The Return
The Return is a natural evolution from the Yussef Kamaal project, mining the influence of visionary jazz but blended with all kinds of texture, sounds and signals from the over-saturated London streets. Notable tracks for old and new listeners are ‘Salaam', 'Situations', 'Medina', 'LDN Shuffle' which features Mansur Brown (of Mansur's Message) and for those die hard Yussef Kamaal fans - they should hear the interpolated roots of 'Strings of Light' in the title track 'The Return’. And that signature Wu Funk can be heard on 'Broken Theme', and 'High Roller'. The Return will be the debut album released on Wu's new label Black Focus Records.
Following the dissolution of the jazz-funk duo Yussef Kamaal, the London keyboardist returns with an urbane, dynamic album that’s deeply rooted in the city’s rhythms.
If somebody were to surreptitiously start playing Kamaal Williams' solo debut album, 2018's The Return, and then assert that it was a vintage "library music" LP of '70s instrumental jazz-funk (the kind of stock commercial recording intended to evince a popular sound of the era, recorded by studio musicians for general licensing to radio, film, and TV, only to be rediscovered decades later by hipster crate diggers and vinyl addicts), you'd have no reason to doubt the veracity of the claim. Except, of course, that The Return, while vintage in aesthetic, is anything but stock. On the contrary, the London-based Williams (a keyboardist who has also produced music under the name Henry Wu), has crafted a vibrantly fractured, psychedelia-dipped, groove reverie in which he and his bandmates, drummer Joshua McKenzie (aka McKnasty), bassist Pete Martin, and sound engineer Richard Samuels, dive headlong into a series of deeply organic jams. It's a jazz-funk dream that picks up where Williams left off with 2016's Black Focus, his similarly funky duo collaboration with drummer Yussef Dayes. Admittedly, the melodies here are elusive at best. Also, there's not much if any improvisation, save for guest guitarist Mansur Brown's acid-drenched frenetics on "LDN Shuffle."
Kamaal Williams (aka Henry Wu) is back with a sparkling followup to his collaboration with Yussef Daves. The pair's 2016 disc, Black Focus,...
Separated on the day of their sold-out show at Koko Camden, the split of the ground- breaking Yussef Kamaal felt like the premature end of something truly
With the 2016 release of Yussef Kamaal's Black Focus, the duo of drummer Yussef Dayes and keyboardist Kamaal Williams (nee Henry Wu) showed themselves to...