Lonnie Liston Smith JID017 Adrian Younge & Ali Shaheed Muhammad

• 1Love Brings Happiness04:53
• 2Dawn02:51
• 3Cosmic Changes03:47
• 4Gratitude03:27
• 5Love Can Be04:28
• 6Fête04:25
• 7Kaleidoscope03:09
• 8What May Come03:54
• 9A New Spring03:08
• Total Runtime34:02

Info for Lonnie Liston Smith JID017

Coursing through the cosmic pulse of Jazz-Funk is the inimitable influence of Lonnie Liston Smith. For over five decades, the legendary keyboardist and bandleader has been a driving force in shaping the genre's sound. Smith made his recording debut as a sideman for heavyweights Miles Davis, Pharoah Sanders, Gato Barbieri and Leon Thomas. He later formed his own ensemble, Lonnie Liston Smith and the Cosmic Echoes which delivered an incredible run of classic albums through the 1970s. His music has served as the foundation for immortal hip-hop samples and ecstatic dancefloor revelry. In late February 2020, Smith headlined Jazz Is Dead’s Black History Month series, giving many jazz fans what would be their last taste of live music before the nightmare of COVID-19 that took over in the weeks that followed. Now, he reunites with Jazz Is Dead to deliver Lonnie Liston Smith JID017 - a full-bloom tribute to the multitude of sonic strains that all lead back to the fingertips of the maestro himself.

Album opener "Love Brings Happiness" immediately bursts to life with drums and guitar accompanied by the sultry vocals of frequent Jazz Is Dead collaborator Loren Oden. The track title becomes an inescapable jolt of encouragement and assurance. In contrast, proceeding track "Dawn" slows things down, opening up for keyboard and synth meditations. "Cosmic Changes" sees Oden again serenade listeners, reciting celestial truths about love and happiness, as the guitar and keyboard float in the background. On "Gratitude" Smith and company temper their groove, with Smith switching onto a grand piano as cymbals shimmer and wind chimes fade in and out, gently recalling Smith's recordings with Pharoah Sanders. Rounding out the trilogy of Oden collaborations, "Love Can Be" slowly ambles through Fender Rhodes, organ, and an unobtrusive groove that takes off the moment Oden enters. On the aptly-titled "Fête", the band creates the perfect soundtrack for backyard soirees, joyous moments with friends spent lingering over a grill as the sun melts into the horizon.

Sounding as if it could have been taken from one of his classic albums released on the Flying Dutchman label, "Kaleidoscope" encapsulates much of what generations of listeners have come to love about Smith- introspective chords that glisten like sunbeams, opening up space for one to dive deeper or to release, a perfect balance of private energy. Penultimate track "What May Come" takes the concept of private energy further, pivoting into funkier territory as Smith's Rhodes cruises like a comet making its once-in-a-century appearance, as horns, chimes, and percussion dart in and out of orbit. Closing the album, "A New Spring" is the thematic crescendo, the climax of the last several meditations. Taken as an entire body of work, JID017 is a triumphant celebration of love's power to heal.

Already beloved by several generations of Jazz, Hip-hop, and Dance music fans, Lonnie Liston Smith still shines as brightly as he did on his most well-known records. In the studio with Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, contemporaries who have enshrined much of Smith's musical trails, the trio excavate and revisit some of Smith's most well-known musical motifs and themes, and in the process deliver a reminder of their lasting poignancy.

Lonnie Liston Smith, acoustic piano, Fender Rhodes piano
Adrian Younge, electric guitars, electric bass, alto & sopranino saxophone, Monophonic synthesizer, clavinet, vibraphone, percussion, Fender Rhodes piano, Hammond B3 organ, Auto-harp, Mellotron
Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Fender Rhodes piano, electric bass
Greg Paul, drums
Malachi Morehead, drums
Loren Oden, vocals

Adrian Younge
is the next generation of soul music. A self-taught musician and recording engineer who has dedicated his life to the study of classic soul music, Younge finds himself at the center of a new soul renaissance with a vision for pushing the boundaries of the music itself.

The story begins in 1998 as the budding hip-hop producer found himself confined by the limitations of the MPC. He began teaching himself how to play various instruments so he could fully realize his vision. First it was keyboards, then drums, sax, guitar, and bass. Fascinated with the sounds of Italian soundtracks by the likes of Ennio Morricone, Younge begins work on the soundtrack to the fictional film Venice Dawn, recording the album intermittently over the course of the next year. What developed was a sound that is equal parts Morricone and Air. Self-released in 2000, the moody, synth-drenched album was entirely composed, arranged, played, and recorded by Younge.

Eight years later in 2008, Younge would find himself at the center of the Black Dynamite zeitgeist. Instrumental in the film’s development, Younge not only edited the film, but also composed the original score, which was hailed as a modern blaxploitation masterpiece for authentically capturing the cinematic soul of the 1970s, from Isaac Hayes to Curtis Mayfield. The album was released by Wax Poetics Records. Adrian Younge solidified himself as a force to be reckoned with and soon went to work writing music for the forthcoming Black Dynamite cartoon series on Adult Swim.

His next solo project, Something About April on Wax Poetics Records, Younge envisioned a new sound that would revisit his earlier, more baroque instrumental work of Venice Dawn and mesh it with the deep, gritty soul of Black Dynamite, eventually deciding to bring everything full circle by releasing the material under the moniker Venice Dawn. It is a heavy, dark mix of psychedelic soul and cinematic instrumentals with hip-hop aesthetics, touching on influences from Morricone to King Crimson, Portishead to the Flamingos, Wu-Tang to Otis Redding. Two songs—”Sirens” and ”Reverie”—were sampled by Timbaland for Jay-Z’s Magna Carta… Holy Grail, respectively on the lead single “Picasso Baby” and “Heaven,” which features Justin Timberlake.

In spring of 2013, Younge released Adrian Younge Presents the Delfonics (Wax Poetics Records), cowritten with William Hart, founding singer of the legendary soul group; as well as Adrian Younge Presents Twelve Reasons to Die, a concept album with Ghostface Killah on RZA’s new imprint, Soul Temple. He and his band, Venice Dawn, toured to support the Ghostface album.

Younge has recently completed Souls of Mischief’s There Is Only Now, and is currently working on follow ups to Ghostface Killah’s Twelve Reasons To Die and Venice Dawn’s Something About April. A new project with A Tribe Called Quest alumni Ali Shaheed Muhammed, The Midnight Hour: One Night in Harlem, 1971 sees the duo creating music that ATCQ would have sampled had these records existed decades ago. “I’m a modern soul artist who, as a hip-hop head, is always making music he hopes will get sampled,” Younge adds. New collaborations with Bilal, Raphael Saadiq, Common, No ID, and DJ Premier are also in the works for future release.

With Lyor Cohen coming on in a management position and having recently inked a deal with Sony/ATV Publishing, Younge is poised for the big leagues. Both parties have been instrumental in forging relationships with today’s top artists with the sole goal of making good music, confident his sound is the next big thing.

“I aspire to be the modern day Quincy Jones. I consider myself a composer, not a beatmaker. Beatmakers make ten beats in a day, I try to make one good beat every two or three days,” Younge acknowledges.

A love child of the Wax Poetics aesthetic, Adrian Younge’s time has come. (Andre Torres)

Ali Shaheed Muhammad
was born and raised in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. At an early age Ali became fascinated with music. His earliest memory of this fascination was toting around a yellow Mickey Mouse transistor radio he received as a gift. “I brought that with me everywhere; I was comforted by the sounds that came from that little box,” he says. Other memories lead to house parties his mother would throw where his Uncle Mike would deejay. It was at one of these parties that the then eight-year-old Ali took control of the mixer and turntables and began his life long musical journey. Ali went from local neighborhood deejay to a world-renowned producer and musician, forming not one but two popular bands.

The first group, A Tribe Called Quest, was where “Mr. Muhammad” partnered up with band mates Q-Tip and Phife. The hip-hop trio recorded five albums. The three stand incontestable as hip-hop classics. Their innovation changed the sound of hip-hop and R & B with jazzy, melodic beats. Tribe exited the world via the same stage as The Beatles and The Police, but their influence still lives with artists like D’Angelo, Common, Erykah Badu, Jill Scott, The Roots and Musiq.

After Tribe, Ali co-founded a new super trio named Lucy Pearl. Here with band members Dawn Robinson and Raphael Saadiq, he was able to explore more of his music abilities. Lucy Pearl fused funk, rock, R & B and hip-hop bringing a new energy and sound which remains to be duplicated.

This album contains no booklet.