Bassist Dezron Douglas and harpist Brandee Younger doing over Alice and John Coltrane, The Stylistics, The Jackson 5, Pharoah Sanders, Kate Bush, Sting, and The Carpenters.
Douglas has worked with Pharoah Sanders and David Murray, amongst other jazz notables; Younger with Charlie Haden, Stevie Wonder, Lauryn Hill… Both are featured on Makaya McCraven’s Universal Beings.
‘It’s an uplifting suite of real, soulful comfort music — a spiritual salve.’

Legs eleven — Nicole Mitchell, Jeff Parker, Jaimie Branch, Joel Ross, Mikel Patrick Avery, Tomeka Reid, Chad Taylor, Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, Macie Stewart, Angelica Sanchez, and John Herndon; with Damon Locks contributing lyrics and vocals.
‘Somehow swirling adventurous elements of avant-garde jazz and contemporary classical into the most universal attractors of pop music, the cosmic opera of Dimensional Stardust is a pure spiritual extension of the unifying ethos of the Exploding Star Orchestra.’

Fourteen new pieces of organic beat music cut from the original sessions in New York, Chicago, London and Los Angeles, featuring Brandee Younger, Tomeka Reid, Dezron Douglas, Joel Ross, Shabaka Hutchings, Junius Paul, Nubya Garcia, Daniel Casimir, Ashley Henry, Josh Johnson, Jeff Parker, Anna Butters, Carlos Niño and Miguel-Atwood Ferguson.

A bouquet featuring interpretations of Joe Henderson’s Black Narcissus and Trane’s After The Rain, plus nine originals, performed by the New Breed, and dedicated by the guitarist to his mum.
“I used to deejay a lot when I lived in Chicago. I was spinning records one night and for about ten minutes I was able to perfectly synch a Nobukazu Takemura record with the first movement of A Love Supreme and it had this free jazz, abstract jazz thing going on with a sequenced beat underneath. It sounded so good. That’s what I’m trying to do with Max Brown. It’s got a sequenced beat and there are musicians improvising on top or beneath the sequenced drum pattern. That’s what I was going for. Man vs. machine.
“It’s a lot of experimenting, a lot of trial and error. I like to pursue situations that take me outside myself, where the things I come up with are things I didn’t really know I could do. Patchwork quilting. You take this stuff and stitch it together until a tapestry forms.”

Recent collaborations in London with Nubya Garcia, Joe Armon-Jones, Soweto Kinch, Ashley Henry, Daniel Casimir and Kamaal Williams… remixed live the next weekend by LeFtO, Ben LaMar Gay, Quiet Dawn, Earl Jeffers & Don Leisure of the Darkhouse Family, and later by Emma-Jean Thackray and Lexus Blondin… finally chopped-up and re-assembled back at Makaya’s home studio in Chicago, into two continuous side-long suites.