Album Reviews // Ezra Collective - You Can't Steal My Joy

26h May 2019

Enter The Jungle Records

Ezra Collective have been at the vanguard of London’s jazz scene for a few years now, alongside acts like Sons of Kemet, Comet is Coming, Nubya Garcia and Oscar Jerome are carving out a space for gritty, pan-global jazz that draws heavily on the cultural milieu of the City of London. Already with one of Gilles Peterson’s esteemed worldwide awards under their belt You Can’t Steal My Joy is remarkably their first LP. And despite an indelible footprint of tradition the pace and force of the Collective’s stomp is undeniably London, evidenced on the first cut: a slinky, neo-soul interpretation of a Sun Ra tune (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dokLwszdUgY). Catching that unifying spirit of the Arkestra with spacious, live production and holding down a city street boom bap in the rhythm section. The performances gradually open up, half submerged synth and horn flourishes susurrating from every corner of the mix as they feel their way in.

Feet found, the London five-piece draw breath Why You Mad?, menacing before blowing the doors down with a gale of noise, the five elements fizz off into their own dimensions then re-find their centre around the ‘hush now’ of Femi Koleoso’s cymbal crashing. The track closes out with an aftertaste of soulquarian hip hop, as does the ferocious King of the Jungle later on, before segueing into Red Whine, a haunting calypso/ska melody surrounding a savage punchy beat. There’s something in this sound that is indebted to the female brand of 90s hip hop; echoing the sensual glissando of Erykah Badu, the declamatory voicing of Lauryn Hill and sashaying sexuality of Missy Elliot.

Ezra Collective by now are flexing their multi-cultural dexterity and start sounding off on the bolshie linearity of their soloing on Quest For Coin, a groove steeped in reverence of the UK crate digger – choppy breakbeats and house-y bass spliced with dub vibraphone. It’s a walk through the city: picking up snatches of pavement dialects and exchanging them at pace in a pristinely produced atmosphere creates a buzzing sense of potentiality and tension in the music. The individual performances breach microtones of expression at the song’s climax, simultaneously breaking for freedom and collapsing into form, hovering between free expression and dictated harmony.

Jorja Smith leaps to the foreground on Reason For Disguise but there’s something of the sore thumb in her controlled delivery, sticking out from the album’s restlessly shifting inspiration. Where Smith’s feature isn’t elastic enough to merit putting the band on the backburner, Loyle Carner (whose recent album Not Waving, But Drowning showed a sensitivity for the UK jazz scene as well as the jazz-heavy Northern UK hip hop of Jehst and High Focus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1_MmFyHeN8) manages to sit in the mix like Deep Thought on a Roots cut. The Collective and Carner bring the best out of each other; the former challenging the latter’s flow, Carner bringing out the versatile and accessible side of the Collective.

Although both Londoners featured put in strong individual performances the band’s sidelining creates an unfortunate seam between the cohesiveness of the brilliant first and second halves of the album. With Chris and Jane the band wrestle focus back and launch into a South American flurry of big brass and dancing organ keys. As with other tracks like Why You Mad? And Sᾶo Paolo the group show tact in the placement of their more frantic, less accessible material. Following the Cuban carnival of Charlie and Jane, People Saved’s metronomic rhythm and melancholic melodies create a prog-y atmosphere, but it’s one that falls out of line with the rest of the album.

Philosopher II is a departure. This ambient interlude from Joe Armon-Jones is reminiscent of Dylan’s Departure from previous EP Juan Pablo: The Philosopher. It shows an uncommonly deft touch on a debut album, showing experience before exploding into imagination – imitating the tides of this album, the disruption of form in the song’s final movements are deeply stirring. In reaction to the peace of the previous track Sᾶo Paolo and King of the Jungle are violent staccatos of full band activity. The Afro-Latin vitality of the former makes you wish for Daymé Arocena or Angelique Kidjo to jump on mic. The latter is an equally wild exhale of sound but pulls from a North American free jazz songbook building horn melodies in repetition only to demolish them in mad bursts of energy.

Despite featuring some of the brightest and most exciting brass runs on the record the title track seems to run out of ideas towards the end. Armon-Jones’ solo in particular goes searching up and down the keyboard never finding real purpose or direction. The track is a piece for solos when the album is most successful mingling the sounds and textures of the full band. As if in recognition of this the album’s final cut is one of the strongest, combining with 8-piece afrobeat neighbours KOKOROKO to form a many-limbed monster of rhythm and flair. The interplay of keys, strings and brass is a manifest of the potential in music for recognising and interweaving culture, celebrated in the recent proliferation of Afro-futurism around London.

This is an incredibly accomplished LP from a young group of diverse talents. The recurring themes of construction and destruction, tight grooving and wild expression are echoed throughout the album and resonate with the bursts of ambitious music shooting up in the cracks of London’s current troubled path. As with Marvin Gaye on Motown, Led Zeppelin’s refusal to release singles or Miles Davis’ conceptual works; this appreciation for the album as a narrative form nails the Collective’s intent to the mast. They’ve made a stark bid for longevity, their collaborative work as well as adulation for the masters on this album herald them as potential ringleaders of a new movement and as they say themselves: “You can steal a lot of things from us - our ability to travel freely, our access to education, our right to a level playing field, even our ability to live life at its full potential - but as long as we don’t forget our core truth, You Can’t Steal Our Joy”