Where We Come From (Chicago x London Mixtape)

Drummer, bandleader, beatmaker, catalyst: *Where We Come From* is a remarkable document of Chicagoan Makaya McCraven’s hybrid talents. This mixtape stems from a 2017 jazz summit with some of the UK’s most vital rising players; those intimate sessions serve as raw material for McCraven’s loop-based alchemy. Free-flowing improv gets broken down into swaggering boom-bap, as bright splashes of Joe Armon-Jones’ keys, Theon Cross’ powerhouse tuba, Nubya Garcia’s modal sax riffing, and bursts of crowd noise are spun like objects in a kaleidoscope. Punctuated by MC chatter and sequenced into a seamless flow, it’s a spellbinding mix of live prowess and sample-flipping chops.