- Producers like Kaidi Tatham and Georgia Anne Muldrow help bring Nubya Garcia's brilliant jazz into new sound worlds.
- Late last year, Nubya Garcia delivered a tour de force of contemporary jazz. Source was a sprawling statement of cultural identity and collective power, blending jazz with dub, funk, Afro and Latin influences. Her virtuosic tenor saxophone performances and an ensemble of on-form collaborators, like keyboardist Joe Arman-Jones and trumpeter MS Maurice, kept things familiar without any obvious revivalism. Hot to the touch and borderless with its global sound, Source explored all corners of jazz with a stylistic wanderlust. A year later she re-enters its lush and vibrant universe of the original with a remix album, Source + We Move.
In a time when jazz is earning new popularity with fans from across scenes, Nubya Garcia sees crossovers with electronic music and hip-hop as opportunities for even more vibrant forms of expression. Source + We Move isn't necessarily the first time Garcia has delved into electronic music—her 2018 EP When We Are made some forays. The new record recruits the likes of Moses Boyd, KeiyaA, Georgia Anne Muldrow and Kaidi Tatham to fuse her already rich source material with styles like drum & bass, hip-hop and broken beat.
The remixes are best when they keep the focus on Garcia's sax. Its commanding cadence provides structure for the producers to build around without losing the freewheeling sensibility that makes the source material so special. Take DJ Harrison's remix of "The Message Continues," which zooms in on Garcia's spiralling sax riffs, subduing them with a hip-hop structure. The distant brass samples make conjure up a distant dreamscape, an atmospheric hip-hop jazz fusion that reminds me of Nujabes at his best. Broken beat pioneer Kaidi Tatham's maximalist approach to "La Cumbia Me Está Llamando" bathes the shadowy original in a warm light, as erratic percussion and angelic chords occupy the space left open by Garcia and the all-woman Colombian trio La Perla.
Composer-percussionist Moses Boyd's remix of "Pace" features brisk drum & bass percussion that says "match the pace or get left behind." The original was meant to evoke hectic London life from an individual perspective, whereas Boyd's version captures teeming, bustling city life on a macro scale. It's a close toss up between that one Georgia Anne Muldrow's celestial "Boundless Beings" rework for the best effort on the album. If Garcia's version made you feel like you were floating along Earth's orbit, Muldrow's trip-hop remix leaves you untethered in deeper space.
Last year, Garcia told Bandcamp that with Source, she was "questioning and thinking about what it means to be a collective power, and what 'source' stands for. What is at our source as people? What is it that ignites a person’s energy? What is it that makes them feel hope and power in whatever they're doing?" By drawing energy from Garcia’s abundant source, these remixers try to answer those questions in their own respective sonic languages, offering intriguing answers and new ways to hear Garcia's potent energy.
Tracklist01. La Cumbia Me Está Llamando feat. La Perla (Kaidi Tatham Remix)
02. Together Is a Beautiful Place to Be (Nala Sinephro Remix)
03. The Message Continues (DJ Harrison Remix)
04. Inner Game (Blvck Spvde Remix)
05. Boundless Beings (Georgia Anne Muldrow Remix)
06. Stand With Each Other (KeiyaA Remix)
07. La Cumbia Me Está Llamando feat. La Perla (Suricata Remix)
08. Source (Dengue Dengue Dengue Remix)
09. Pace (Moses Boyd Remix)