Addis Ken

5 STARS

Occasionally, an album comes along that sings to me in such a way that it just leaves me mesmerised, spellbound by its spiritual beauty. Addis Ken (New Day) by Abate Berihun & The Addis Ken Project belongs firmly in this category. It feels like it's somehow channelling the history of an ancient civilisation through its creativity, energy, and musical storytelling.

Berihun, an Ethiopian-born, Israel-based multi-instrumentalist, draws from a deep well of cultural and spiritual lineage. His work sits within a continuum shaped by figures like Mulatu Astatke, yet it expands beyond Ethio-jazz's familiar modal frameworks into something more liturgical, more explicitly devotional. The album channels Ethiopian Jewish (Beta Israel) prayer traditions, weaving them into a modern jazz vocabulary that never feels imposed or ornamental. Instead, the past and present coexist organically, as if they were never separate to begin with.

From the opening moments of "Tefila," Berihun's tenor saxophone emerges as a beautiful voice of invocation. His playing is raw, searching, and deeply human, often shadowed or answered by his own vocals - elastic, grainy, and charged with emotional immediacy. There's a striking physicality to his sound: breath, reed, and body all audible, all essential. When he shifts to soprano, the tone sharpens into something almost incantatory, evoking both lament and exaltation.

The quartet surrounding him - Roy Mor on piano, David Michaeli on upright bass, and Nitzan Birnbaum on drums and percussion - operates with remarkable sensitivity. This isn't a rhythm section in the traditional sense; it's a collective organism. Mor's piano moves fluidly between impressionistic colour and percussive drive, while Michaeli's bass grounds the music without ever confining it. Birnbaum, meanwhile, treats rhythm as texture and ritual, using space as effectively as sound.

Standout tracks like "Addis Ken" and "Jerusalem" embody the album's dual nature: rooted yet forward-looking. They carry a sense of motion - geographical, spiritual, historical - while maintaining a reverent stillness at their core. On "Behatitu Kadus Kadus," featuring Rudi Bainesay, the music reaches a kind of sacred intensity that feels genuinely transformative. The inclusion of recorded Ethiopian priests adds another layer of authenticity, blurring the line between performance and ceremony.

The album is also dynamic and far-reaching in its essence, heightened by its refusal to dilute its sources. There is no attempt to "translate" tradition into something more palatable; instead, the listener is invited inward, into a sound world that demands attention and openness. The production, handled by Mor and the band, with mixing by Dave Darlington, preserves this immediacy beautifully. Every breath, every resonance, every heartbeat of its music feels intentional.

In a contemporary jazz landscape often preoccupied with hybridity, Addis Ken stands apart by achieving something deeper than fusion. It is synthesis at a spiritual level, music that doesn't just combine influences, but embodies them. It honours lineage without nostalgia and embraces modernity without compromise. It's a phenomenal achievement and a sensational listening experience - one to absorb, feel, and return to time and time again. And in doing so, it offers something increasingly rare: a sense of connection and inner healing that transcends time and place.