Album of the Week: Angel Bat Dawid – Requiem for Jazz // Brekky Boy – Seita

EASTSIDE ALBUM OF THE WEEK PRESENTS

Angel Bat Dawid – Requiem for Jazz

[Released – 23 March, 2023 on International Anthem]

Composer, clarinetist, and singer Angel Bat Dawid has released her third studio album Requiem for Jazz on Chicago based label International Anthem. Requiem for Jazz is a 12-movement suite composed, arranged, and inspired in part by dialogue from Edward O. Bland’s 1959 film The Cry of Jazz – the album is a wide-ranging treatise on the African American story from one of its most astute narrators.

The Cry of Jazz is an incisive critique of racial politics in the USA, and Dawids requiem uses an avant-garde approach to jazz – ardent gospel and disparate afro  rhythms and operatic structures – to tether the exuberant relationship of jazz and the African American experience – this is a relationship of freedom and restraint, of joy and suffering – a manifestation of the triumph of spirit over the crushing prejudice of daily life.

“I want us to have this very wonderful conversation that Ed Bland started over 50 years ago and I want to continue the conversation; because this is a loving conversation that we need to have with each other” – Angel Bat Dawid, Feb 2023.

Brekky Boy – Seita

[Released – 15 September, 2023 on Independent]

Seita is the fourth studio album released independently by South Coast Sydney ensemble Brekky Boy.

Chaotic rhythms interweaved with cinematic swells and minimalist melodies – Brekky Boy blends instrumental electronic jazz to evoke the emotions felt when watching a Studio Ghibli film. Drawing on artists such as GoGo Penguin, Tigran Hamasyan & Robert Glasper, the Montreux Jazz Award nominees have forged a path as pioneers in the Australian instrumental music scene.