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“We’re gonna-gonna-gonna take over the world,” chants Jaimie Branch with breakneck urgency. “Give it give it give it back-back-back to the la-la-la land.” Her fury in this song, “Take Over the World,” is fueled by her blaring trumpet, Jason Ajemian’s galloping double bass, Lester St. Louis’s slippery cello and Chad Taylor’s cascades of drums. And as punctuation at the end of each of many repetitions/variations on that chant, Branch becomes a charging warrior or enraged beast, letting out a fierce “ahhhh-wooooooooo.”
It’s arguably a candidate for punk anthem of the year. But it comes on a collection that is arguably a candidate for jazz album of the year: Fly or Die Fly or Die Fly or Die ((world war)). Branch likely would argue that this is both punk and jazz — or neither. Well, would have argued, She died last year at 39 of an accidental drug overdose at home in Brooklyn, just as she was cementing her stature as an artist…
