Makaya McCraven

This is such a long overdue thread. Anyway, now there's a place to anticipate In These Times, which is due in September: https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/in-these-times

Preview track "Seventh String" sounds p great, though obviously it's not a "single"

I saw him give a master class in Portland, OR a few years ago, and while I wasn't very familiar with his work, I was really knocked out by it. He said, "Pulse is the basis of what we as drummers do." Afterwards I asked him about the pulse in percussionists who didn't play metric time (Sunny Murray, Milford Graves, Rashied Ali). He said, "There's still the same pulse -- they just don't have to overtly state it." I thought that was interesting. He also talked about how he got into non-standard time signatures (say, 5/8 or 7/8) from Hungarian folk music.

Very interesting dude. I interviewed him for The Wire a few years ago. I pre-ordered this new album (which I'm surprised is on IA/Nonesuch, as his last thing was on Blue Note — I guess that was a one-off, or it didn't do the numbers they hoped for).

Instant pre-order for me, really looking forward to this.

I'd also *highly* recommend seeing him live if you can; really psyched he's playing the Jazz Fest here at the end of the month

Excited for this, I was at the Walker gig that was recorded to be used on this

Although this album is “new," the truth it’s something that's been in process for a very long time, since shortly after he released his International Anthem debut In The Moment in 2015. Dedicated followers may note he’s had 6 other releases in the meantime (including 2018’s widely-popular Universal Beings and 2020’s We’re New Again, his rework of Gil Scott-Heron’s final album for XL Recordings); but none of which have been as definitive an expression of his artistic ethos as In These Times.

Universal Beings is pretty perfect, imo, so the bar for this is certainly high.

Shoulda checked email sooner: press release says Sept.23, and

Contributing musicians: Jeff Parker, Junius Paul, Brandee Younger, Lia Kohl, Macie Stewart, Zara Zaharieva, Marta Sofia Honer, Greg Ward, Irvin Pierce, Marquis Hill, Matt Gold, Greg Spero, Joel Ross, De’Sean Jones, and Rob Clearfield.