Black Focus cover

Black Focus

Released

Across ten tracks, two of them sub-one minute audio sketches, keyboardist/producer Kamaal Williams and drummer Yussef Dayes with a crack team of premier players — Kareem Dayes and Tom Driessler on bass and Mansur Brown, Shabaka Hutchings and Yelfris Valdés on guitar, sax and trumpet respectively — set out their vision of jazz. Black Focus is a musical amalgamation: partly an update of 70s jazz-funk fusion, and partly forward-looking, leading-edge contemporary jazz. Dayes’ impeccably played and pristinely produced drums are at the centre, each tiny sweep of his brushes, every ghost note and moment of percussive intricacy clear in the mix, and Williams’ cosmic synth washes and electric piano lift the whole thing beyond terra firma. A deep, dramatic and potent album that’s all just so classy and effortlessly cool.

Harold Heath

Suggestions
The Inner Mounting Flame cover

The Inner Mounting Flame

John McLaughlin, Mahavishnu Orchestra
Shout It Out cover

Shout It Out

Patrice Rushen
SHADES OF FLU cover

SHADES OF FLU

Kassa Overall
Colours cover

Colours

Eberhard Weber
Life in Leipzig cover

Life in Leipzig

Terje Rypdal, Ketil Bjørnstad
Electric Funk cover

Electric Funk

Jimmy McGriff
Secret Sauce cover

Secret Sauce

Eric Ghost
Spectrum cover

Spectrum

Billy Cobham
V cover

V

Magic In Threes