Credited to the duo Yussef Kamaal (Williams' short-lived project with long-time colleague, drummer Yussef Dayes), Black Focus was an electric, eccentric dervish, a rhythm section record that veered between expansive ambiance, frenetic invention and compositional poise, celebrating fusion-era textures and grooves that London has been using as musical building blocks at least since jungle's love affair with Lonnie Liston Smith and Pat Metheny. Yet this collection of instrumental miniatures also underlines what continues to make the city's music exciting, presenting another chapter in its decades-long rhythm-culture continuum, an inter-generational mix that pushes things forward.įunny thing is, The Return isn't a jazz record at all - a fact made slightly odder by its billing as the sequel to 2016's Black Focus, an album that was partially driven by Williams' keyboards, and which really is among London's recent jazz masterworks. The Return, keyboardist and producer Kamaal Williams' debut full-length as a bandleader, presents ideas about London's renewed flirtation with jazz and improvisation that are both illuminating and misleading.
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