Release Date: 5th December 2025
Re-issue of one of the best jazz albums of 2018! Makaya McCraven's Universal Beings took the modern jazz world by storm with its incredible range, having been created out of a year’s worth of recordings from live shows featuring some of the best jazz players out there in Shabaka Hutchings, Nubya Garcia, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Tomeka Reid, Joel Ross, Brandee Younger, and Jeff Parker. The record lives somewhere between a studio and a live record and that's what sets it apart and with its roots in hip-hop and the beat scene, it lives and breathes with a pulsating undercurrent. Out of this universe!
FFO: Alfa Mist, Tenderlonious, Damon Locks, Mammal Hands
"Universal Beings is jazz drummer / producer Makaya McCraven's new album - his most ambitious, elegant and refined work yet. Recorded at 2 intimate live sessions and 2 pop-up "studio" sessions across the "new" jazz hotbed cities of New York, Chicago, London, and Los Angeles, Makaya collaborated with an all-star cast of improvisers (15 musicians in total, including Shabaka Hutchings, Nubya Garcia, Jeff Parker, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson,Tomeka Reid, Brandee Younger and Carlos Niño) to create source material for the signature style of "organic beat music" production he debuted on the ground-breaking 2015 release In The Moment. The result is this epic, double set that represents another breakthrough in Makaya's career as a recording artist, as well as a definitive new work of the exciting global groundswell of next-generation, Black musicians re-vivifying and re-articulating "jazz" in 2018."
IARC22LP11
