Press

Greg Tate’s Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Cham­ber: Paint the Sky Red

“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.).”

Bill Milkowski
Jaz­zTimes

Fricke’s Picks: Big-Band Sugar and Brawn

“Led by guitarist-conductor Greg Tate, New York’s Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Cham­ber is a fleet-footed big band, slid­ing and swag­ger­ing through galac­tic R&B, brawny jazz and elec­tric funk like a Sun Ra-size spin on Miles Davis’ On the Cor­ner band. Mak­ing Love to the Dark Ages (LiveWired) also comes with extra black rock: kinetic solo­ing by guest gui­tarist Ver­non Reid of Liv­ing Colour.”

David Fricke, Rolling Stone

Burnt Sugar: That Depends on What You Know (Trugroid)

“A multi-ethnic troop of New York birth but no fixed genre, Burnt Sugar expand, con­tract and groove like liq­uid mer­cury across this three-CD suite of jams and dreams, the fol­lowup to the band’s 2001 debut, Blood on the Leaf. The Jimi Hen­drix, Cur­tis May­field and Thelo­nious Monk cov­ers dot­ting each vol­ume (sub­ti­tles: The Sirens Return: Keep It Real ‘Til It Flat­lines; The Crepes­cu­lar­ium; Fubrac­tive Since Antiq­uity Suite) mark the high roads Burnt Sugar take through mod­ern black music. But under the baton of producer/guitarist Greg Tate, the voices, gui­tars, strings, keys, horns and per­cus­sion also sum­mon over­lap­ping echoes of George Clin­ton, the elec­tric Miles Davis of Get Up With It, Lee Perry’s dark magic at Black Ark Stu­dios, plan­ta­tion blues and gangsta hip hop (minus the gats and ‘hos): Elling­ton to the future via the Grate­ful Dead’s Anthem of the Sun. You can buy the discs sep­a­rately, one trip at a time. Or you can get all three and ride ‘em to infinity.”

- David Fricke,  Rollingstone.com
From “Ten of the Best, From Under the Radar”

“A mul­tira­cial jam army that freestyles with cool telekine­sis between the lus­trous men­ace of Miles Davis On The Cor­ner, the slash-and-om of 1970s King Crim­son, and Jimi Hen­drix moon­walk across side three of Elec­tric Ladyland.”

- David Fricke,  Rolling­stone Mag­a­zine

The Sweet Funk of Burnt Sugar

“ If the his­tory of music is a strug­gle for free­dom, imag­i­na­tion, the liq­ui­da­tion of all bar­ri­ers and bound­aries, then the future is here. Greg Tate’s lat­est project, Burnt Sugar (The Arkestra Cham­ber) is the big band of the new millenium”

- Robin D. G. Kel­ley SeeingBlack.com Cul­tural Critic
also from: Beneath the Underground:Exploring New Under­cur­rents in Jazz.

Burnt Sugar Live in Wash­ing­ton DC

“… Burnt Sugar aptly sum­moned the spir­its of chaos and order to sub­lime effect, unleash­ing a fero­cious per­for­mance that left many lis­ten­ers speech­less and oth­ers cheer­ing for more. Lucky for the band, Tate’s under­stand­ing and love for Miles is so deep that Burnt Sugar avoided the pit­fall of sound­ing like a reper­toire band. And no mat­ter how spa­cious the hyp­notic grooves dis­si­pated or abstract the orches­tral col­ors grew, the music’s cohe­sive­ness never fell apart..”

- John Murph, Jazztimes.com

Burnt Sugar Black Sex Y’All & Bloody Ran­dom Vio­lets Review

“Burnt Sugar’s music is oceanic, and there’s been no sight of a shore­line since they set sail in 1999. Ini­tial lis­ten­ing to Black Sex Y’all in its entirety may be exhaust­ing — no smooth stu­dio jam or cold con­cep­tual exper­i­ment, the level of ambi­tion and con­comi­tant length (almost 140 min­utes) raises the spec­tre of indul­gence, but breadth and scope are cen­tral to the group’s endeavour.”

- Colin Buttimer, The BBC

Burnt Sugar: “The Rites”

“ …gen­tle string inter­ludes that organ­i­cally meld into frac­tured ambi­ent washes to deep bass grooves and long gui­tar lines that pro­duce soar­ing, sus­tained aches or dis­turb­ing sub­ter­ranean agitations.”

- Tom Bojko on The Rites, The Japan Times

“It’s elec­tric Miles with soul, Mag­got Brain with a PHD, the Hen­drix Evans band of dreams, the under­wa­ter funk some hear in A.R. Kane.”

- Robert Christ­gau, The Vil­lage Voice.

“Gui­tarists Rene Akan, Mor­gan Craft and Kirk Dou­glass man­age to sound mas­sive yet patient; not at all how you’d imag­ine the typ­i­cal three gui­tar cockfight.”

- Hua Hsu, The Wire.

“The sharp dis­play of tal­ent at Sym­phony Space’s Wall To Wall Miles trib­ute was com­pli­mented by Burnt Sugar’s expan­sive free­lean­ing set. Led by Gre­gory Tate, this enor­mous band incor­po­rated whis­pered vocals, whistling, dul­cimer, and more, held together by the funky bass play­ing of Jared Michael Nickerson.”

- Ann Pow­ers, The New York Times.

“It’s intel­li­gent, car­nal, spir­i­tual and shows a tex­tural aware­ness alto­gether miss­ing from way too much black music right now.”

- Peter Shapiro, The Wire

“Burnt Sugar is a musi­cal all ter­rain vehi­cle; a smol­der­ing con­coc­tion of sounds which teeter dan­ger­ously on the edge and shel­ters the spirit of a post Bitches Brew Miles Davis.”

- Sunil Chauhan, Straight No Chaser