Whether talking Jandek or Albert Ayler or La Monte Young, some musicians-- even if their work is inventive and perhaps revolutionary-- owe their reputations-at-large to public personality. Jandek, the recluse; Ayler, the firebrand; Young, the hoarder: These musicians have calling cards somewhat removed from their art. You don't have to know their music to know their personas.
If you've heard the name Steve Reid at all, his story is probably familiar: Berry Gordy paid him $75 in the early 1960s to play drums on Martha and the Vandellas' "Dancing in the Street"; he gigged regularly at the Apollo; he drummed his way through college; he moved to Africa, working with Guy Warren and Fela Kuti; he was arrested for draft-dodging back in America; he recorded and toured with Sun Ra and Miles Davis; now 64, he's recorded four albums with Kieran "Four Tet" Hebden since 2005. What's more, the liner notes for both of Reid's albums with the Steve Reid Ensemble have included breathless writing by BBC Radio 1 DJ Gilles Peterson: 2005's Spirit Walk used a long-form interview with questions and answers about Africa, influences, and adolescence; this year's Daxaar-- captured last January during Reid's first trip back to Africa in four decades-- includes a Peterson essay that reads, "For Steve Reid to return to the home of the drums... was a natural trip.... If the quest is to 'keep in the rhythm' then Steve Reid is The Man and Daxaar is the lick."
Lucky for us, the music on Daxaar's not bad, either: Recorded by a septet that recalls only Hebden and keyboardist/music director Boris Netsvetaev from the octet that made Spirit Walk, Daxaar uses Reid's tight, steady grooves like loam. The band's textural nuances and unorthodox solos spring above his traps, but they always trace back to the rhythms, acknowledging the fecundity of the soil beneath. The trumpet of Roger Ongolo and the guitar of Jimi Mbaye, for instance, weave through the hi-hat tap of "Dabronxxar", slipping into and stepping out of the rhythm, emphasizing its tiny waves. And on closer "Don't Look Back", everything funnels into the groove one layer at the time-- bass, electronics, drums, keys. Again, the guitar and trumpet lock around that meter, darting between its cracks. All five tracks operate under the same premise: Let the rhythm be the foundation, and surprises will surface. That principle has been evident in Reid's work since 1975's excellent Rhythmatism.
The outlier, though, is the disc's intro, performed solo by singer and kora player Isa Kouyate: Titled "Welcome", it's a prelude that functions like a string section opening a black metal album or a well-placed skit opening a hip-hop album: Except for fundamental ideas, it has little to do with the nearly familiar jazz that follows. It's only an invocation opening the curtains on the homecoming, the communion, the recontextualization. "Welcome" is such a successful gambit because, for the rest of the record, Reid and his four-sevenths-native band don't emphasize region or sentiment. Aside from an African-American émigré living in Switzerland returning to Africa with an English electronicist and a Russian keyboardist, there's no agenda in the music they're making. Instead, Reid coasts with his crash and ride, leaning forward against the beat on the title track, as Netsvetaev builds wide organ arches. Khadim Badji's hand drums complement Reid's stick-and-metal lead, and bassist Dembel Diop lopes around the basic rhythm, always pulling on it or pushing against it with a brilliant, buxom tone. Hebden sparkles with some of his best moments in his prolific if patchwork collaboration with Reid. His young mercury has hamstrung his duo records with Reid, although he's excellent at identifying interesting sounds and tinkering with them: Here, as he's often done as Four Tet and on last year's Fire Escape with Sunburned Hand of the Man, he's content to play that role. Hebden accents and warps but doesn't define.
No one else does, either: Taken as a whole, Daxaar is fun if somewhat static. Spirit Walk was an essential listen, its hymns to heroes and its huge, charging arrangements signaling Reid's renewal and new status with force. Daxaar, then, is the other side of the picture-- a lot more comfortable, a little more nuanced, a bit too stable. But, again, Steve Reid is 64, and this jazz is far outside of the supper club. And it gets by on more than its backstory.
