DARIUS JONES
NPR:
“The raw, full-throated cry of Jones' alto saxophone has long been one of the visceral pleasures of the improvising avant-garde. On this galvanic and challenging album, he nestles that sound."
— Nate Chinen, NPR
"This is a fearless, even boisterous record... Jones’ writing and playing reach their apex. Surprises abound: springy violin plucks, violent sax stabs, and, most frequently, rhythmic surges that have the force of massive waves. It’s all part of keeping the process right up front."
— Mark Masters
"The avant-gardist Darius Jones has such a distinctive sound on the alto saxophone — widely dilated, yet so rough it could peel paint — he could make a living off his tone alone. But he also has a fiercely innovative streak as a composer. Now he returns with a wide-ranging new album showing off both sides of his talent, “Fluxkit Vancouver (Its Suite but Sacred),” with a string section in prickly repartee with Jones and the commanding drummer Gerald Cleaver."
— Giovanni Russonello
"Flashes and streaks of avant-garde and free jazz, washes of classical/chamber, post-jazz, post-bop, and more. But cataloging the performance’s qualities is to turn a blind eye to its brightest personality traits, which, by and large, are pretty damn ineffable."
— Dave Sumner
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The Wire
Issue 482 (cover story)
- #1 Jazz & Improv
- #3 Top Releases 1-50
"fLuXkit Vancouver (its suite but sacred) is a riveting work of creative music... a moving celebration of community and friendship."
—Stewart Smith, The Wire
PopMatters: The 17 Best Jazz Albums of 2023
“In a career of high-concept creativity where Jones has written for a cappella voices and electronics as well as standard jazz quartets, this is his most sumptuous and ambitious project yet.”
— Will Layman
JazzTrail: The Best 30 Jazz Albums of 2023
“Jones, capable of fleeting articulated flurries as well as even-tempered sequences, confirms he’s one of the most interesting saxophonists of our times.”
— Filipe Freitas
"It’s been a few years since I opted out of end-of-year polls, but if I was still in the game this would be one of my choices for this year. The “jazz with strings” sub-genre has been with us since at least the bop era, and this release for me takes a revered place within it, not least because it’s the work of an artist with a view for the future of creative improvised music and the possibilities it might still offer as well as an eye for the past."
— Nic Jones
"The roots of this work reach down into other jazz meets chamber works like Ornette Coleman’s Skies of America or Kronos Quartet’s collaborations with John Zorn but there’s something that feels so much more tightly controlled and compact about this work — a ticking time bomb of screeches and drum assaults and sax screams that threaten to cause widespread damage to the world’s infrastructure."
— Robert Ham
