When I listen to Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew it feels like the music is a living organism that exists somewhere halfway between the physical and the spiritual, a dark vapor that wraps its tendrils around me and drags me into a primal and ancient sea where discord and harmony are yet to be separated from one another—like a primordial soup of sound, a musical version of the moment just before the Big Bang.
There are only a few other albums that have a similar effect on me: Blue Lake by Don Cherry, Mwandishi and Sextant by Herbie Hancock, Bennie Maupin’s The Jewel in the Lotus… The list is short, but add to it Laura Jurd’s Rites & Revelations.
Jurd wields her trumpet like a sword. On tunes like “Offering”, that sword evokes a sense of protection and safety. On others, like “Praying Mantis”, it heralds danger and menace. In every case it cuts deep into the subconscious recalling a time long before the trappings of modernity and science when superstition and ritual were the only way to make sense of the world.
My favorite moment is probably Jurd’s otherworldly interpretation of “St James Infirmary.” In her version of the blues classic, instead of the United States’ deep south Jurd puts the infirmary on the edge of some ancient battlefield. There are no nurses or doctors, only a priestess who attends to the wounded and dying through prayer to some dark and mysterious god.
Rites & Revelations is one of the best “avant garde” jazz albums I’ve heard in some time. It’s going immediately into my regular rotation.
Listen
What is “An Album a Day”?
Each day in 2026, I’m listening to an album that:
- I’ve never heard before
- Was released in the last six months (from the time of listening)