Kamaal Kicks It At Komedia
Friday, January 11, 2019
"This ain’t jazz, this is blue funk", declares the evenings’ special guest, an unnamed compadre from Brooklyn who appears mid-set to contribute some stream-of-consciousness verbal meandering, but there’s a definite Gilles Petersen demographic to tonight’s sold-out show, Herbie’s ‘Sly’ is playing as walk-on music, and Kamaal Williams has just been announced as a Love Supreme headliner, so what’s in a definition? Decked out in bucket hat, big shades and gold tooth, Williams looks ready to take on all comers – he pumps up the crowd with some South London hyping then turns to one of his bank of analogue keys and hammers out a simple staccato lick – drums and bass enter with a smash, pounding out a heavy groove – then break – then drop – then break again, as Williams’s lick nags away.
It’s a simple idea, but devastatingly effective and enough to get everyone in the room on board.
Proceedings continue to take shape around a two-note bassline, garnished with slickly soulful licks from bassist Pete Martin’s seemingly endless supply. He and high-powered, hard-hitting drummer Dexter Hercules provide the backbone of the show, while Williams sprinkles textures and floats dreamy extended chords over the top, his palette of sounds chosen to hit all the right reference points – ripples of echoplex Rhodes, retro-synth squiggles, scratchy clavinet stabs. It’s like an extended basement jam driven forward by the relentless power of the crack rhythm team – appealingly uncontrived and infectiously energetic, and in this packed low-ceiling room it’s viscerally exciting.
There’s a synth bass-driven track, but the groove isn’t quite as compelling and some of the energy dissipates. Hercules has to labour his way though an extended drum solo to bring it back, but when the Brooklyn MC joins the proceedings things take an unexpected, not to say bizarre, turn, as an old-school jazzy hip-hop jam mutates into an actual 4/4 jazz swing that speeds up under the MC’s repeated yelps of "Hey Taxi", like a beatnik poetry slam. So, maybe it sorta is jazz after all.
It’s time to break out some of the Yussef Kamaal back catalogue, and the crowd’s energy pulls right back up. Williams' MO has developed along similar lines to ex-colleague Yussef Dayes since the split of their joint venture; long, organic jams based around minimal themes but strong sonic identities, kept afloat by the sheer energy of the performers. If Dayes has picked jungle as his template, Williams defaults to a high-energy funky house, and ‘Lowrider’ is his mission statement. There’s room for some shredding from the superb Pete Martin, and for Hercules to pose for selfies with the girls in the front row – a good-natured, freewheeling party vibe that’s shared out among the crowd and keeps everyone engaged to the end; no-one seems too worried about what genre it should be classified under.
– Eddie Myer
– Photo by Anya Arnold