Adrian Younge

★★★ The American Negro JAZZ IS DEAD. CD/DL/LP

No punches pulled on LA musician/producer’s tract on racism through the ages.

Issued in tandem with a podcast (Invisible Blackness) and short film (TAN), Adrian Younge’s ambitious album splices all-analogue blaxploitation sounds with psychedelia. It’s a volatile mix for songs that pay tribute to Margaret Garner and George Stinney, gravely wronged by the white establishment, the sometime Jay-Z and Ghostface Killah producer meshing Linear Labs Orchestra’s strings with his own wah wah guitars, Fender Rhodes and busily tiptoeing bass lines. Loren Oden’s falsetto hymning of his uncle James Mincey Jr and Sam Dew’s impassioned turn on Light On The Horizon are broken up by intense between-song soliloquies (Paradox Of The Positive simply states: “We’ve been marching for years but haven’t moved an inch”) that pall over repeated listens, making for both a chastening and frustrating listen.