One of the greatest traits for jazz as a musical pursuit is its ability to accommodate many other sounds, approaches, and even genres under its umbrella while renewing itself in the process. You can hear it in Jelly Roll Morton's mutant rumba rhythms, Dizzy Gillespie's Afro-Cuban bop exchanges with Chano Pozo and Machito, and in the experimental, tape-sliced fusion recordings of Miles Davis with producer Teo Macero, on through the funky jazz and hip-hop melds of Guru and Madlib. In These Times, by beatmaker/drummer/mixing desk wizard Makaya McCraven, is an excellent new chapter in this evolution. He is a sound technician whose multidisciplinary approach takes live playing from a carefully curated cast and samples, splices, and sequences it, revamping the audio to satisfy his inner muse and blending the organic and synthetic into holistic compositions. In These Times has been in process since McCraven released 2015's In the Moment. It continued through 2018's Universal Beings and sequels, 2020's Gil Scott-Heron reimagining We're New Again, and 2021's Deciphering the Message, an exploration of Blue Note's vault with a mixing desk and a band. Here he relies on more than a dozen collaborators recorded in five studios and four live performances; McCraven's extensive post-production assemblage happened at home.

1		In These Times
2		The Fours
3		High Fives
4		Dream Another
5		Lullaby
6		This Place That Place
7		The Calling
8		Seventh String
9		So Ubuji
10		The Knew Untitled
11		The Title