– THE QUIET RIOT –

I don’t know about the States, but we don’t have an awful lot of ‘Kendrick’s over here in the UK. Unless ‘Ken’ is simply an abbreviation of Kendrick, in which case Ken Barlow’s street-cred just took a sizeable bump.

In fact, the only other Kendrick I’m aware of (pending a judge’s review on Corrie’s finest) is Mr. Lamar; the twisted genius behind jazz/hip-hop super-album To Pimp a Butterfly (and much more besides, of course.)

However, that aside, Mr. Scott couldn’t – ostensibly – be more the opposite of his namesake with his band’s laid-back piano lines (courtesy of Taylor Eigsti) guitars (Mike Moreno) and reeds (John Ellis) coming across as very much the antidote to Cali’s finest’s aggression.

And yet, his freshly-released album A Wall Becomes a Bridge hides the sort of rebellious messages, that Lamar, himself, would be proud of; mere use of the all-emotive word ‘wall’ should be a signifier of that, given the country of origin.

>>>>>>>>>Voices comes four tracks in to a full-length that is carefully structured to take the listener on a journey through perspective, breakthrough, doubt, acceptance, denial and innocence, until finally reaching transformation and optimism.

“Walls are easier to build than bridges” says the drummer and band-leader. “We are often quicker to stack bricks built of fear than we are to weave a cable of empathy and reach across a divide… ultimately, our walls don’t exist in contrast to bridges; they are our provocations and precursors to our breakthrough.”

And as the track builds towards its climactic ending, one genuinely feels a transformation taking place as a pedal point on the sax, hidden low in the mix, reaches out towards the possible and away from the provincial.

A Wall Becomes a Bridge is out now on Blue Note.

More From This Week’s Mix:

DJEUHDJOAH & LIEUTENANT NICHOLSON | “EL NINO”
BLACK FLOWER | “FUTURE FLORA”
JPEGMAFIA | “THE WHO”
THE COMET IS COMING | “SUPER ZODIAC”

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

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.

– SV –