March 2009 “Making Love to the Dark Ages

Well it’s d-day y’all as the Sugar drops it’s first all-studio release in five years on LiveWired/TruGROID. It doesn’t seem that long but that’s what hap­pens with a band that has twenty-minute segues. In other words… time flies by when your mak­ing extended-jammy music. Ya heard!!

The reviews are start­ing to hap­pen and we wanted to give you a taste of what the crit­ics have to say. If you’re already a fan, we love you for it, if you are new to the sugar-express, hope­fully these crit­i­cal tid­bits will whet your appetite, lead you to your favorite music retailer for a taste of the Arkestra Chamber.

On the live tip, it’s been a minute there too, so let’s get this party started at our next hit at the World Famous Blue Note in Man­hat­tan ( 131 West 4th Street off of Sixth Avenue — for reser­va­tions call 212–475-8592 ) on March 27th for their Late Night Groove series. Cost is agree­able, and doors open at 11:30pm with show­time at 12:30am and believe me.… after a minute of silence Greg and the band will have plenty to say.

Blog­Crit­ics Online Mag­a­zine
Writ­ten by Richard Mar­cus
Pub­lished March 15, 2009

“Jazz and impro­vi­sa­tion have gone together like bread and but­ter since the first player stepped out to blow a lead. There is some­thing about the music that just lends itself to allow­ing musi­cians the free­dom to explore all a piece of music has to offer. How­ever, it’s jazz’s free-form nature which seems to have worked against its inte­gra­tion with orches­tral works. Although mod­ern com­posers have drawn upon many other ele­ments of con­tem­po­rary music and tech­nolo­gies, orches­tral and jazz haven’t seemed to be able to find the com­fort zone where they can blend eas­ily…”
read the entire piece here

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DOWNBEAT Mag­a­zine
April, 200
by Bill Shoemaker

Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Cham­ber
Mak­ing Love To The Dark Ages
LIVEWIRED MUSIC 1002
***1/2 stars
Tri­an­gu­lat­ing Afro-futurism and Butch Mor­ris’ con­duc­tion cue lex­i­con is a heady propo­si­tion on paper, but Burnt Sugar’s ring­leader Greg Tate’s approach yields fluid, funk-fortified music. While there are moments that flash with antecedents–
usu­ally located some­where in the mid– ‘70s, but reach­ing occa­sion­ally as far back as the ‘40s-Burnt Sugar has it’s own sound. there’s a cadre of horn play­ers who cover the post-Ornette Cole­man water­front with ease ( includ­ing Matana Roberts and Avram Fefer ), rhythm sec­tions who can lock into a groove but also sud­denly pivot, and a suf­fi­cient array of tex­tures ( some ema­nat­ing from Tate’s lap­top ) and sear­ing walk-ons by Vijay Iyer and Ver­non Reid that morph the ensem­ble sound from track to track.
Burnt Sugar is at it’s elas­tic best dur­ing extended work-outs like the sec­ond sec­tion of “Chains and Water,” “Thorazine/81″ and the title piece. How­ever some of the album’s high points occur in the more tightly scripted pieces like the first part of “Chains and Water,” a throb­bing, harmonica-laced holler fea­tur­ing Lisala, a com­pelling singer. But there are also a few mis­cues in the more struc­tured pas­sages. In the bop­pish tag that con­cludes “Chains And Water,” Lewis Barnes’ trum­pet is frac­tured by a psy­che­delic mix. A syn­the­sized osti­nato threat­ens to sti­fle the album-ending title piece, but vio­lin­ist Mazz Swift pre­vails with a syn­the­sis of Leroy Jenk­ins and Papa John Creach, mak­ing a last­ing impres­sion.”
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March 2009 issue of Jaz­zTimes
Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Cham­ber
Mak­ing Love to the Dark Ages
LiveWired
By Steve Green­lee
“Tate works with a huge array of musi­cians on Mak­ing Love to the Dark Ages, and he knows how to use them. Trum­peter Lewis “Flip” Barnes Jr. turns in a solo on “Chains and Water” that grows more and more dis­cor­dant before the tune takes on a hip-hop bent that becomes an all-out jam in the long mid­dle section—which, in turn, leads into a brief final sec­tion of Ellington-inspired swing. (Whew.)
More wild­ness ensues: The heavy romp of “Thorazine/81” teeters at the edge of chaos for much of its nine-and-a-half min­utes, and an unusual cross of hip-hop and free-jazz-style solo­ing (from bass clar­inet, no less) threat­ens to cre­ate a new species of music on “Love to Tical.” Then Tate goes fur­ther afield, using his lap­top to cre­ate a rhythm of blips and beeps on the bal­lad “Dom­i­nata” and a back­drop of noises on the 18-minute title track. And what a tune: Mys­te­ri­ous, tense, and dra­matic, it builds toward sev­eral high­lights, includ­ing a fan­tas­tic solo from bari­tone sax­o­phon­ist “Moist” Paula Henderson.”

Read the arti­cle here

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March 2009 issue of Jaz­zTimes
Greg Tate’s Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Cham­ber: Paint the Sky Red
By Bill Milkowski
“On Mak­ing Love to the Dark Ages (LiveWired), the lat­est record­ing by Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Cham­ber, Tate wields a baton along with a lap­top and occa­sion­ally his trusty gui­tar. The results range from his expan­sive med­i­ta­tion on slav­ery, “Chains and Water,” full of free-blowing con­ver­sa­tions between the horns and soul­ful vocals sup­plied by dynamic singer Lisala, to the elec­tric Miles-ish groover “Love to Tical,” to the dream­like, ambi­ent, Eno-meets-Teo sound­scape “Dom­i­nata,” which incor­po­rates his auda­cious lap­top exper­i­ments, to an intrigu­ing mashup of Tate’s funky “Tho­razine” with the Ron Carter-Miles Davis com­po­si­tion “Eighty-One” (from E.S.P.).
Tate’s ensem­ble com­prises such high-caliber play­ers as key­boardist Vijay Iyer, bassist Jared Nick­er­son, trum­peter Lewis “Flip” Barnes, alto sax­o­phon­ists Matana Roberts and Avram Fefer, bari­tone sax­o­phon­ist Paula Hen­der­son, gui­tarists Ben Tyree and Rene Akan and vocal­ists Lisala, Karma John­son, Abby Dob­son and Jus­tice Dilla X. Spe­cial guest gui­tarist Ver­non Reid explodes with fero­cious metal-esque aban­don on “Love to Tical.” Says Tate of the Liv­ing Colour founder, “Vernon’s like a damn Fer­rari, man! He can start where most gui­tar play­ers cli­max, and then he keeps on tak­ing it out from there. In the midst of an improv piece you just call on Ver­non and … bam! He’s set­ting land speed records.”
read the arti­cle here