The London jazz musician’s latest stakes out a middle ground between spiritual fire and smooth jazz.
Powered by drummer Yussef Dayes and keyboardist Henry “Kamaal” Williams, 2016’s Black Focus —the duo’s lone release as Yussef Kamaal—neatly mirrored the renaissance of jazz out on the West Coast helmed by Kamasi Washington. Uncluttered yet rhythmically deep, Black Focus also revealed the true range of UK jazz; its ready assimilation of hip-hop, R&B, Afrobeat, dubstep, and broken beat set the stage for the likes of Shabaka Hutchings, Kokoroko, and Ezra Collective to rise up in its wake. But Dayes and Williams soon splintered, never building on that keystone.
Yet, with each passing year, Black Focus grows in importance and resonance. It continues to inform Williams’ subsequent releases, from his house music-indebted productions as Henry Wu to the group he helms now; he’s even adopted Black Focus as his label name. Following from 2018’s The Return, Wu Hen forges further into jazz-funk territory, staking out a middle ground between the spiritual fire and the glossy textures of smooth jazz, a terrain that keyboardist Lonnie Liston Smith himself mapped back in the 1970s.
The songs themselves seem aware of that disparity, with neighboring tunes serving as subtle variations on a shared theme. The needling synths and vocal ad-libs that jolt “One More Time” impart a craggy feel, but Rick Leon James’ supple bass throbs even it out, while Williams’ shimmering keyboard accompaniments find more space as we suddenly slip into “1989.” A decidedly more mellow take on the same groove, Quinn Mason’s buttery saxophone mixes eloquently into swells of scored strings, which come courtesy of guest Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, the L.A.-based multi-instrumentalist and arranger.
“Toulouse” and the subsequent “Pigalle” evolve in similar fashion. Williams puts away the keyboards and reverts to piano to state the lovely theme, when he’s joined by Mason’s breathy sax and pizzicato strings. As Williams’ comping turns choppy and James’ acoustic bass runs quicken, the piece opens up into “Pigalle,” which moves the sound into Maiden Voyage-era Herbie Hancock territory, flowing like a tributary into an open sea. For all of Williams’ penchant for blending together the electronic textures of different eras, the in-the-studio feel of this post-bop jazz throwback stands out, feeling spontaneous rather than carefully deliberated. Even Mason’s otherwise unobtrusive horn pushes to its harsher register, giving the song a harder edge. A similar trick occurs between the pliant balladry of “Big Rick” and the disco groove of “Save Me.” Drummer Greg Paul flips to double-time and Williams gets within shouting distance of the off-kilter dance tracks he makes as Henry Wu. As he toys with the filters on his synths, the song evolves yet again into “Mr. Wu,” leading to the kind of infectious jazz-funk that could slot into a Theo Parrish set.
Atwood-Ferguson’s arrangements to the set are the clear stand-outs, adding yet another era of musical tradition for Williams to draw upon (in this instance, the opulent charts crafted by the likes of David Axelrod and Gil Evans) and new textures for his group to react to. Yet the gorgeous opener “Street Dreams,” which foregrounds Atwood-Ferguson’s work, feels interrupted. The use of harp and orchestrations hearken back to the likes of Alice Coltrane (a touchstone for the Angeleno), but just when the piece seems like it’s about to achieve lift-off to a higher plane, it instead comes to an abrupt halt at two minutes.
Williams’ music emphasizes the malleability and evolution of sound across styles and eras, even drifting into an R&B track voiced by the up-and-coming Lauren Faith stashed away near the album’s end. But the continual stylistic shifts make stretches of Wu Hen feel fidgety, hurriedly racing off to somewhere different rather than lingering and deepening its focus.
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