Ocotea

Album Review

On this half-hour disc, Georgia Anne Muldrow operates as Jyoti, a name given to her by family friend Alice Coltrane. The alias is used for her jazz-inspired works, and here, she goes way out — and way back — to modernize late-‘60s and early-‘70s avant-garde and electronic jazz within the framework of a presumably one-woman band. (Again, she is joined by Her Ancestral Orchestra, whose lineup is not specified.) Just about any attempt at vocalizing over these tracks will result in bugged-out silence. The most mind-bending one of the bunch is the title track, which carries echoes of Herbie Hancock's “Rain Dance” but sounds more like a windstorm, built on revolving hand percussion, electronic zaps, and smudged flute trills in place of horns. A close second is “Thread’s First Stitches,” all haunted synthesizer frequencies and sparsely deployed trap fillips. Not for every Muldrow fan, this will nonetheless remain one of the producer’s most fascinating releases. Familiarity with Hancock’s Patrick Gleeson-assisted sessions, Tonto’s Expanding Head Band, the first Weather Report album, and George Duke's most out-there moments will not hurt.