"...Generating a renegade soundclash of words and music, Bad Mouth blends writer Ishmael Reed's soulful-social-political life lessons with contemporary world rhythms, elemental jazz, funk stylings and even rock asthetics..."
-Mitch Myers, Downbeat

"Ishmael Reed is the Charlie Parker of American fiction."
- Max Roach

"...Reed's best poems conjure up a vertiginous, miltiplicious, irresolvable and thrilling world. It looks a lot like ours."
- Joel Brouwer, New York Times Book Review

"The opening salvo is brilliant. The Meters' monumental funk motherlode 'Just Kissed My Baby' is reprised as a loose jazzy jam with a swaying new melody that rolls incessantly to hypnosis. This tells you everything that you need to know about the omnivorous, pan-black music ethos of Conjure. Any kind of sound, style, riff or groove is up for grabs. Fittingly, there is a line-up of brilliant figures from all areas of the African Diasporic sound world - a world in which the heavy percussive drive of Cuban son is a kind of entrancing lingua franca- and it is assembled around the central voice of seminal writer Ishmael Reed. His novel Mumbo Jumbo provided the raw material which producer Kip Hanrahan, a kind of Cecil B. De Mille-cum-John Cassavetes of creative audio, orchestrated into something quite captivating on Conjure and Cab Calloway Stands In For The Moon many years ago. As with those albums, Bad Mouth is a superlative meshing of music and spoken word with Reed's authoritative recitations punctuating a wounded and somber soundtrack. With subject matter ranging from anti-war addresses to ecological concerns via teasing metaphysics, Bad Mouth is as rich a thematic stew as Reed and Hanrahan have served up thus far, proving that Conjure has become more than an on-going music project but a kind of self-regenerating creative world, an aesthetic in which deeply-rooted African-American folklore melts with post-modernism in a crucible of colourful creativity. ****"
- Kevin Le Gendre, Jazzwise

"**** ...intense Latin-funk riffs, tunes and atmospheres that underscore Reed's poetry, which is by turns coruscating, moving, tender, explosive and political. ...it's a stunning album."
- John L. Walters, The Guardian

"Musical director Kip Hanrahan instigates some of the most visionary, funky, bluesy modern world music amalgams on record with Bad Mouth, alongside his sonic congregation, Conjure. ...a stew of R&B, blues, Haitian music, jazz, rock and Latin grooves that makes the word “eclectic” seem a poor adjective....A huge elevating factor in the sound is Billy Bang's violin, rising like a snake out of the guitar grooves, followed by David Murray's unrestrained tenor sax, going for broke and roaring in an inspired fashion over the rock-steady bass/guitar drums rhythm. ...The set closes with “Prayer to Earth” (by Reed and Murray), a thanks to the celestial orb that has spawned Thelonious Monk, the Alps, the black sand of Hilo, George Clinton's funk and more. Hear this recording and you'll be thanking the earth for Kip Hanrahan, Ishmael Reed, David Murray and Conjure. Magnificent!"
- Dan McClenaghan, ALL ABOUT JAZZ

"Conjure "Mo Ku Lana, Mo Jinde Loni" Bad Mouth
"I died yesterday/I saw vultures/I rose today/I saw doves" goes the chant that opens this swirl of poetic lyrics, spoken word, and deep, pan-ethic groove music. This is the third title in Kip Hanrahan's ongoing collaboration with writer Ishmael Reed, and as the Meters' "Just Kissed My Baby" is delivered in a meticulously funky manner (Meters guitarist Leo Nocentelli is part of the crew), a disturbingly vivid excursion gets a grand kickoff.
VH1 - 1 Week, 10 Songs: Editors' Picks:
Every week our music writers choose 10 must-hear, must-have tracks. Keep coming back to hear which tunes we're hot about.
- Jim Macnie & C. Bottomley

Music Consumer Guide Honorable Mention: Conjure / Bad Mouth -
The return of polycultural prophet Kip Hanrahan, starring Ishmael Reed and some funky jazzmen ("In War Such Things Happen," "Bad Mouth").
- Robert Christgau, Village Voice