Yes, there are very explicit echoes of Coltrane in his playing & compositions, but also of Pharaoh Sanders - especially on Akhenaten & Guiding Spirit. Creation & Sacred Dimension are closer to Alice Coltrane with Sanders. His most recent, Sounds Almighty, delves deeply into roots & dub reggae - again, it's uncanny just how much this record sounds like it could have come out of Scratch Perry's or King Tubby's or Keith Hudson's studios in the mid-70s. I think that you're right to suggest that his records veer close to pastiche...but I think there's enough going on to make them worth listening to on their own merits.
These days, "pastiches" and tributes and echoes and copies, intentional or not, are often valued just as highly as original work. When a listener discovers Coltrane and Birchall in the same year, who's to say who is copying whom?
Actually,Miles didn't pioneer modal jazz, though he did popularize it. If you want the roots of modal jazz, check out pianist Lennie Tristano, 1949.
Of course Coltrane's '60s quartet with McCoy Tyner (another major modal player) was big in this arena too, before the saxophonist turned more decidedly free.
I'm coming late to this thread and haven't read it all, suspecting others have suggested modal stuff, but had to cite Tristano, as he's often overlooked.
FYI, I was at the premiere of Wild Man Dance in Wrocław, Poland. A staggering show, to say the least.
John Kelman
Senior Contributor, All About Jazz since 2004
Freelance writer/photographer
The new ep from Maisha - https://maisha.bandcamp.com/ - is superb (especially "side 1"). I think Nubya Garcia's solo on the the title track is amongst the best things she's ever done.
I sometimes think, listening to this band, that their whole musical existence consists in exploring the horizons & the depths of the Africa's that Coltrane recorded for his debut on Impulse! (which is a whoolly good thing, imo!)
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