Steve Coleman began playing music just days before his 14th birthday and nowadays, 43 years later, Steve Coleman’s music it’s still fresh and he’s still hungry to explore magical-mystery places, unrevealed paths and dimensions, he’s still searching for the unheard and unconventional.
And many of his incredible musical adventures are still available for free download on his official site, at the download section (including some of those albums I had falling in love with more then two decades ago as “Rhythm People”, “Black Science”, “Drop Kick”,”The Tao of Mad Phat”or “Anatomy Of A Groove”). Really cool, but don’t you ever forget, artists need our full support to be able to deliver unconditional art in a world of conditional and conditioning.
In 2000 Steve Coleman withdrew from performing and recording in order to travel extensively to India, Indonesia, Cuba and Brazil and he continued his research as an associate professor at the University of California at Berkeley in the years 2000 to 2002. He has conducted a lot of workshops and he thinks of himself like a West African Griot.
Coleman never stopped his spiritual searches and journeys and “Functional Arrhythmias”, he’s third album at Pi in the last four years, it’s just another incursion into the complex, but subtle, fascinating and always fresh, always revealing musical universe that’s so close to the soul and spirit of Coleman.
Tracklist:
01. Sinews
02. Medulla-Vagus
03. Chemical Intuition
04. Cerebrum Crossover
05. Limbic Cry
06. Cardiovascular
07. Respiratory Flow
08. Irregular Heartbeats
09. Cerebellum Lean
10. Lymph Swag (Dance of the Leukocytes)
11. Adrenal, Got Ghost
12. Assim-Elim
13. Hormone Trig
14. Snap-Sis
“The influential American alto saxophonist Steve Coleman has a reputation for the arcane (his works simmer with polyrhythmic innovations, lunar-calendar calculations and inscrutable spiritual references), but these pieces inspired by the human heartbeat represent his most open invitation in years. He’s joined by fine trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson, bass guitarist Anthony Tidd and drummer Sean Rickman; and in guitarist Miles Okazaki he has a multi-talented newcomer who looks to be as much of an innovative thinker. While some of the ascetically curt melodies, edgily avant-funky grooves and impassively entwined counterpoint are familiar Coleman traits, the music is several degrees warmer: full of sparky ensemble writing, varied percussion sounds and vivacious grooves. Finlayson’s crisp precision and Coleman’s slurred phrasing sharply contrast on the brightly twisting Sinews; Limbic Cry is an Ornette-like dirge; Cerebellum Lean swings infectiously over its repeated four-note motif and Tidd’s grunting bass; Lymph Swag sounds like Henry Threadgill (partly thanks to Okazaki’s guitar); and on Snap-Sis the two horns run around each other like children playing. Listeners previously irritated by Coleman’s musical conundrums should consider one more try.”
Steve Coleman – Official Site
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Steve Coleman – Twitter
