Theo Croker: BLK2Life: A Future Past

Editor's Choice

Rating: ★★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Jeff Parker
Anthony Ware (as, ts, bs, ac, bcl, f)
Shekwoaga Ode (d, perc)
Charlotte Dos Santos (v)
Ari Lennox (v)
Theo Croker (t, ky, fl, samples)
Malaya (v)
Ego Ella May (v)
Iman Omari (v)
Eric Wheeler (b)
Michael King (ky, p)
Gary Bartz (as, ss)
Kassa Overall (v)
Wyclyf Jean (v)

Label:

Sony Masterworks/Music On Vinyl 19439882482/MOVLP 2946

April/2022

Media Format:

CD, 2 LP, DL

RecordDate:

Rec. July and October 2020

Theo Croker’s last album Star Nation earned him a Grammy nomination, and the steep ascent of the Florida-born composer, producer and trumpet ace – the second son of civil rights activist William Henry Croker – continues.

This 13-track oratorio takes the ancient-to-future vibe and invests it with fury, connection and understanding, makes it a call-to-arms. While the notion of history repeating itself finds voice in the cycles so intrinsic to jazz, there’s a hero’s journey in here too – non-linear and meandering, staccato and golden, lit by trumpet and immersed in blackness.

Having set out his stall on solo opener ‘4Knowledge’, a creationary swirl of trumpet, Fender and nature-inspired effects, and its horns-to-the-fore follow-up ‘Soul Call Vibrate’, Croker introduces the first of a series of guests that accompany his (ad)venture: singer Ari Lennox, with co-lyricist, London’s Ego Ella May, on backing vocals. Sax king Gary Bartz, now a de rigueur presence for leftfield jazz cognoscenti.

On track nine, positioned around the hero’s defeat of the enemy (think Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth), singer Malaya celebrates on ‘Happy Feet (for Dancers)’, a warm breeze of a clubfloor filler; Wyclyf Jean spits verses that tell of human rights and revolution on ‘Station of the Union 444’, a track designed for thinking and moving and coinciding with the hero’s road back. ‘Hero Stomp: A Future Past’, with its horn blasts, piano riffs and rootsy West African balafon samples, suggests a resurrection. ‘Pathways’, the closer, seizes the elixir, celebrating wisdom, heralding freedom, acknowledging the ancestors.

Follow us

Jazzwise Print

  • Latest print issues

From £5.83 / month

Subscribe

Jazzwise Digital Club

  • Latest digital issues
  • Digital archive since 1997
  • Download tracks from bonus compilation albums during the year
  • Reviews Database access

From £7.42 / month

Subscribe

Subscribe from only £5.83

Never miss an issue of the UK's biggest selling jazz magazine.

Subscribe

View the Current
Issue

Take a peek inside the latest issue of Jazzwise magazine.

Find out more