The Critics Riff On Burnt Sugar
From “Ten of the Best, From Under the Radar”
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
“ 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 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.”
- John Murph, Jazztimes.com
“Burnt Sugar come on like a birthing machine for possibility. Never
quite sure what they'll produce next - you'd be crazy to ignore them. Impossible
to disregard anyway, they come on irresistibly, loud, hectic, wild...”
- Colin Buttimer, The
BBC
“
...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,
“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, Rolling Stone.
“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.
“Greg Tate's live freestyle orchestra semi, like fucking owned the whole black people as masters of their instrument thing this year, and when they entered the studio, ancestral blessings rained on them.”
- dream hampton, Best of 2000.
“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
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