Music / Jazz
Review: Kamaal Williams, The Lantern
As one half of Yussef Kamaal keyboard player and producer Kamaal Williams was a big ‘name to remember’ in 2017. Despite their Jazz: Refreshed showcase planned for last year’s SXSW festival falling foul of President Trump’s ridiculous travel ban (drummer Yussef Dayes being Muslim) the band still won the Best Breakthrough Act at the Jazz FM Awards and headlined at Ronnie Scotts before abruptly falling apart. This trio with bassist Pete Martin and drummer MckNasty is the latest phase of Kamaal’s career (he is also producer Henry Wu) and there was plenty of anticipation in the sold-out Lantern before they came on stage.
Kamaal Williams – funk to smooth (and back again)
There was plenty of time for anticipation, too, as they started an hour late. All seemed to be forgiven, however, when Kamaal’s becowled figure swaggered across the stage to his keyboard complex. He immediately began playing space games on the Rhodes electric piano, tinkering with a few arpeggios that eventually fizzled out only to return in Pete Martin’s hands as a fat bass figure over motorik-funk drums. Switching keyboards to a plinky Nord, Jamaal swooped into long held chords in the House style with drums and bass also falling back from energetic funk to make a smooth interlude. Then one spiky nod from the keyboards and it was back to the funky business.
And so it went throughout the set: pretty much all delivered at the same tempo, rarely fluctuating in rhythm, each unannounced number a basic two or three chord riff given a range of tones by the different keyboards at his disposal and driven along by hefty drum chops and the kind of wilfully flamboyant bass playing that gave Marcus Miller his reputation. While the live Yussef Kamaal line-up had the advantage of trumpeter Nick Walters to give some kind of narrative to the music, this performance had no melodic flow at all (unless you count the five note phrase that opened Calligraphy – the only tune to get a name check). The resulting impression was like a rhythm section covering for a missing soloist or a backing band whose singer had been abducted.
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What there was – in plenty – was razzmatazz, chops and a sense of entitlement that the audience was only too willing to gratify. And while Pete Martin could be relied on to deliver a relentless slap-bass solo at any time, and MckNasty was always willing to leap out of his seat and slam dunk a rough hewn drum solo it felt like something big was missing here. I found myself wondering what their Brownswood label-mate Shabaka Hutchings would have made of this rudimentary grooving form of jazz-by-numbers.
Kamaal Williams’ music felt very rooted in the repetitions and simplistics of dance music, and while many contemporary jazz outfits deploy minimalism to great effect this felt more like stretching a not-too substantial point. What it proved to be, however, was a good soundtrack for a Friday night, a DJ set of not too exciting tunes for an about to go clubbing crowd. Having delayed the gig’s start it was a little disingenuous of Kamaal Williams to protest about the venue forcing him to end on time (“I wanted to do a two-hour thing!”) but musically he’d made his point more than adequately by the time they finished.
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