JAZZ
BY ANDY COWAN
Gregory Uhlmann, Josh Johnson, & Sam Wilkes
★★★★
Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes
INTERNATIONAL ANTHEM. CD/DL/LP
LA players unite for jazzy take on electro-acoustic chamber music.
Bringing together three envelope-pushers from Los Angeles’ vibrant jazz scene, this was never going to be a straight-ahead listen. So it proves. From stuttering, stop-start opener Marvis (first featured on Johnson’s Unusual Object) to the harmonic bass and slowly unfurling melody of Unsure (reprised from Wilkes’s Live On The Green) to Johnson’s transcendent alto-saxophone on Arpy, it plays to their chameleonic reputations. While the lack of percussion focuses ears on the timbre of Uhlmann’s fingerpicked electric guitar, Wilkes’s fragile bass and Johnson’s treated horn there’s familiar comfort in a sweeping, transformative take on Beatles ballad The Fool On The Hill. Carefully layered yet playful, these continually unfolding forms are less about exposition and more about restraint on a sweeping marvel of the unknown.