Review Summary: Jazz-soul-funk that works very well
The cheekily titled 'Wu Hen', with it's album cover concept being a comment on the current pandemic situation, is a new album from jazz-fusion artist Kamaal Williams.
Now, while Kamaal Williams is listed in the jazz genre, this music actually transcends many styles, including soul, funk and classical among others. They all blend seamlessly here. Given that all the musicians featured here are all professional, and a crisp, bass-heavy, slightly dreamy production sound, the result is smooth, silky, velvety and dreamy.
Most of the songs run into eachother, and the listener will not even realise one song ended and a new one has begun, it will be something subtle that indicates that change, like a change in tempo, one instrument becoming more prominent, a brief pause... such is the smooth continuity on here, and luckily we have passed on from the days of CD where there would be a gap as the next song was loading.
To really get a feeling what 'Wu Hen' sounds like, it could be described as having a distinctly funky and insistent rhythm section, with a very prominent bass guitar. The rhythm sometimes goes almost disco on us, but not in an electronic-techno way, but just brilliant drumming. This is often accompanied with the sort of keyboards that were prominent in late 70s - early 80s soul music, as well as a lot of saxaphone.
The highlight is almost undoubtedly the three-fer that lands in the middle 'Big Rick - Save Me - Mr Wu'. Big Rick is a brief slow-burner driven by it's tempestuous bass, which, almost completely unnoticed to the listener, seaugues into 'Save Me'. 'Save Me' begins slowly, but over it's 6 minute duration, with synthesisers, saxaphone and other instruments coming and going, steadily gets a lot faster, and as it reaches the crescendo, there's a brief pause, and suddenly the exact same synth line re-emerges, but faster and louder, and this leads into Mr Wu, an absolute STOMPER of a track - dance-able jazz-fusion if ever there was such a thing!
'Touluse - Pigalle' are the two most traditional jazz sounding songs here. 'Toulouse' features the effervescent string section of Miguel Atwood, but this song acts as sort of an intro into 'Pigalle'; grounded by the piano, the saxaphone slowly, slowly but ever so surely builds more energy as the song progresses, reaching the 'summit' as it were (I need more synonyms for crescendo!) before unwinding.
Atwoods strings dominate the brief opener 'Sweet dreams', it leads into 'One more time' which starts off with a perplexing, well, what sounds like a recorded message. Before this puts you off too much, the song quickly becomes a rather snappy 'synth-funk' jam that leads into '1989',a resplendent track with keyboards, saxaphone and, again, Atwoods' strings; another highlight.
Unfortuntely, the album closes on it's weakest two moments - 'Hold On' being the absolute lowlight. The luxurious sounding, technical music on Wu Hen doesn't mesh at all with Lauren Faiths guest vocals, her jagged 'struggles of life' singing style is very out of place against the harps and strings. 'Early Prayer' closes the album with MORE recorded message style talking, adding nothing to the music, before becoming a pleasant if uneventful saxaphone jam.
It was hard to decide on a 4-star rating when the only real vocal track didn't go so well, but the six songs in a row from 1989 (tr 3) through to Mr Wu (tr 8) is truly stunning - this is very well written and superbly executed music. As it is, if you like instrumental jams, or if you ever wondered what a late-70's soul album would sound like if it were instrumental (and more jazzy), this album should be for you. A very strong offering. Not for everyone but should please a lot of people.
