Taped live in 1970 amidst the growing Black Nationalist movement and borrowing its title/opening refrain from poet/writer Amiri Baraka, Joe McPhee’s Nation Time combines strains of funk and free jazz in a way that feels like Pharaoh Sanders sitting in with James Brown’s backing band. A legendary figure of the contemporary free music world who’s since played alongside the likes of William Parker, Graham Lambkin, Bill Nace, Mats Gustafsson, Chris Corsano, etc etc etc (the list goes on!), it feels fitting that Superior Viaduct had brought McPhee’s much lauded and scarce album back into circulation. Full-lunged sax and trumpet exhortations, interlocking dual percussion, funk inflected guitar chops and grooves, you’re carried on the back of the rhythm section and gradually led into freer sonic territories. An album not just for jazz heads! -Mitch (Repressed Records)