. Her choice of artists to rework her material traditionally is also strong, so remixed tracks of hers are not just a forgettable gimmick mostly entertaining for those who make them.

The rLr remix of the album closer "Waiting For The Dawn" is sped up to an instrumental rollercoaster of Break Beats and Oriental Disco. Very energetic.

With five minutes the Khalab remix of the title track has only half the length of the original version, but also compensates with a fast-paced danceable rhythmic approach. While the beauty of Ahmed's brass stays untouched, a powerful electronic bass pumps below it, while Afro-Arabic drums and handclaps irresistably drive it forward.

A slower, bass-heavy and a bit glitchy groove finally carries the Ahmed/Langley/Singh remix of "Mermaid's Tears", which also leaves fragments of the original's vocals floating around.

If you subtract the original album versions, which are also featured on the EP, this only adds up to a total of slightly over thirteen minutes. If you can dig a creative, vivid Jazz/Dance Music crossover however, those are still definitely worth it.

The New York-themed Dissonant Avantgarde Black/Death Metal band Imperial Triumphant of course approaches Jazz from a completely different angle than Ahmed. Even if Metal fans with a narrower horizon might miss it, their brutal sound actually is deeply rooted in Jazz skills and knowledge. And as if that needed further proof, the trio's bass player Steve Blanco has recorded this solo piano album with new interpretations of material from "Goldstar" and also older albums like "Spirit Of Ecstasy", "Alphaville", "Vile Luxury" all the way back to "Abyssal Gods".

So it's a pretty comprehensive representation of the band's discography, all transformed into virtuoso piano pieces between Jazz and Contemporary Classical Music.
The only track which isn't a dramatic story of six to nine minutes length - and also the only one not reinterpreting Imperial Triumphant - is the seventh and final piece, the "F# Minor Fugue" by Johann Sebastian Bach, which calmly closes an album that should easily speak not only to fans of Blanco's nonconform Extreme Metal, but also to friends of Keith Jarrett and congeneric Piano Jazz. Remarkably good!

Of course it would be nice to add one of the limited vinyl copies of "Imprints of Man" to my collection, but unfortunately it wasn't out yet when Imperial Triumphant were playing in Hamburg in October, and transatlantic shipping, you know... So I guess the digital version must do this time.

Since I'm mostly writing about music I like enough to spend money on, I'm quite used to reviewing great albums here.

But every once and a while there's a release that you already own in its regular version (two black LPs in a regular sleeve), but once you listen to it you're thinking: Damn, this is so great, I need it that one as the more expensive coloured gatefold edition with the extra signed booklet full of credits and more illustrations from the great Sophie Bass!

Ok, I guess that example got pretty specific pretty fast.

If you're following me and you paid a little attention at the right time while I was talking about Jazz, you might have caught that there are few contemporary musicians in the genre I hold in higher regard than Yazz Ahmed, who writes, plays and brings concepts to life on a level a little hobby critic like me can hardly keep up adequately processing with.

On her new double album the British-Bahraini composer and trumpet/horn player keeps following her themes of home, identity and feminism to a conclusion which seems even more consistent than her 2019 (has it been that long?) masterpiece "Polyhymnia".
While I don't think that any piece of music should rely on you knowing its intellectual background - which can sometimes even ruin your own perception -, Yazz Ahmed somehow is capapable of transporting her conceptual ideas into amazing pieces of music in a way that once I hear what a song is about, I enjoy it even more than before.

In this case she embraces her double heritage even tighter than in the past, as she dives into the myths, legends and folklore of the island kingdom in the Persian Gulf, adapts the source material, celebrates the beauty, femininity, humanity in it, but also creates alternative narratives from a woman's point of view, which certainly is a different angle than the daily reality of systematic disadvantage women are actually experiencing in the Arabic world today.

"A Paradise In The Hold" is a saga filled with divine muses, pearl divers and reluctant brides, brought to life in a creative storm of breathtaking Jazz Fusion that has never been dancing closer with traditional Near Eastern rhythms and melodies, even though most of the instrumentation stays within the spectrum Ahmed has established on her previous works, with her own silky trumpet and flugelhorn playing on eye-level with the sounds of bass clarinet, vibraphone and Fender Rhodes piano - and also some fearlessly yet harmoniously integrated Electronic tricks and programming. 

The secret MVP on this album however is the late Martin France, who sadly passed away after the recordings, whose completely off the charts Cobham style drumming not only leaves you listening with a stunned opened mouth, but who also masterfully energizes and elevates the beauty of his fellow musicians' performances with his incredibly lively backbone.

Speaking of beauty one cannot dismiss the multitude of lead vocalists - both male and female - who bring Ahmed's stories to life with overflowing emotion and devotion, completely pulling you into this magnificent aural book of tales.

Originally a ninety-minute suite dedicated to the goddess Siduri from the Gilgamesh epos, which was composed and performed ten years ago, the material has evolved into an ("only" seventy minutes long) album that instantly justifies the long and thorough process of its making. This couldn't be more marvellous! An album which doesn't leave any room for possible improvements.

Her land is a garden in which the morning sun walks

The trees bear jewels

Jewels, pearls and gold."

Good things always come back, right? - They usually don't? Ok, that sucks. Well, they should. Following that sentiment here are my...

First Barbara Thompson's Paraphernalia, then Gordon Beck's Gyroscope... and today another one! Am I developing a preference for British Jazz reissues lately? Maybe a little, maybe it's just sheer coincidence. And of course Yazz Ahmed covers a whole different generation than those other two from the 1970' and 80's.

However, it just seemed fitting to write this review today, as Yazz Ahmed has just announced the release of her next album "A Paradise In the Hold" for February 2025.

Even though the main inspiration for picking up her instrument has been her grandfather, who was a professional trumpeteer and record producer, it's of course impossible for any Jazz musician to choose this instrument and deny the towering influence of Miles Davis.
And it's the shortest track - just one and a half minutes - on this first-time vinyl pressing of Yazz Ahmed's debut album, which gives us an unmistakable clue, where she started - and where she is going. "The Birth Of The Fool" is of course a play on Miles' Cool Jazz phase, way before he went Electric, and when the main attribute which set him apart from other contemporary players was his focus on long notes and emotion instead of boasting with technique and speed.

Musically however this track features one of the the clearest uses of Arabic rhythms and scales, indicating the beginning of Ahmed's impressive journey of self-discovery between the British (obviously American-influenced) and Bahraini side of her identity. And you already can feel it here: The more she leans away from the Western tones, the more elevated and magical her performance gets.

Besides her brass playing she also already introduces her fondness for little electronic tidbits and creative production tricks, but that only appears in rather subtle form here, waiting to be explored much further in the future. 

All in all the whole album feels as if she embraced the smooth early bandleader days of Davis, yet stirred the ship towards the musical legacy of the Near East. Half of the tracks are her own compositions with a full band in different constellations, in which of course not only her own trumpet and flugelhorn parts shine, but it's useless to name everything which impresseses here. The whole rhythmic approach is so satisfying, and there are wonderful contribuitions by Shabaka Hutchings on clarinets, John Bailey on piano or the inclusion of Corrina Silvester's hand drumming or the flavour of Chris Fish's cello and so on...

However if I had to choose one most important player besides Yazz it surely would be bass guitarist Janek Gwizdala, who doesn't appear on the band tracks, but on various stunning duet improvisations, including the ten minute title track of the album - plus their version of "Birthdays, Birthdays", a composition by saxophonist Stan Sulzmann (who by the way also performed on the Gyroscope compilation I reviewed the other day).

On the original CD release they also interpreted Miles Davis' "So What" from "Kind of Blue", but just like the original Ahmed song "Flip Flop" that track didn't fit on this vinyl re-release, which also changed the running order of the remaining tracks a little. I actually prefer the overall flow of this shorter version, yet still recommend buying it from a source (like Bandcamp), which also provides you with a digital copy of all ten tracks.

If you're familiar with her later albums it's a pretty large elephant in the room that the original cover of "Finding My Way Home" may be a nice photograph, but not really up to the standards of the amazing artworks which followed.

Her new label Night Time Stories - who also reissued the later masterpieces "La Saboteuse" and "Polyhymnia" - has done a nice job of jazzing it up, with a couple of neat often tried and tested tricks from the school of Jazz iconography: Fill half the frame with typography - huge name, even bigger album title, add some liner note stuff, so the corner doesn't look too dark, and most importantly screw those tourist snapshot colours, keep it monochrome and drench the whole image in the jazziest of all colours: Blue. Which besides classic black is of course also the vinyl colour for this limited edition.

 Good job! It's a beauty inside and outside. Great treatment of a wonderful album.