What is genre? Is it a help or a hindrance to the maker and listener? LA’s pioneering label Leaving Records have an answer, flying with the strapline pun ‘Genre All’ and nuturing a catalogue that swerves definition, wide ranging in tone but unified by the drive to experiment whatever the starting points. Now comes news of a soon come album from the partnership of Sam Wilkes and Jacob Mann, which will dock comfortably in Leaving’s refreshing waters. Releasing on 23rd September, the pair’s wryly titled ‘Perform the Compositions of Sam Wilkes & Jacob Mann’ looks set to be a weird and wonderful dive into lo-fi electronic jazz with a contraflow of smooth funk and today pop.
You might recognise Wilkes from his boundary shifting releases with sax illusionist Sam Gendel (also on Leaving) but this partnership with Mann is not a new departure. It goes way back to the pair’s USC music school days and has evolved over their crossing paths in the same bands and on the same sessions. Although Wilkes may be best known as a bassist and Mann for his keyboard work, they are composers, arrangers and multi-instrumentalists in their own right. So their debut recording, shaped from improv-banter in their apartment studio promises to be some conversation, carefree, quirky and naturally flowing.
First preview track ahead of the album, ‘Dr T’ is an enticing lo-fi snippet from the whole script where Nintendo chatter meets rumbling space jazz funk. Dig through the chord layers on top and you find skittering beats, shimmy shaking synth chops plus those juicy bass pops that know just when to scuttle and stop. Incidental, accidental and elemental all at once, it’s a spoonful of surprise flavours in a thick and creamy electro mix.
And this is just for starters, definitely more please…
Pre-order your copy of ‘Perform the Compositions of Sam Wilkes & Jacob Mann’ from your local record shop or direct from : https://samwilkesjacobmann.bandcamp.com/album/perform-the-compositions-of-sam-wilkes-jacob-mann
