Since I'm mostly writing about music I like enough to spend money on, I'm quite used to reviewing great albums here.
But every once and a while there's a release that you already own in its regular version (two black LPs in a regular sleeve), but once you listen to it you're thinking: Damn, this is so great, I need it that one as the more expensive coloured gatefold edition with the extra signed booklet full of credits and more illustrations from the great Sophie Bass!
Ok, I guess that example got pretty specific pretty fast.
YAZZ AHMED - A Paradise In The Hold (2LP) (2025)
If you're following me and you paid a little attention at the right time while I was talking about Jazz, you might have caught that there are few contemporary musicians in the genre I hold in higher regard than Yazz Ahmed, who writes, plays and brings concepts to life on a level a little hobby critic like me can hardly keep up adequately processing with.
On her new double album the British-Bahraini composer and trumpet/horn player keeps following her themes of home, identity and feminism to a conclusion which seems even more consistent than her 2019 (has it been that long?) masterpiece "Polyhymnia".
While I don't think that any piece of music should rely on you knowing its intellectual background - which can sometimes even ruin your own perception -, Yazz Ahmed somehow is capapable of transporting her conceptual ideas into amazing pieces of music in a way that once I hear what a song is about, I enjoy it even more than before.
In this case she embraces her double heritage even tighter than in the past, as she dives into the myths, legends and folklore of the island kingdom in the Persian Gulf, adapts the source material, celebrates the beauty, femininity, humanity in it, but also creates alternative narratives from a woman's point of view, which certainly is a different angle than the daily reality of systematic disadvantage women are actually experiencing in the Arabic world today.
"A Paradise In The Hold" is a saga filled with divine muses, pearl divers and reluctant brides, brought to life in a creative storm of breathtaking Jazz Fusion that has never been dancing closer with traditional Near Eastern rhythms and melodies, even though most of the instrumentation stays within the spectrum Ahmed has established on her previous works, with her own silky trumpet and flugelhorn playing on eye-level with the sounds of bass clarinet, vibraphone and Fender Rhodes piano - and also some fearlessly yet harmoniously integrated Electronic tricks and programming.
The secret MVP on this album however is the late Martin France, who sadly passed away after the recordings, whose completely off the charts Cobham style drumming not only leaves you listening with a stunned opened mouth, but who also masterfully energizes and elevates the beauty of his fellow musicians' performances with his incredibly lively backbone.
Speaking of beauty one cannot dismiss the multitude of lead vocalists - both male and female - who bring Ahmed's stories to life with overflowing emotion and devotion, completely pulling you into this magnificent aural book of tales.
Originally a nine-minute suite dedicated to the goddess Siduri from the Gilgamesh epos, which was composed and performed ten years ago, the material has evolved into an ("only" seventy minutes long) album that instantly justifies the long and thorough process of its making. This couldn't be more marvellous! An album which doesn't leave any room for possible improvements.
On her new double album the British-Bahraini composer and trumpet/horn player keeps following her themes of home, identity and feminism to a conclusion which seems even more consistent than her 2019 (has it been that long?) masterpiece "Polyhymnia".
While I don't think that any piece of music should rely on you knowing its intellectual background - which can sometimes even ruin your own perception -, Yazz Ahmed somehow is capapable of transporting her conceptual ideas into amazing pieces of music in a way that once I hear what a song is about, I enjoy it even more than before.
In this case she embraces her double heritage even tighter than in the past, as she dives into the myths, legends and folklore of the island kingdom in the Persian Gulf, adapts the source material, celebrates the beauty, femininity, humanity in it, but also creates alternative narratives from a woman's point of view, which certainly is a different angle than the daily reality of systematic disadvantage women are actually experiencing in the Arabic world today.
"A Paradise In The Hold" is a saga filled with divine muses, pearl divers and reluctant brides, brought to life in a creative storm of breathtaking Jazz Fusion that has never been dancing closer with traditional Near Eastern rhythms and melodies, even though most of the instrumentation stays within the spectrum Ahmed has established on her previous works, with her own silky trumpet and flugelhorn playing on eye-level with the sounds of bass clarinet, vibraphone and Fender Rhodes piano - and also some fearlessly yet harmoniously integrated Electronic tricks and programming.
The secret MVP on this album however is the late Martin France, who sadly passed away after the recordings, whose completely off the charts Cobham style drumming not only leaves you listening with a stunned opened mouth, but who also masterfully energizes and elevates the beauty of his fellow musicians' performances with his incredibly lively backbone.
Speaking of beauty one cannot dismiss the multitude of lead vocalists - both male and female - who bring Ahmed's stories to life with overflowing emotion and devotion, completely pulling you into this magnificent aural book of tales.
Originally a nine-minute suite dedicated to the goddess Siduri from the Gilgamesh epos, which was composed and performed ten years ago, the material has evolved into an ("only" seventy minutes long) album that instantly justifies the long and thorough process of its making. This couldn't be more marvellous! An album which doesn't leave any room for possible improvements.
"She stands on the shore of the unknown sea
Her land is a garden in which the morning sun walks
The trees bear jewels
Jewels, pearls and gold."
(And since this is such a spectacularly magical work, of course the blue hour lurked into my window while I was taking the pictures below. So what you're seeing here isn't actually the real vinyl colour.)
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