Makaya McCraven : Techno Logic; The People’s Mixtape; Hidden Out; PopUp Shop
On January 9, 2025, drummer Makaya McCraven lorded over an invocation from behind the drum kit onstage at the packed-to-the-gills venue Nublu, located in New York’s East Village. With Ben LaMar Gay and Theon Cross helping conjure spirits on this night, the arrangements soundtracked those six-day-a-week working souls crossing through the rural countryside of Clarksdale, Mississippi. Kinda like the movie Sinners. No, really.
Fans, including myself, waited outside in what used to be Alphabet City, up until 30 minutes before midnight struck, for an extended period of time during the soundcheck in 21-degree weather (according to my phone—but it felt more like 4). They practiced in an elongated silence, once inside, while Cross used the low-end register of his tuba to emulate the tone of bullfrogs, while horn player and fellow International Anthem labelmate LaMar Gay manifested vocalizations, in and out of a tambourine, to transport us all into a trance-like state to a different time. So much so, during one section of the opening, when McCraven was drilling down on an intense segment on his snare, a fraction, not even a sliver, of a drum stick flew up and behind him, just missing a patron, who never moved. She, like the rest of us, was no longer in this building; We all were in the portal, heading toward crossing those boggy lands in the Jim Crow South.
The track “Gnu Blue,” created from those performances that night, a rewording of the club name, Nublu, from the Techno Logic EP, one of the four EPs from the wide-stretching double-album release Off The Record, simultaneously released by McCraven last week, takes those grimy tuba lines, where these sounds were recorded, and styles them up in a jungle/drum and bass way for almost three minutes. That slight woodblock clickety-clack ringing in the beat? Connects. It’s the blues double-timed, sped-up, moving your shoulders, noddin’ your head. The ancestors are ridin’ with cha. Ben LaMar Gay vocalizes like a bass music emcee, not necessarily using words, just unidentifiable vowels. Or maybe, in this case, field hollers that get bodies moving.
With the remaining two minutes on the track, McCraven, through his production or arrangement—it is purposely a bit difficult to exactly identify—returns us to a different live show where sonic squalls and amplified horns communicate code, transporting listeners as sonic bleeps and blops finish assigning the coordinates. That bleeds directly into the next track, “Technology” using that computerized airspace. “Feel that in your body, it’s called technology, many many years behind we we got already, it’s called technology,” declares Ben LaMar Gay, while McCraven and Cross proceeded lockstep in stutter-stepped cadence.
“Boom Bapped” features Gay, this time on a trumpet, possibly looped up, referencing a golden-era stylized hip-hop track where you swear Guru, Q-Tip, Pete Rock or CL Smooth are just waiting to bless the mic and set it, because McCraven is knockin’, just crackin’ the snare with that backpacker hip-hop DNA. “Strikes Again,” which closes out this EP, takes us back to the swamplands—those rural-blues folk, traveling music—used to cross blood-soaked terrains in rhythm; a form of coded communication so that the dogs and trackers don’t get the scent. Gay once again leads the vocal chants, hummables, which can be seen as directional. I might be wrong, but that’s what my soul is telling me.
McCraven, the Chicago-based drummer, composer, and producer, is dealing a wild card release here that, for sure, pays off long term. It provides access points for non-jazz fans, hip-hop adjacent heads, and grand on-ramp thoroughfares for experimental jazz fiends and folks who have no problem delving into the deep waters of abstract soundscapes. I’m not really into promoting tech these days, but I gotta admit, the Apple Music feature that allows for the entire four EPs to mix and blend into each other, which took over unprompted, adds yet another layer of relaxed listening to this whole project.
A good buddy of mine and killer music scribe hit me via text that Pop-Up Shop was grabbing him the best. With its funk-fusiony orchestration, its tracks featuring guitarist Jeff Parker, vibraphonist Justefan, and bassist Benjamin J. Shepherd at their most looped-up exploratory heights—created from recordings of McCraven’s Los Angeles debut at Del Monte Speakeasy in 2015—personify the project’s overall point. Here are four EPs: Techno Logic, The People’s Mixtape, Hidden Out!, and Pop-Up Shop—four shots at reformatted presentation of this music, a version of jazz, not of the straight-ahead album configuration (the title Off The Record delivers the sentiment), for you to find the music. Or for the music to find you.
If that’s the point of the project, it’s a hands-up, hands-down celebration from one of this generation’s most exploratory jazz composers, with Jeff Parker being close right there with him. These modern sketches could point toward a quote McCraven nailed a while back, explaining how evolution is inevitable: “I would be more interested in what my elders thought than what they played.” Amen, Brother.
Label: International Anthem/Nonesuch
Year: 2025
Similar Albums:
Makaya McCraven : Off the Record
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