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James Blood Ulmer: In And Out

In + Out

If you want to know who put the harm in Ornette Coleman’s free-jazz harmolodics system, then you need to go no further than James Blood Ulmer. With deep delta blues as his foundation, Blood routinely deconstructs the guitar with the abandon of an abstract expressionist, while his soulful, grit-and-gravel voice opens the door for those who like their music a little less, shall we say, aggressively experimental. His latest album In + Out offers a little of both in the jazz sense of the phrase, starting with the slow-cooked “No Man’s Land,” a brilliant slab of Hendrix-meets-Hooker wah soloing and bluesy testifying. Blood is at his best in a trio. With Mark Peterson on bass and Aubrey Dayle on drums, he shifts easily between swinging street jazz (“Eviction”), sophisticated bop (“High Yellow”), hard avant funk (“Fat Mama”) and churchy balladry (“Maya”), always with a style that’s equal parts crafty and unhinged.