Episode 391: Makaya McCraven's 'Universal Beings' and new music from Braxton Cook

To call Chicago’s Makaya McCraven, just a drummer would be doing the multi-talented musical truth seeker a grave disservice. Over the past few years, McCraven has been refining a production technique that mixes live jam sessions and impromptu performances with radically creative editing to produce some of the most exciting jazz of the modern day. On Universal Beings, an album recorded in four different locations with four distinct groups of musicians at each, McCraven seems to have perfected this technique, and the result is one of the best albums of 2018. Meditative, complex, smooth, and even funky, Universal Beings points to blindingly bright future for not just McCraven, but jazz as a whole.

PLUS! Saxaphonist, vocalist, and DMV native Braxton Cook is back with a new album No Doubt, and we’ve got a listen to it’s title track to help you get hip to this remarkable talent!