Burnt Sugar [extended]

• Blood on the Leaf: Opus No. 1 [Trugroid, 2001] A-
• That Depends on What You Know: Fubractive: Since Antiquity Suite [Trugroid, 2002] A-
• That Depends on What You Know: The Sirens Return: Keep It Real 'Til It Flatlines [Trugroid, 2002] ***
• That Depends on What You Know: The Crepescularium [Trugroid, 2002]
• Black Sex Yall Liberation & Bloody Random Violets [Trugroid, 2004] ***
• All You Zombies Dig the Luminosity [AvantGroidd, 2017] ***
• Angels Over Oakanda [CDBaby, 2021] A

See Also:

• Burnt Sugar/The Arkestra Chamber

Consumer Guide Reviews:

Burnt Sugar/The Arkestra Chamber: Blood on the Leaf: Opus No. 1 [Trugroid, 2001]
Like most major writers, Greg Tate--the young Ironman turned older-than-that-now Ionman--pursues music at his peril. When I've heard him play guitar in public, I've only wished he'd go finish his novel--or, better still, write more about music. So call this dimly mastered Black Rock Coalition spinoff living criticism. It's electric Miles with soul, "Maggot Brain" with a Ph.D., the Hendrix-Evans band of dreams, the underwater funk some hear in A.R. Kane. With due respect to badmuthashutyo guitarist Morgan Michael, Mandarinsprechen banshee guitarist Rene Akhan, and unstemmed crimson tide guitarist Kirk Douglass, the standout player is piano virtuoso Vijay Iyer, and let us now praise Human Switchboard and Freedy Johnston stalwart Jared Michael Nickerson, though Tate hisself wrote the basslines. But the ensemble is all, and the opus subsumes its parts. A-

That Depends on What You Know: Fubractive: Since Antiquity Suite [Trugroid, 2002]
If electric Miles could make the double-LP his métier, why shouldn't eclectic Greg try triple-CDs? Especially since he's got the humanity and business sense to sell each disc singly. This Lester Bowie tribute is the hit because within the permissive parameters of Burnt Sugar's art-ensemble ambience it's the loudest and fastest, and because the blood never leaves its pulse. As does happen on these discs, the best theme was written elsewhere (by Monk, with Miles immortalizing). But the whole thing will fill your earhole from the moment its chant-and-percussion rises out of the ooze. MVP: pianist Vijay Iyer. A-

That Depends on What You Know: The Sirens Return: Keep It Real 'Til It Flatlines [Trugroid, 2002]
atmosphere gathers fitfully into song (and rap), then disperses beautifully ("[Bas] Kiss," "Two Bass Blipsch") ***

That Depends on What You Know: The Crepescularium [Trugroid, 2002]
"If There's a Hell Below"

Burnt Sugar/The Arkestra Chamber: Black Sex Yall Liberation & Bloody Random Violets [Trugroid, 2004]
wish Tate edited his music like he edits his copy (which doesn't mean perfectly, believe me) ("Funky Rich Medina," "No Direction Home I"). ***

All You Zombies Dig the Luminosity [AvantGroidd, 2017]
Greg Tate's permanent floating black-bohemian-nationalist big band speaks its truths to power and its beauties to the grays ("The Charmer," "Yung Black & Vague," "Black Fros Black Gold") ***

Burnt Sugar/The Arkestra Chamber: Angels Over Oakanda [CDBaby, 2021]
It was only when I witnessed Greg Tate deploying more brains and heart than any of the other star commentators who render the Miles Davis documentary Birth of the Cool such food for thought that I realized I'd been flummoxed by his 20-year-old band's latest release because it honored '70s Miles, on sheer electricity always a key influence but never before adduced with such revisionist reverence. Here be two tracks of free and two of vamp, neither loud much less abrasive, in a 39-minute gambol we might as well call an Agartha offshoot that aspires to the listenability of In a Silent Way. Tate may have had nothing of the sort in mind, but he won't mind if you do. The only trumpet is Lewis "Flip" Barnes's in the opener. Miles didn't play that much trumpet back then himself. A