I Too Am A Stranger by The Sorcerers - ATA Records [ATA033] FLAC download included with physical items
ATA033:

I Too Am A Stranger

The Sorcerers

A 9 track world fusion album (36m 26s) — released March 8th 2024 on ATA Records

#jazz #world-fusion

ATA Records are proud to announce the new album I Too Am A Stranger from The Sorcerers, following previous album successes The Sorcerers and In Search of The Lost City of The Monkey God, which garnered high praise from Mulatu Astatke Who's this? The Sorcerers? It's cool! This is great. Give me the CD man!" and recent Radio 6-listed 7" single Exit Athens, of which Giles Peterson said, "Great Stuff as always".

I Too Am A Stranger was recorded at ATA Studios by the core Sorcerers trio: bassist (and producer/ATA label head) Neil Innes, drummer and percussionist Joost Hendrickx (Gott Street Park, Eddie Chacon) and reed/flute/vibes/keyboard player Richard Ormrod. Up-and-coming Leeds trumpeter Olivia Cuthill was chosen to augment the brass sections, and regular collaborator Danny Templeman fills out the percussion palette.

As ever, the Ethiopique sound is front and centre, as evidenced in flute features Bebaynetu and Kid Mahout, and the final track, alto sax feature She Who Perceives The Sounds Of The World.

Beyond the Addis influences, I Too Am A Stranger references other unique and striking sounds that have always enthralled members of the ATA family: the declamatory baritone sax-heavy chanbara soundtracks of Fumio Hayasaka [Yasuke In Roppongi, Oromo Moon], the fuzzed-out vibes sound of Vibrafinger-era Gary Burton [side openers The Warrior Code and He Who Kills With One Leap], and Moondog's popping woodblocks [Moth, The Dao Of The Sorcerers].

ATA is particularly proud of the space given to Joost Hendrickx's exquisite drumming throughout the album, and of the opportunity to feature so much of Richard Ormrod's little cosmos of tones and melodies. I Too Am A Stranger is a resolutely maximal endeavour, reflecting the cosmopolitan and cross-cultural networks that comprise our world; wherever we've come from, wherever we are and wherever we're going, we are all new to the future.

Who's this? The Sorcerers? It's cool! This is great. Give me the cd man! - Mulatu Astatke

You'll have heard their music on the show back in February and if you've been in my house in the last 6 weeks cos I've been playing it constantly. It's a brilliant, brilliant sounding record, great playing. Really deep in this universe of Ethio-Jazz that I like, via the route of The Whitefield Brothers and Karl Hector and the Malcouns, if you know what I'm talking about and if you don't know what I'm talking about, it doesn't matter because this track and whole album is awesome. Such a good record this. Your gonna wanna go and get it in your collection. They are The Sorcerers, the album is called I Too Am A Stranger - Jamie Cullum BBC Radio 2

This sounds great! Love the way it's recorded! The dynamics are spot on and the playing is superb. Proud to say its from Leeds! - Nightmares on wax Ninja Tune

**** “leading listeners down rhythmic paths bejewelled with wah wah funk, rolling saxes, flying flutes and vibraphone fills.” - Mojo Magazine

I love this, this is so good! I'm going to be listening to this all week - Jamie Cullum BBC Radio 2

It's really deep, it's really beautiful - it's a great record - Dom Servini Jazz FM

the Sorcerers are another purveyor of what I recently called pulp jazz, effortlessly funky stuff trussed up with all kinds of less-reputable genre signifiers, drawn from library grooves, exotica, lounge music, kung fu movie soundtracks, instro-hipster canned psychedelia. What I love about this style is the way it hearkens back to a time when jazz was a global pop form, when its permutations, high and low, still belonged to night clubs and film scores and radio waves. At their best, the Sorcerers remind us of when jazz was genuinely a world music. The language was spoken everywhere - Aquarium Drunkard

The Sorcerers are not exactly prolific – this is their third album in nine years – but they are a great band from Leeds, influenced by the classic Ethio-jazz styles of the 60s and 70s. And they have succeeded so well that one of their heroes, the great Mulatu Astatke, championed them on his Addis radio show. The Éthiopiques albums encouraged a spate of bands to make use of Ethiopia’s distinctive scales and styles, but The Sorcerers have created a style of their own. Unlike Dub Colossus, one of my favourite Ethiopian-inspired bands, they don’t mix reggae or dub with African styles (though there is a reggae edge to the cool, funky ‘Oromo Moon’), but create soundscapes that would make fine atmospheric film music. Which is perhaps not surprising, as they cite European horror films as an influence. The tracks are instrumental, and based around insistent, slinky or exuberant percussion riffs over which Richard Ormrod (flute, vibes, keys) and Olivia Cuthill on trumpet add Ethio-melodies. From the opening exuberant ‘He Who Kills with One Leap’ to the flute work-out on ‘Bebaynetu’ or the final, alto-dominated ‘She Who Perceives the Sounds of the World’, this is a classy set. - Songlines Magazine

Short review: Album three from multi-tasking trippy instrumental troupe The Sorcerers is fantastic, okay? Oh, as it's you. The Sorcerers make a noise akin to a standoff between BadBadNotGood and Cymande. More Funk than jazz...they often sound like they're scouring an obscure, bugged -out '70's crime flick. I Too Am A Stranger is no exception. Whatever the plot is, it's funkier than horse shit - Shindig

Ethno-jazz downbeats are the cosmos of the core trio Leeds. Maybe that would be already unusual enough, but the Ethiopian influence, wonderful with flutes, alto sax and grooves in African soundscapes staged, but surprising and ultimately inspires just as grandiose as these two prequel albums. Striking tracks like “Yasuke In Roppongi” of average listening habits and create universal ones unique selling points. The fascinating ones get me flute tones on “Kid Mahout” and “She Who Perceives the ”Sounds Of The World” in particular away. An intercultural one journey that takes the listener with the past and the present on the way into the future takes. Mega! - Fazed Germany

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