Artifacts

Black Flower is a Belgian quintet led by multi-instrumentalist and composer Nathan Daems. Their sound offers a unique interpretation of the Ethiopian jazz developed by Mulatu Astatke, Mahmoud Ahmed, and Hailu Mergia, wed to post-bop jazz, funk, Afrobeat, dub, and Balkan and East Asian sounds. They made their debut with 2014's Abyssinia Afterlife, weaving brittle yet elephantine beats into tight, arpeggiated grooves shot through with blasts of baritone sax and wah-wah-driven organ. While 2017's Artifacts centered on Ethiopian folk melodies joined to skittering beats and soulful improvisation, 2019's Future Flora offered a more Western touch with Romanian influences stitched into the mix. 2022's Magma shifted gears to treat Karel Cuelenaere's antique Farfisa organ with a large palette of electronic textures while massive dub effects were added to the rest of the arrangements.

Nathan Daems (Ragini Trio, Echoes of Zoo), a conservatory-educated composer and multi-instrumentalist, founded Black Flower in 2014. In addition to playing saxophones and flutes -- Western, Turkish, and Ethiopian -- he also performs on electronics and percussion. His bandmates include Texas-born cornetist Jon Birdsong (Beck, Calexico, Neurosis), jazz drummer Simon Segers (Marc Ribot, Louis Sclavis), bassist Filip Vandebril (Lee Perry, Kocani Orkestar), and keyboardist/guitarist Wouter Haest. After rehearsing for a couple of months, Zephyrus Music and De Werf Records teamed to release their debut album, Abyssinia Afterlife, late that year. Black Flower hit the club scene and the road, touring across Europe. They played high-profile gigs opening for visiting international musicians while headlining their own shows at home.

Ghost Radio followed in 2016. The band considered it an "inbetweener" release and took to the studio intended on recording an impressionistic, abstract, and psychedelic session. The proper album Artifacts followed a few months later. Its music was influenced by Daems' nearly mystical trip to Greece earlier that year.

These titles won Black Flower many opportunities to tour and earned them headline spots on festival stages at home. While they worked the road, it was in short bursts, as all members had other recording and performing commitments. It would be two years before the band released 2019's Future Flora, an album that offered a more Western touch yet was shot through with Turkish, Greek, and Romanian influences woven tightly into the mix. Praised by Gilles Peterson, who featured it on BBC Radio 6, the album was picked up for rotation by Worldwide FM, Jazz FM, and BBC Radio 3.

Haest left the group shortly after its release to pursue his solo and studio career. He was replaced by Karel Cuelenaere (Jamaican Jazz Orchestra) on Farfisa organ and clavinet. Black Flower's first single with the organist, "O Fogo," was issued in October 2021 and followed by "Morning in the Jungle," which featured vocals by hitmaking Belgian singer/songwriter Meskerem Mees, winner of the Montreux Jazz Talent Award in 2021. Given the high-profile participation of the latter, the track charted. In January, Black Flower released Magma, a set that utilized the sound of Cuelenaere's keyboards as a set centerpiece. In addition, Daems added a bevy of electronic textures and dub effects into their psychedelic brand of brittle, funky jazz. ~ Thom Jurek