Fred Moten, Brandon López, Gerald Cleaver - the blacksmiths, the flowers 2LP

Surely, these are among three of the biggest names in contemporary jazz at the moment? Gerald Cleaver and Brandon López are a surefire rhythm section mark of quality on any album in the last decade or so. Here they’re joined by Fred Moten, the poet, theorist, and one of the most prominent jazz critics/thinkers of this century.

Collecting two performances at 411 Kent, López and Cleaver build complex, taut rhythmic beds over which Moten positions a fragmentary stream of phrases in line with his other writing, with a dizzying spin of familiar names and signifiers that weave in and out of the set. Can’t put it better than what Reading Group do in the press release: “Incendiary music for a burning world”! –Mitch