– THE MILITARY COUP –

As a teenager, one of me best mates was a lad called Ben. Lovely bugger, he was. Long hair. Charmed everyone’s Mam. And brilliant at guitar.

A fellow fuzz-rock fan, him and I spent a couple of great Summers driving around in a car that could barely make it up the Chiltern hills, listening to Clutch, The Desert Sessions and Monster Magnet.

And, while I think it extremely unlikely that Belgian psychedelic jazz collective Compro Oro’s track Ben is dedicated to my old mucker, I feel sure he’d very much approve.

Already a blues-rock behemoth of brawn, brute force and bared teeth, Ben (the song, not my mate) is given extra bite by the electric saz of cult Turkish psychedelic folk band BaBa ZuLa frontman, Murat Ertel.

But what I love about Ben (again, the song, not my mate) is the track’s fantastic groove. After a screeched, scratchy intro, Frederik Van den Berghe’s drums kick in and the rest of the track rides along on wave after wave of Middle Eastern mystic force.

I played the album to my wife (a far more erudite and infinitely less loquacious reviewer of music than I) earlier today, and she described it as ‘grumpy’. And while there’s certainly a restlessness about Ben (I think you know which one I mean by now), it’s got a certain likeability that – if it wouldn’t exactly charm your Mam, would, at least, get her nodding her head in approval.

If you like this try my review of Ibitlan by Mdou Moctar.

Album, Simurg is out now through Sdban Ultra.

HEAR MORE HERE

TEYANA TAYLOR: MADE IT
GIA MARGARET: FOR ZOYA IN CHINA
KELEKETLA!: FUTURE TOYI TOYI
ANGELA TURONE + CHRIS PLATT: A FELICIDADE

THE OUTRO

And so we reach a cease-fire for this week.

You can find all of the tracks reviewed above in the 45 Revolutions per Minute playlist below or click to access the Future Jazz Playlist on Spotify itself.

And, as a special treat, you can find these five selections featured on the wonderful Jazzfuel New Jazz Releases playlist. Find out more about founder Matt Fripp and the site he set up to support and celebrate the global jazz community at https://jazzfuel.com/

If you like what you hear (or even if you don’t), please engage in dialogue with me @45rpm_Reviews on Twitter. And, if you’d like to receive updates weekly, please subscribe to the email list to get these recommendations sent to your inbox weekly.

Until next time, love and noise.

– SV –