أحمد [Ahmed]

Reviews

19th Annual Francis Davis Jazz Poll. 2024 

An international poll of over 200 jazz journalists and critics (mostly US with a few Europeans and two Stuart Nicholson and Richard Williams from the UK who are asked to rank their top 10 albums of the year. Their lists are subsequently amalgamated into a top 60 list.

10th      AHMED Giant Beauty 

Most of the 60 albums were by established US artists on major labels.

Tom Hull who co-ordinated this year’s poll commented "If we had a system for handicapping records — compensating for how little known the artists were, how poorly distributed the labels, how little publicity they got, and possibly how un-pop the music was — their placing would be an unprecedented triumph. They’re only the second UK/Europe album ever to crack our top 10 (the first was Sons of Kemet in 2021, but on Universal’s Impulse! 

THE WIRE – The Wire celebrates and interrogates the most visionary and inspiring, subversive and radical, marginalised and undervalued musicians on the planet, past and present, in the realms of avant rock, electronic music, hiphop, new jazz, improvised music, modern composition, traditional musics and more.

AHMED Giant Beauty was their number ONE album of 2024 (all musics)

JAZZWISE – UK mainstream jazz mag

AHMED GIANT BEAUTY was their highest ranking UK recording of 2024

AHMED has deep Derby connections. Seymour Wright grew up in Derby (in Derby Jazz even). He's the son of Geoff Wright who’s been running Derby Jazz since 1982 and helped on the door at dozens of Derby Jazz gigs when he was a kid and first met Pat Thomas when Pat stayed at the family house when playing and leading workshops for Derby Jazz over several years. Derby Jazz was very early on Pat Thomas’s case. He first played for us in 1986 and we have been one of his most consistent promoters.