Jazz
Brownswood Recordings have repressed “Arise”, the album Zara McFarlane released on the label in 2017, as a limited gold vinyl edition that is on sale now. The label frames it as part of its twentieth anniversary and says the original copies had become highly sought after.
It was produced and co-composed by Moses Boyd, then McFarlane’s long-standing drummer and still some years away from the record that would put him on the Mercury Prize shortlist. Binker Golding, Shabaka Hutchings, Nathaniel Cross, Peter Edwards and Shirley Tetteh all play on it.
The label says the album ties jazz to soul, reggae and Afro-Caribbean traditions, and that it arrived just before the international spotlight turned towards London’s young jazz generation. The cover photograph is by Adama Jalloh and was taken on a street close to the label’s north London headquarters.
The original came out on 29 September 2017, and on release the Guardian called it “A Class Act” and All About Jazz described its fusion of jazz and Jamaican rhythms as “spellbinding”. The label has not said how many copies have been pressed.
Text by Aina Torrents