William Parker & Ellen Christi - Cereal Music

William Parker & Ellen Christi
Cereal Music
AUM Fidelity
USA, 2025
LP

Absolutely wonderful LP. Known for his virtuosic double bass work on countless wide-ranging jazz records, Parker takes a different tack here, foregrounding spoken word over a series of varied instrumental sketches by collaborator Ellen Christi, interlaced with her gorgeous, wordless singing. It comes off like the square root of late-career Gil Scott-Heron, Jeanne Lee, Tom Waits, and the jazz-wise beatmaking of Makaya McCraven, marbled with an out-there avant streak that evokes the further-flung outer zones of both free jazz and the tape-trading underground. There's just a something special here.