McCraven, Makaya: In The Moment LP

Makaya McCraven’s new album is pared from nearly 48 hours of live, improvised performance, recorded at one venue over 12 months and 28 shows. Makaya culled, cut, rendered and remixed the mass of sounds into 19 potent pieces of organic beat music and, as constructed, thusly named, In the Moment.

In January of 2013, Makaya set to mapping out a weekly residency from within a reclaimed bank vault turned contemporary restaurant in the heart of Chicago’s Ukrainian Village. Recruiting friends and frequent collaborators, over the course of the year, the residency became a hotbed for a rotation of Chicago improvisers multifarious in specialization. From local luminaries of post-rock to left-field hip-hop, the stage was made as a proving ground for style experiments based in jazz and hip-hop but faithfully receiving the spontaneous summoning of a host of subconscious influences. From free jazz to krautrock to downtempo house, what they arrived at was a new lexicon within an improvisational framework.

Jeff Parker (Tortoise, Chicago Underground), Joshua Abrams (Natural Information Society, Prefuse 73), and De’Sean Jones (Underground Resistance) were among those who accepted Makaya’s invitation over the course of the residency. Public House Sound Recordings’ founder Dave Vettraino committed himself to the task of recording and mixing every performance that occurred. From those raw hours of performance, Makaya trimmed and hewed the honey pot into an armory of beats, vamps, hooks and arresting moments of instrumental revelation.