Chip Wickham’s new jazz album taps into the cosmic nature of music
Flautist and saxophonist, Chip Wickham returns with his third solo album entitled Blue to Red. The album features Chip’s signature spiritual flute work alongside a excellent lineup of cosmic jazz band members. Nightmares On Wax colaborator Dan ‘JD 73’ Goldman plays the keys while Simon ‘Sneaky’ Houghton is on double bass. Jon Scott (the drummer from Sons of Kemet and Mulatu Astatke) joins Rick Weedon on percussion while Amanda Whiting gives the album a feeling of other-worldliness with her mystical cascading harp.
The album title, Blue to Red, refers to the world slowly becoming unliveable and reflects Chip’s unease with the current climate situation. The album, not only seeks to forewarn Earth’s possible Mars-like future but seeks to tap into the interplanetary, cosmic nature of music. “It’s a culture crisis rather than a climate crisis,” explains Wickham when talking about his inspiration. “[A crisis] that can only be solved if we go right to the core of how we live as human beings.”
Chip sticks mostly to the flute on this album, and musically, it pays homage to the type of jazz that the likes of Alice Coltrane and Yusef Lateef pioneered — heavily leaning into the spiritual jazz discipline.
Born and raised in Brighton, Chip Wickham has been making music for the last few decades. Wickham initially emerged from Manchester’s modal-jazz scene in the late 90s, and has played and collaborated with the likes of Matthew Halsall, Nat Birchall, 808 State, Nightmares On Wax, Badly Drawn Boy, The New Mastersounds and Grand Central Records, to name but a few.
Blue to Red is out now on Lovemonk Records.
Chip Wickham – Route OneChip Wickham – Double Cross
Chip Wickham – Blue to Red
When life started 4 billion years ago, Mars was also a blue planet. It lost its atmosphere and ever since then, there has been red and dead. It’s our own senselessness that we’re pushing our planet in the same direction. It’s a culture crisis rather than a climate crisis, one that can only be solved if we go right to the core of how we live as human beings. Jazz has always had a big spiritual connection with life and our place in the cosmos, searching for answers and finding meaning above us, but now we need to stop looking up and look around before its too late and blue becomes red.
– Chip Wickham
