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Rating: Kamasi Washington's records are impossible to finish. Beautiful, mind you, but live it's a whole different music. The definition that came to me is "prog jazz," which is a bit of a redundant absurdity but well identifies the power, richness, yet also the lightness and black danceability with which everything unfolds.
On record, they seem like sung masses. Live, the saxophonist's audacity emerges, with his solos seemingly reviving the primordial force of rock and metal, the sax as the new electric guitar which is a political instrument and a virile, if not macho, weapon. It's no coincidence that after each solo, his or one of the other members’, someone always proclaims the name of the performer, to give them due credit: it's an erotic litmus test, an arousing tour de force that in turn involves all members of the large band. And in a corner, singer Patrice Quinn dances and makes gestures of bewitched admiration, like a Sabine ready for the abduction.
In two hours of concert, the pieces performed might have been six or seven, but boredom never showed its face. The songs, already long on record, are transfigured, overturned, and expanded, giving space to the solos of the individuals which, however, never seem disconnected from the context. They seem more like rearrangements than improvisations, but I wouldn't doubt that ample space is given to Kamasi's devilish discretion. And time flies, you don't even notice twenty minutes of a piece passing because you're enchanted by those hands creating, by that breath that never runs out. Only the live excitement can return the nearly brutal power of these musicians, who are somewhat cocky because of how skilled they are.
Certainly, the main themes return, there's some refrain, but the space given to the singer and the original scansions of the pieces seems even more limited this time (I saw them also in 2016), in favor of a free, ever-new form of musical orgasm. It makes you reflect on what that excitement is, why notes can titillate us so. How does that big man give birth to such sonic cathedrals that, however, have the primitive force of a hominid banging a stick on the ground? It might be a mathematical issue, of repetitions and variations, of accelerations and decelerations, as music always is: but how is it done so well, so quickly, with such nonchalance and for such long periods? Truly, some solos are endless (and yet immediately enjoyable, in every part). This man is a monster.
However, just as after every orgasm comes the ebb, you need to catch your breath, but the rhythm section takes care of that: two drummers, keyboards, the double bass, which, when not in the spotlight, still do shadow work that gets noticed, with staggered rhythms, dense bass notes, delightful sonic textures.
The black giant with the big cap (even in summer) has recently released sensational songs, like "Truth" or "Fists of Fury." Tracks that give you a heart attack even on record, here become huge beasts. And the people around dance, or someone gets fixated, hypnotized by the flood of notes shot into the Milanese sky.
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