Kamasi Washington says that, at first, this sixth full-length album is is paean to flexibility. It’s a subject that few musicians of his era are higher positioned to debate. Since making his breakthrough with ‘The Epic’ in 2015, the saxophonist has turn into one of many extra unlikely crossover success tales of current years by taking staple jazz influences and reshaping them so adventurously that he appears to be talking a musical language all his personal; in an period the place the style has turn into a distinct segment concern, ‘The Epic’ and 2018 follow-up ‘Heaven and Earth’ appeared to seize imaginations each in and out of doors of the jazz scene by means of the sheer pressure of their vibrancy.
Ordinarily, an artist having fun with this sort of validation would possibly use it as a basis to forged the shackles off on their subsequent file, however Washington was already within the enterprise of three-hour conceptual odysseys lengthy earlier than he was selecting up Grammy nominations. So while ‘Fearless Motion isn’t essentially any looser or wilder than its predecessors, it’s, because the title suggests, unafraid to wander down any stylistic avenue its creator pleases. On the centre of it’s the aforementioned fascination with flexibility, each bodily – the entire file acts as Washington’s tribute to the artwork of dance – and metaphorical, impressed too by the profound adjustments to his life since changing into a father in 2020.
Accordingly, there’s room for him to each enterprise into funkier, groovier territory – see the impressed George Clinton collaboration ‘Get Lit’ – and provide up slow-burning, ruminative reflection, as on the irresistibly easy ‘Collectively’. The latter observe is an outlier in how straightforwardly it nods to basic jazz; Washington’s regular modus operandi is to imbue his references with sounds of the close to future, like he does when he channels each his hero and occasional collaborator Herbie Hancock and the Austrian synth innovator Joe Zawinul on the audacious ‘Pc Love’, which sees him replace the pair’s pioneering work for the twenty first century.
He meets his contemporaries on their very own present-day stage, too, securing the primary visitor flip by André 3000 since he pivoted to flute and going toe-to-toe with him on the album’s atmospheric centrepiece, ‘Dream State’. ‘Fearless Motion’ appears like extra of a private piece than ‘Heaven and Earth’, leaning extra in the direction of humanism than the spiritualism that has so enraptured Washington previously. The important thing to his enchantment, although, stays unchanged; he makes music that’s apparently limitless in scope and but joyously speedy, even to the informal jazz listener.
Particulars
- Launch date: Might 5, 2024
- Document label: Younger
