Christian Scott - Ruler Rebel

The Guardian 80

(Stretch/Ropeadope)

Ruler Rebel is the first of a trilogy to be released this year by the imaginative and increasingly popular 33-year-old New Orleans trumpeter Christian Scott – as a commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the first jazz record in 1917, and a typical Scott genre-mash with a undisguised socio-political subtext in African American history.

Scott’s reverence for Miles Davis is soon plain in his softly exhaled, muted sounds against the silky orchestral synth textures on the title track opener. Two New Orleanian Love Songs embrace open-trumpet sweeps over keys loops and hip-hop grooves. The soul-jazz sound of vocalist Sarah Elizabeth Charles (for whom Scott has previously produced) mingles with ghostly brass tones on Phases, and the sensational young jazz flautist Elena Pinderhughes commandingly swoops through the handclap-driven Encryption and the church-bell synth mimicry and terse percussion of The Coronation of X aTunde Adjuah.