Kamaal Williams Trio at Alte Feuerwache Mannheim
Kamaal Williams Trio at Alte Feuerwache Mannheim
On Thursday the 11th of January, I traveled up to Mannheim from Freiburg to catch British jazz keyboard player and music producer Kamaal Williams play one of his German tour dates. Normally I wouldn’t bother traveling over an hour by train to see a concert, but something about Williams and his music is very exciting to me. Admittedly, I wasn’t sure what the music would actually sound like since Williams and his former bandmate Yussef Dayes recently split up to do their own projects. Williams has put out solo work under the alias Henry Wu, but there is not a great deal of music by Williams and his new trio on the internet at the moment. **On May 25th 2018 Kamaal Williams released a new full length album entitled 'The Return'**
Listen to 'The Return' for free
My strange faith in Kamaal Williams was sparked last spring, lets call it mid February 2017, after the album Black Focus popped up in my Youtube recommendations (long live the current Youtube algorithm). Black Focus was released in 2016 by Yussef Kamaal (Kamaal Williams + drummer Yussef Dayes) and quickly became a defining album of the current UK jazz scene. The album combines jungle influenced drum breaks and moody keyboards in a sound which to me feels like London. Revolving around sharp lines of rhodes, bass and menacing synths, the album transitions naturally from sections of cosmic elegance to the bleak and spooky. Notable for its authentic ‘live-jam’ feel, Black Focus surges with an energy which I find is often lost in the recording process for many jazz records.
Although I couldn't be sure what to expect from Kamaal Williams and his trio, the excellence of Black Focus and the blissful sonic imprint it left in my brain convinced me I had to see the band perform. The show took place at Alte Feuerwache, an old Firehall in Mannheim.
Kamaal Williams’s trio is officially comprised of Williams on keys, Pete Martin on bass and McKnasty (aka Joshua McKenzie) on drums. The trio confidently took to the low, intimate stage as Kamaal introduced the band. He explained that British drummer Dexter Hercules would be filling in for McKnasty that night, and that we were all “in for a treat”. Kamaal didn’t explain where McKnasty was.
It quickly became clear why Williams speaks so highly of drummer Dexter Hercules. As Williams dropped rhodes chords into place and Martin performed winding excursions up and down his bass, Hercules’s drums crackled explosively on the left side of the stage. Hercules played with a relaxed aggression, adding punch but also a heightened intricacy to the music. Exclamations of delight could be heard from the crowd when Hercules performed creative, hard-hitting fills or switched from driving rhythms to discreet but chillingly precise cymbal work during his band mates’ solos.
At certain points in the show I found myself unsure where to look. The trio’s sound was harmonious and cohesive, but not for a lack of complexity in each musician’s playing. Quite to the contrary, the complex, swaggering style of the trio actually seemed to facilitate the perfect slotting of each instrument into the uptempo grooves, no matter how frantic or syncopated things became. My attention drifted to (or rather became locked on) one musician at a time. The musicians appeared deeply focused yet also psychically aware of one another.
Williams juggled a rhodes and several other keyboards throughout the set, adding momentum and more complex arrangements to the tracks. Williams is known for his use of rich, expressive synth sounds. His synths are often computery and alien sounding, but in my opinion, their unpredictable nature adds a paradoxically human feel to the music.
The band played several songs from Black Focus, along with new pieces from Williams’s current project. The band’s sound bore some resemblance to the Yussef Kamaal aesthetic, but it was also very different. The style of drumming and William’s keyboard work certainly recall the sound of the now defunct Yussef Kamaal, but the sound of Williams’s new trio is different somehow - perhaps their sound can best be described as a more joyful permutation of Yussef Kamaal.
Kamaal Williams trio performing at New Morning, Paris in March 2018
The performance by Kamaal Williams and his trio was punctuated by playful motifs of squelching keys, and equal parts humorous and impressive instrumental battles between a grinning, standing Kamaal, a dancing Pete Martin and the seated and surgical Hercules. The audience seemed to relax the moment Williams took the mic to introduce his band at the start of the show, and it seems that Williams’s palpably happy, confident personality has had a similar impact on the band’s sound.
The trio’s music seems like a reflection of Williams’s own sensibilities - energy, skill and precision are important, but so is the occasional touch of humour. The music was complex but it was also danceable and fun. The mixed audience of mostly German and English fans was captivated by the energy and tempo changes of the music for the duration of the performance. At times it felt as if the highly engaged audience was contributing to the grooves as much as the musicians on stage. At one point, one of Williams’s keyboard pedals broke and he asked an audience member to fix it. While the audience member crouched down and fiddled with the pedal, the band began another song. This scene seemed to sum up the night’s performance and the trio’s music in general: vibe with the situation and the audience, and keep grooving.
By Matthew Douglas
Check out the newly founded Black Focus records for future releases by Kamaal Williams and other similar artists in the burgeoning London jazz scene:
https://blackfocusrecords.bandcamp.com/
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