Album review: Black Flower – ‘Magma’: a perfumed souk of North African psych jazz from the Lowlands quintet

THE WORLD of Belgian Eastern jazz outfit Black Flower is a well-woven and beautiful one; the quintet this week unveil their sixth full-length album for Ghent’s rather groove-obsessed Sdban Ultra imprint, with whom they’ve released two of their past three albums this past five years. Through this arch, if you will, to enter their aural world.

They’ve been expertly piloted by Brussels-based saxophonist, flautist and composer Nathan Daems across their decade-long existence; they are, as you can hear, influenced by the likes of Alice Coltrane, Mulatu Astatke, Feli Kuti and others, bringing it all together in a tapestry of Afrobeat, souk psych and more.

The organ is the latest colour to be added to the gradually evolving Black Flower aesthetic, and comes courtesy new recruit to the melodic cause Karel Cuelenaere, adding another, trippier texture to their sound.

We mustn’t neglect to mention Nathan and Karel’s fellow travellers in this current incarnation of the Black Flower: they ae Jon Birdsong on cornet, who’s worked with fellow countrymen dEUS as well as Beck and Calexico; drummer Simon Segers and bassist Filip Vandebril.

Otherwise involved in the making of a very fine record are the ever-dependable Frederik Segers at the faders, whose worked with Black Flower previously on three albums and a 12″; the inviting green, red and white cover art comes courtesy London’s Raimund Wong, who also records himself as Total Refreshment Centre.

And Magma as a whole concept in the aural sense, rather than the strictly volcanic? We’re told it’s “a creative process solidified into vinyl, just as magma into rock.”

The album opener begs you follow, guides you through arches and squares and courts deep into Black Flower’s particular take on the mystery. “Magma” rolls through a dazzle of sub-Saharan jazz colours in a complex weave, yet with a grand groove; each instrument steps up in turn to curl luxuriantly like smoke, subducting like the liquid rock of the title as new elements and motifs flow and arise; the brass and woodwind proud and wending the main melodic flow, a warm organ, redolent of recent Jimi Tenor, patterning and adding its glow; little skitterings and smatterings of electronica bringing the grain and the texture. The track resolves in the crisp pride of a resounding gong.

The band themselves collectively say of this opener: “[It’s] a metaphor for what is to come – moments in time when music comes to the surface taking a concrete form, shared and used to amplify the beauty of life.

“It reflects a boiling, churning, silent energy. It is the core, the source. It is a state between solid and liquid and represents ancient energy and new potential.”

“O Fogo” keeps that post-Tony Allen, hyper-rhythmic dub feel, by turns flowing and tricksy and jerking, this time blessed and blissed with some beautiful Afro-psych flute, overbreathing textures present and correct, the organ slotting in comfortably with some exotic trills, which tune flows and dizzies and envelops.

“The Light” cools your boots a touch in clicky bass, a cornet and flute involved in snake-charming, winding this way and that in a beguiling melody; a more plaintive and filmic middle break opens out the possibilities, an almost vocal ululation coming to the fore on the flute among dunes of ‘tronica and what I’m venturing is the taut redolence of an oud.

That organ, courtesy new member Karel, really comes to the fore in the call of “Half Liquid”; the tone it has is at once entirely African and Seventies-psych, recalling the percussive, tremulous, trippy tones of fellow Belgians Brainticket; a touch of the Jon Lords, even. And this new arrow in Black Flower’s sling does a very clever thing; it gives the whole record the feel of a lost gem, some record those parents of the way cooler hippy kid you grew up with brought back from their year getting themselves together on the Silk Road, like Call Of The Valley. Real, cool and artefactual.

“Deep Dive Down” does just that, perhaps just offshore from the verdancy of the northern Mediterranean coasts; pushes Nathan’s liquid flute back out to the fore. And here he’s at his most fluid, the warm, woody tones running like water atop the swing and rattle of the organ, itself picking out a staccato mantra that swings in undertow. It begins to accelerate in a skitter of triplets, the flute multitracking in close harmony with itself, the tune steeped in atmosphere and sunbliss.

“Morning In The Jungle” feat the vocal honey of 21-year-old singer-songwriter Meskerem Mees, herself something an adept of the field, having won the Montreux Jazz Talent Award this year; and she releases some of the tension of the wild exoticism preceding in an expansive jazz pop; you wouldn’t say a welcome change of gear, quite, as that would be to disparage the excellence of what’s passed before; but it does feel like a focus, a grounding back into this world in the soulful – like a ride out in the Atlas Mountains, returning to town for nightfall and bustle and the abstract warmth of random crowds. “And so they walk, slowly / Finding themselves on the forest floor / Memory of the night before dissipating, evaporating / With each warm breath,” she intones in the evocative, spoken middle passage.

“The Forge” begins in big, bold brassy (in both senses), ominous, things, the bass spy-movie percussive, the organ a more complex balm. It subsides into a smoother piano essay, a little bit Monk, and you find yourself lost in that piano world, even a touch of the Cuban about its flow; the brass and drums stir themselves and hurry on into a more mantric space, just in check and in service to that complex Moorish motif, doubling down and collapsing, spent, into an ambient swirl. “Blue Speck” is a seductive, wafting exploration of outright funky flute to close.

Magma, in essence: Although I’ve given a rundown of the eight tracks and sure, sprinkle them individually over your playlists, that can only be a good thing; I venture that this album is maybe best approached as a suite of eight songs, so tightly and atmospherically interwoven is it. It’s a place to tarry awhile, perhaps over a strong, black coffee and a hookah; a place to really get to know. If the recent works of Jimi Tenor or last year’s album by Huw Marc Bennett spice your world, then I really must advocate you step right in.

And with the album release coming now, in the darkest, most trudging depths of the Northern European winter, it’ll act as a metaphorical shot of vitamin D for your soul. Recommended.

Black Flower’s Magma will be released by Sdban Ultra on January 28th digitally, on CD, trad black and limited smoky vinyl; you can order yours now from Bandcamp.

Connect with Black Flower elsewhere online at their website and on Facebook and Instagram.