Well-connected (from Nick Cave to Thom Yorke), the California-born musician now based there revisits Funkadelic and Frank Ocean, all while treading in Miles Davis’s footsteps.
One had to pay close attention, sifting through the credits of Red Hot Chili Peppers’ albums Mother’s Milk (1989) and Blood Sugar Sex Magik (1991) to realize that Flea, their energetic bassist, also knows how to play the trumpet. A live archive from 1993 even shows him blowing into his horn beside Nirvana during Smells Like Teen Spirit.
The Australian-born, adopted Californian had to wait until he reached his sixties to realize a teenage dream — before punk or funk thrust him into orbit, he swore by bebop. If he fulfills this late-night jazz longing, he does so with confidence and a clear vision that keeps him from the “school exercise,” as evidenced by the memorable Morning Cry, a free-form and hypnotic creation.
Around ten minutes of mutating improvisation with Warren Ellis
Surrounded by luminaries such as drummer Deantoni Parks, bassist Anna Butterss, guitarist Jeff Parker, and saxophonist Josh Johnson, Flea delivers his version as modern, spiritual, and joyful. Partly inspired by Ornette Coleman or Miles Davis, he discovers a remarkable freedom in this transformation into a trumpeter. He can thus segue into a jazz standard, Willow Weep For Me, reimagined here in a spatial fashion with the help of John Frusciante from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and a luminous reading of Frank Ocean’s Thinkin Bout You with a string orchestra.
For Frailed, he lets the groove of his TR-808 drum machine drive about ten minutes of mutant ambient jazz improvisation where Warren Ellis of the Bad Seeds shines on violin and flute. His friend and compatriot Nick Cave also takes part in a cover of Jimmy Webb’s Wichita Lineman, a song-intricate marvel. On this occasion, Flea and the others turn into subdued accompanists, letting Nick Cave’s voice and the composition’s dramaturgy take the foreground.
For the very groovy Traffic Lights, the Red Hot Chili Peppers draw on their elegant network of friends and invite Thom Yorke, with whom they formed the supergroup Atoms for Peace. Yet Flea also adds his own voice in the opening of a rendition of Funkadelic’s electric surge Maggot Brain, where his trumpet takes over from the original guitar.
We mainly hear him sing on two manifesto tracks, the fiery A Plea where he addresses the current climate of civil war in America, insisting that hate is never the solution, and also Free As I Want to Be, a haunting closing of an album that should serve as a perfect entry point for those stepping into jazz.
Honora (Nonesuch Records/WEA). Released March 27. Live in concert at the Alhambra, Paris, on May 28.
