James Blood Ulmer – Music Revelation Ensemble – 75th Anniversary Tour

James Blood Ulmer (guitar)
Calvin „The Truth“ Jones (bass)
Aubrey Dayle (drums)

American Revelation Music presents James Blood Ulmer
an evening with a blues, jazz and guitar legend

James Blood Ulmer at 70 is among the most distinctive and influential electric guitarists to arise in the past four decades. James Blood Ulmer has made a career built on left turns and reinvention. And now in the 21st century, Ulmer continues to progress as his most recent history finds him being recognized as an elder statesman of the blues. At the core, however, remains the one and only James Blood Ulmer.

„... the missing link between Jimi Hendrix and Wes Montgomery on one hand, between P-Funk and Mississippi Fred McDowell on the “
– Greg Tate, Village Voice

„Ulmer is a leading interpreter of the blues - transcendent and edgy.“ – Washington Post

„Ulmer still sings as if 20 miles of bad road lie ahead.“ – Miami New Times

Road music: James Blood Ulmer's Music Revelation Ensemble at Vision Festival 19

Some sets are built with variety and pacing in mind; others, like the one I caught at Vision Festival last night by James Blood Ulmer's Music Revelation Ensemble, have a quality of infinity about them. Hearing them is like stepping into a river that was flowing long before you arrived, and will continue long after you leave.
I wish I had a more precise theoretical vocabulary to describe the sensation of Ulmer's playing. The closest I can come is that he conjured some sort of blues-jazz raga—deeply earthy but also wildly exotic. Dramatic but not flashy, and so intensely colorful—a kaleidoscope of moods. Themes introduced, obsessed over, played in a kind of self-round that often reminded me of the cyclic, mantric beauty of Ornette Coleman´s best electric band. Rhythmically driving but elastic, rubato, infinitely expandable. In other words, visionary modern American guitar music, spearheaded by players hip to and fluent in advanced jazz but who choose to set aside away flashy soloing in favor of this eternal (modal?) drone. When this kind of thing works well, as it did last night, you get a kind of snowball-effect profundity. Pieces would end, but the next one would always seem to pick up exactly where the prior had left off. Bassist Calvin Jones providing the droning bedrock, Rochester tossing rhythmic Molotov cocktails Ulmer's way, explosive, post–Billy Cobham fills and punctuations (not to mention the occasional gravity blast—a sort of one-handed snare roll that's become commonly used stunt technique in grindcore); Foreground and background, "soloist" and rhythm section not interacting so much as coexisting—the music just rambling, ambling steadily on. ( Hank Shteamer, Time Out)

Foto © Julia Wesely