And, on the reissues front meanwhile…

South African drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo (he added an extra ‘Moholo’ at some point subsequent to this recording, in deference to family/cultural traditions) first came to the UK as a member of pioneering Cape Town jazz group The Blue Notes, who collectively relocated to London in 1964. As recounted in a chapter of Joe Boyd’s memoir ‘White Bicycles’ covering the author’s work with the band, The Blue Notes trod a hard road to put it mildly as they tried to establish a place for themselves within the era’s marginal and diffuse British jazz scene, with hard drugs, bad living and, eventually, premature death putting a significant dent in their stride as the members gradually drifted apart and went their separate ways.

Pianist Chris McGregor of course went on to great things with his Brotherhood of Breath, but Moholo-Moholo has likewise kept the fire burning right up to the present day, first hitting back against adversity with his 1978 debut LP as band leader, ‘Spirits Rejoice!’. Reissued late last year on Café Oto’s Otoroku label, the album showcases the impressively massive-sounding eight-piece ensemble the drummer assembled to play the heavily African-influenced compositions he and his fellow countrymen (including bassist Johnny Dyani, featured here) had collectively knocked up, and the sheer, overwhelming greatness of the results is difficult to overstate.

In addition to the aforementioned players, the octet comprises Keith Tippett on piano, Harry Miller doubling up the bass, and a full quartet of brass players including two trombonists (Radu Malfatti & Nick Evans) alongside free improv luminary Evan Parker on sax and gifted stylistic all-rounder Kenny Wheeler on trumpet -- and right from the outset, this thing is just as much of a joyous riot of incendiary sound as you might have hoped.

Opener ‘Khanya Apho’ finds Parker and Wheeler dropping sloshing puddles of searing post-Ayler skronk across a tempestuous rhythmic work-out, as the declamatory, melodic trombone riffs which open the piece are soon submerged in a writhing sea of happy chaos. Probably the album’s highlight, the following ‘You Ain’t Gonna Know Me Cos You Think You Know Me’ (composed by Blue Notes alumnus Mongezi Feza) is considerably mellower, but even more revelatory in its own way, mustering a swaggering, Elephantine swing from the brass players, whose gentle, insistent melodicism and massed, sinuous groove could part the clouds amid a Pacific tsunami and raise a smile from a death row inmate, I daresay. Play it at some more celebratory occasion, such as a street party or carnival, meanwhile and bliss would swiftly be achieved, guaranteed. It’s just such an unrelentingly generous, happy piece of music, its hard-won, monolithic positivity is difficult to put into words.

Subsequent to that, the similarly blue-skied cosmic/modal workout ‘Ithi-gqi’ proves equally sublime, with dizzying depths of interlocking, twinkle-fingered majesty that could have fitted right in on a late ‘60s Pharaoh or Alice joint – just absolutely stunning. Those declamatory brass riffs ring out again meanwhile on side 2’s ‘Amaxesha Osizi’, sounding like the ceremonial entrance music of some long forgotten, jewel-bedecked Nubian monarch, before the composition slides headfirst across eras and continents to become a slinky, hard-bop workout with Parker very much out in front, his playing as lyrical, compassionate and otherly inspired as ever, holding court until Tippett’s piano spins things off in a different direction entirely with some brain-breaking double-speed repetition, before things slow down again for a euphoric burst of collective ecstasy in the piece’s closing minutes. Whoa! - is about the only verdict I can muster.

And finally, accompanied by live (?!) bird song, the closing ‘Wedding Hymn’ reprises the indelible central riff from ‘You Ain’t Gonna Know Me..’ in appropriately solemn, matrimonial fashion, seguing into a beautiful, melancholic solo from Wheeler, gradually expanding into a lengthy, blissed out honeymoon night reverie from the entire ensemble.

There’s so much going on across the course of ‘Spirits Rejoice!’, so many musical, geographic and historical currents overlapping and intersecting, that picking it all apart would prove a formidable task – and a potentially headache-inducing and unnecessary one, I would suggest. For all the big names and notions involved here, this album is absolutely not the kind of disc you need to be some kind of jazz buff to appreciate.

On the contrary, the music herein is just so massively, overwhelmingly enjoyable, so welcoming and universal in its appeal, that it seems like a better idea to quit analysing it altogether, to quit yakking and instead just to drink it all in, exalting in the fact that it exists and is here with us on whatever’s left of planet earth. It’s a language-killing, thought-stopping, gate-opening, soul-fortifyingly amazing record, in the best possible way. It is aptly named, in short.

(Vinyl copies are still available direct from Café Oto at the time of writing.)

Labels: album reviews, comps & reissues, Louis Moholo Octet