In the meantime, the London jazz scene needs a plan that, similar to the London Tube, links the stations/bands by colour. Such a map would be practical, as it is barely possible to capture who is playing with whom, when and why. Let’s take Wildflower: Leon Brichard, also plays bass in Ill Considered. There he plays with Idris Rahman, who plays the woodwind section on both sides. Rahman also plays with Soothsayer, the London band that already played jazz when white old men were still shitting their cords in Germany. But today jazz is chic, and the third in the Wildflower bouquet, Tom Skinner, has a big part in it. Like hardly any other record, »Your Queen Is A Reptile« by Sons Of Kemet 2018 has let the hipsters crawl out of their holes. Tom Skinner was on drums. If you don’t know exactly what to expect from this route plan, you are forgiven. Even after listening to the record it is not clear what this is all about. This is not a valuation, more a statement. Because it’s quite enchanting what Wildflowers do on »Season 2«. It’s that kind of relaxed jazz that never loses its urgency, rarely takes itself seriously, but at the same time is drawing an impressionistic painting of reality. Always in the foreground: Idris Rahman’s saxophone (clarinet or flute, on the last two tracks of the album), which misses high variety in the always clean phrasing, but trained on Pharoah Sanders sets the right overblowing moments to open the door to the spiritual world. »Season 2« is a meditation in exhilarated times.

Season 2