Melvin Gibbs Amasia: Anamibia Sessions 2 (Crystal Clear)

Melvin Gibbs’s Amasia: Anamibia Sessions 2 finds him assuming the roles of composer, arranger, collagist, performer, and bandleader — while merging recordings that span decades, featuring an interdisciplinary array of collaborators, into a composite whose amalgam of ideas transcend categorization. Amasia shifts the focus from Gibbs’s solo electronic experiments towards the realm of large ensemble assemblage, recontexualizing performances recorded as early as 2006 within the scope of his contemporary production and in-the-studio contributions from collaborators in 2024-2025. The thrilling results find, for example, the inimitable guitarist Pete Cosey who recorded his parts in 2006 ripping distorted leads alongside the organ of experimental jazz keyboard pillar John Medeski (from 2006) over a drum performance by omnivorous luminary Greg Fox (from 2024). Gibbs’s temporally transplanted sessions defy space and time, but his production and editing — in addition to his drum programming, which takes cues from everything from present-day rap production to frenetic strains of contemporary electronic music — coheres the work into an mosaic of voices that testifies to his horizon-seeking vision as a modern composer. In his role as the spearhead of Amasia, Melvin Gibbs drew inspiration from Teo Macero and Miles Davis’s production / editing on landmark albums including Bitches Brew and On The Corner — with the album Agharta serving as the primary inspiration for the album’s creation. Gibbs began meticulously piecing together Amasia to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of Agharta in 2025, an album whose expansive atmospheres and genre-agnostic experiments inform his work to this day.

A1. Felonious Monk
A2. Gullah Jack Style
A3. The Very First Flower
A4. Dimensions of Underwater Light
B1. Luigi Takes a Walk
B2. O.G. Dreams of Lost Love