“Really cool” – Gilles Peterson, BBC 6 Music
WARNING: an interplanetary experience incoming.
If you wish.
This recording by a loose collective of musicians who each leans in a different way into the vastness of jazz is hard to classify as the flavours are so unique.
They call themselves the Council of 9 and if you close your eyes they will take you towards truth, beauty and goodness.
One. Two. Three. Music is patterns. Chris and his Council are pattern-makers extraordinaire.
From the solitary opening announcement and through to the end of the nine tracks I was led on a journey of washes of colour and coordination. And narrative. The arc of the piece is one of tentative exploration, discovery, understanding and finally, enlightenment. I was taken on a toe-tapping journey to a wholesome peace.
All the people involved in making this record are supreme practitioners of the highest calibre at the very top of their fields and the admixture of all the different flavours is intoxicatingly refreshing. There are so many unflagged departures and twists but I arrived safely and without having become unseated as the whole seemed to follow its own path which although it was not visible to me each turn was more and more unexpected and as a result, more and more delightful. An exotic ride to an esoteric destination without the constant interruptions of a tour-guide telling me where to look. Jazz messengers for our times.
Somewhere in the grey matter I have a vague remembrance of a Council of 9 but who or what or where I do not recall and I do not wish to chase anything of philosophical substance until after the sounds subside as the facts may spoil the visceral nature of the experience. There is something clever going on here with those tantalising titles but I shall leave you to conduct your own research and form your own conclusions which may , I suspect, be the point.
Julian Stewart Lindsay
May 15th, 2026
