The spiritually uplifting ethos that radiates from David Ornette Cherry’s extensive catalog must have been handed down from his father, Don Cherry. After all, the young Cherry was born during the making of the 1958 classic Something Else!!!! The Music of Ornette Coleman, which marked both Coleman’s and Don’s debuts on record. However, David Ornette’s electrifying new effort, Organic Nation Listening Club (The Continual), shares more of a kinship with the elder Cherry’s 1975 Brown Rice. On this sprawling epic, Cherry scales ecstatic heights with a heady brew of out-jazz, electronica, hip-hop, spoken word, and African and Eastern rhythms.
Organic Nation Listening Club (The Continual) sounds like transmissions from another dimension, with its leader at the center of the glorious fray. Credited with vocals, soundscapes, douss’n gouni, and “percussions,” and bolstered by a 13-piece ensemble that includes his nieces Tyson McVey and Naima Karlsson, Cherry is not only fearless but also wondrously versatile. The album zeroes in on the deepest of grooves and doesn’t look back. Its opening one-two funk punch of the sitar-driven and sample-heavy “So & So & So and So” and “Parallel Experience” sets the futuristic jazz tone: body-moving, brain-scrambling, and soul-stirring, as further evidenced by “Cultural Workers (The Continual),” “Eagle Play,” and “Cosmic Nomad.”
Organic Nation Listening Club (The Continual) is a righteous revelation that should appeal not just to Brown Rice and Bitches Brew enthusiasts but also to fans of spiritual-jazz upstarts like Jaimie Branch and Angel Bat Dawid.
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