Common & Pete Rock
The Auditorium Vol. 1
(Loma Vista)
★★★★

THE AUDITORIUM Vol. 1 brings together two hip hop legends — Chicago-born socially conscious rapper Common and East Coast producer Pete Rock, who has worked with many of the all-time greats.

A Tribe Called Quest, Brand Nubian and De La Soul are cited as inspirations, and there is a definite Golden Age-vibe to the set. 

Common’s lyrical prowess is very much front and centre on tracks like Dreamin’, which gives shout outs to a host of iconic figures, including Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, Stevie Wonder, Yasiin Bey and Maya Angelou. There is a power and confidence to his flow, which is enhanced by Rock’s classic-sounding beats and samples. 

With both artists now in their 50s, the album is a nostalgic listen, and a great addition to the progressive, engaged and cerebral strand of the hip hop genre. 

Joni Mitchell
The Asylum Years 1976-80
(Rhino)
★★★★

THE latest release in Joni Mitchell’s archive series, this five-CD boxset covers the Canadian singer-songwriter’s journey from 1970s jazzy rock to full-on jazz.

Her beguiling 1976 album Hejira, full of restless road songs, stands up to her best work — check out the astonishing Coyote, supposedly about playwright Sam Shepard. 1977’s Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter must have confused many of her fans with its experimental, disjointed tracks, as surely did 1979’s Mingus, her collaboration with bullish jazz legend Charles Mingus, who died before the album’s release.

Shadows and Light, her superb 1980 live set recorded in Santa Barbara, California, is the biggest revelation for me. It sounds magnificent, as it should when you realise her band included Jaco Pastorius on fretless, electric bass, Pat Metheny on guitar, saxophonist Michael Brecker, and Lyle Mays on electric piano and synthesizer.

Pat Metheny
MoonDial 
(BMG)
★★★

70 YEARS OLD this year, Pat Metheny is an absolute icon of jazz guitar — Wikipedia lists his discography as comprising a colossal 55 albums. I’m a huge fan of his epic early 1980s longplayers made with ECM, including 80/81 and As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls.

MoonDial is a solo set of originals and covers, the Missouri native playing a custom-built nylon-stringed baritone guitar.

There are some tender moments when the guitar sounding like it’s talking on tracks like La Crosse and Chick Corea’s You’re Everything. His slowed down take on Here, There and Everywhere by The Beatles is almost unrecognisable from the original. 

The meandering tracks are nice enough but I can’t help but miss the huge, terrifically exciting widescreen soundscapes of Metheny’s jazz fusion imperial phase such as Last Train Home and Two Folk Songs: 1st.