Kaleidoscopic Visions

About

Since co-founding the crossover jazz/groove band Sons Of Kemet in 2011, drummer Tom Skinner has become one of the most prolific and compelling players in so-called alternative jazz. His second album as a bandleader combines noirish soundtrack music and post-rock sprawl (“Auster,” dedicated to the author Paul Auster, whose ’80s novels mixed crime-fiction zip with the meanderings of postmodern philosophy), Afro-Cuban rhythms and Philip Glass-like patterns (“Margaret Anne”), the comforts of R&B and the exploratory liberation of spiritual jazz (the 10-minute Meshell Ndegeocello collaboration “The Maxim”). The influences are vast, the synthesis sophisticated, but the effect is pretty much effortless—the kind of music you could space out to, zero in on, play at dinner or absorb in private.

via Apple Music