Yellow (Movementt Records)
Emma-Jean Thackray
Released July 23, 2021
AllMusic Favorite Jazz Albums 2021
YouTube:
https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kmvSqj9JFspVGEwUVApRiULfuLVwTA0tg
Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/album/5DkIhSmABMcjjDh2TJ2Pu9?si=3JBMAsZ2S3ukmv7xVxZYJQ
About:
Emma-Jean Thackray’s debut album, Yellow, is a surprising synthesis of ’70s funk, ethereal orchestral music modeled after Sun Ra and Art Ensemble of Chicago, bits of Eastern mysticism and what DJs in the United Kingdom call “broken beat,” a highly syncopated soul style with all the whip-cracking motion of a guillotine.
The 31-year-old English bandleader, multi-instrumentalist (trumpet is her principal instrument), singer, DJ, producer and boss of the Warp Records imprint Movement records musicians in her home studio, then produces everything, including her vocals and instrumentation, through a computer, following the studio-as-instrument model.
How does this Brian Wilson-meets-Geoff Barrow (from Portishead) worker bee amalgamate the diverse styles of Yellow though the workstation of her south London home?
“The key is to not try to do that,” Thackray said, on her way to headline the We Out Here festival, a coming-out party for the U.K.’s vibrant jazz scene. “I just let things come out honestly and truthfully; these genres and artists I’ve listened to are part of me. When I first played the record out someone said, ‘I can really hear all that broken beat.’ Really? It’s so natural how the music comes out that I’m not aware of the influences.”
A product of West Yorkshire brass bands, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and The Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, Thackray is currently the toast of the U.K. jazz scene, though, at times, she feels excluded.
“I’m a bit different to everyone else in the scene,” Thackray confessed. “I’ve always felt a bit like an outsider. Everyone else, maybe they grew up together or went to Saturday music school together. I didn’t do any of that. I’m not from London originally. And although I’m obviously friends with everyone, and we play together, I’m still on the periphery because, well, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just naturally who I am as a person. That’s been the tag put on me, always the weirdo, awkward or peculiar.”
Thackray’s big-hearted nature fills Yellow with a passion and personality rare to any jazz scene. Though some music of the U.K. jazz scene is based on the Caribbean and African diaspora, Thackray readily admits her love of both American hip-hop and jazz trumpeters.
“Miles Davis is the energy for me,” Thackray enthused. “I also really like Lester Bowie, Don Cherry and Art Farmer. Certainly, Chet Baker, obviously being a vocalist. Art Farmer is weird, in such a cool way.”
Yellow is bold and colorful, grabbing you by the scruff of your brain and the seat of your dance floor pants. It’s a journey of musical inclusiveness. But among the joy, “Spectre” paints an eerie vista of gloomy strings, pacing chordal solemnity and a disembodied vocal choir.
“It’s about mental illness,” Thackray explained. “Whether it’s my own or a partner or a friend’s. It’s about people through illness having the joy sucked out of them and becoming a husk of themselves, not being able to function. You can’t communicate because you’re indifferent, you’re beyond that. You’re a ghost. I wanted to bring that metaphor to demonstrate what it’s like having mental illness or being around someone and loving someone who is ill. I don’t really remember writing it, if that makes sense. It just sort of flew out of me while I was at the keyboard.”
While “Spectre” may be dark, Yellow, as a whole, is overwhelmingly fun and optimistic, a sunny spot amid cloudy London skies.
“I really wanted the album to focus on gratitude and positivity,” Thackray said. “You could use a singing bowl to trigger that state, but for me, it’s colors and smells, more than anything. I wanted to make the whole record be about that.”
Track Listing:
1. Mercury (Emma-Jean Thackray) 05:45
2. Say Something (Emma-Jean Thackray) 03:49
3. About That (Emma-Jean Thackray) 02:15
4. Venus (Emma-Jean Thackray) 06:34
5. Green Funk (Emma-Jean Thackray) 02:01
6. Third Eye (Emma-Jean Thackray) 02:49
7. May There Be Peace (Emma-Jean Thackray) 01:24
8. Sun (Emma-Jean Thackray) 03:06
9. Golden Green (Emma-Jean Thackray) 04:04
10. Spectre (Emma-Jean Thackray) 04:27
11. Rahu & Ketu (Emma-Jean Thackray) 04:13
12. Yellow (Emma-Jean Thackray) 02:02
13. Our People (Emma-Jean Thackray) 04:46
14. Mercury (In Retrograde) (Emma-Jean Thackray) 01:59
Personnel:
Emma-Jean Thackray: multi-instrumentalist
Dougal Taylor: drums
Lyle Barton: keyboards
Ben Kelly: sousaphone
Recorded at Movementt Studios, PRAH Studios, Red Bull Studios, London and Soup Studios, UK
Produced and Mixed by Emma-Jean Thackray
Engineers: Emma-Jean Thackray, Mike Collins (1, 2, 5-8, 10, 14), David Holmes (3, 5, 6, 8), Fiona Roberts (1, 14), Simon Trought (1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12-14)
Mastered by Beau Thomas
Artwork by Meagan Boyd
Additional Artwork & Design by Nazusk
Review:
Yellow is the auspicious debut album by English musical polymath Emma-Jean Thackray. A multi-instrumentalist who can get what she needs out of virtually any instrument, she is also a singer, composer, producer, arranger, and DJ. Since issuing the Walrus EP in 2016, Thackray has been quietly developing an expansive, holistic approach to music-making that melds jazz, electronic dance music — particularly house and broken beat — funk, hip-hop, spiritual soul, Afrobeat, samba, and even modern classical harmony in a deliberately accessible way. Thackray told an interviewer that “Everything I release is based around the mantra, ‘music to move the mind, move the body, move the soul.'” Yellow does all that and more. Her intention was to make a record that attempts to simulate “a life-changing psychedelic experience” using a consciously Taoist approach to musical and lyrical balance. She is joined by her longtime quartet — ace drummer Dougal Taylor, electric and acoustic pianist Lyle Barton, and tuba player Ben Kelly — and a host of notable collaborators over 14 tracks.
A droning electric piano and alternately whispering and crashing cymbals introduce a spacy feel into opener “Mercury.” They are appended by a three-note, circular bass pattern, punctuated by floating Rhodes and synths that usher in syncopated drumming, modal brass, and propulsive polyrhythms, all tuned to groove. The influences of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme and Alice Coltrane’s Universal Consciousness appear simultaneously as more layers of instrumentation appear, and the band begins chanting in a delightfully unsanctimonious way. It’s a gorgeous setup for “Say Something” that weds a Roy Ayers brand of spiritual funk to Midwestern house music as Thackray sings “Open your eyes/Before you open your mouth…” atop a ticking ride cymbal. The beats kick in amid tasty Rhodes flourishes, while her chart orchestrates proggy and post-bop interludes among roiling snare breaks, and the jam evolves into a wildly sophisticated dancefloor anthem. “Venus” is a delicious exercise in syncopated rhythm, soaring five-part vocal harmonies, and keyboard vamps. The far too brief “Green Funk” weds hip, woozy George Clinton-esque vocal and horn tropes to the swagger and swing of Sun Ra’s “Where Pathways Meet.” “Sun” offers a seamless meld of driving jazz-funk à la Herbie Hancock in the early 1980s and the spiritual soul of early Rotary Connection. “Golden Green” joins airy R&B to atmospheric layers of brass, snare, and a hi-hat vamp, as keyboards smoothly blend hip-hop and post-bop. “Spectre” threads Rhodes, muted drums, and electric guitars in opening the stargate for gorgeous interplay between reeds, brass, a vocal chorus, and Thackray’s singing. She makes no attempt to disguise the many influences she employs on Yellow; instead, she combines them in a startlingly original approach to harmony, rhythm, and production. The end result is vast and ambitious yet deliberately welcoming. Its many sounds and rhythms greet listeners wherever they are and compel them to invest in an altogether wondrous sonic journey for body, mind, and soul.
Thom Jurek (AllMusic)
