Chip Wickham: Shamal Wind

Shamal Wind combines Chip Wickham's spiritual jazz expeditions with hard-won schoolings in the funk. Drawing on influences like Yusef Lateef and Sahib Shihab, the album rests on Chip's many-sided experience as a musician, spanning left-field beat experiments to hard-hitting funk heavyweights. Like the Persian Gulf winds referenced in the album title, which often mark the shift to a new season, this album signals a new chapter for Chip, opening up a newfound energy and inclusiveness in his music, and further expanding on what he achieved in the past year. "Shamal Wind" is a heavy record, built on strong foundations. Following his critically acclaimed 2017 debut, La Sombra, Shamal Wind adds Arab-influenced percussion to the mix, most notably on the title track. Elsewhere, 'Barrio 71' sees him nodding to Shihab: high energy, lyrical and absorbing, with sax and the vibraphone taking the lead. 'Snake Eyes' taps into the meditative exaltations of modal jazz, while 'Soho Strut' nods to the ja