Gerald Clayton – Ones & Twos (2025) [FLAC 24bit/96kHz]

Gerald Clayton – Ones & Twos (2025)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/96 kHz | Time – 44:37 minutes | 851 MB | Genre: Jazz
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Blue Note Records

Pianist & composer Gerald Clayton returns with his 3rd Blue Note album Ones & Twos featuring vibraphonist Joel Ross, flutist Elena Pinderhughes, trumpeter Marquis Hill & drummer Kendrick Scott with post-production work by Kassa Overall. The album is an experiment—an idea inspired by the art of turntablism with Clayton setting out to create a record where the A side can be played simultaneously with the B side—a nod to that moment in the club when the DJ transitions from one song to the next and you hear two separate pieces at the same time.Since 2003, Gerald Clayton has evolved his formalist perspective on post-bop, straight-ahead jazz into an increasingly nuanced balance of its populist and progressive streams. 2020’s Happening: Live at the Village Vanguard, a Grammy-nominated essay in progressive formalism, plays with the iconic postures of jazz’s late golden age while stringently advancing the tradition with fluid next-gen skills and harmonic reach; 2022’s Bells on Sand, expansively flashes aspects of modern classical composition, contemplative ’70s jazz chords and moods, and the trippy, who-knows-what? approach of Charles Lloyd (with whom Clayton has played over the past decade-plus) with light, imagistic flair. As pianist/musical director Out Of/Into, a quintet of current Blue Note all-stars, he continues to advance Happenings’ progressive/formal bop conceptions with the organic cool that comes with multi-generational remove.

Ones & Twos addresses the search for a new land of postmodern jazz. Nodding toward concepts of turntablism and duality, Clayton presents the album as an “experimental” effort, but it is never less than compulsive and listenable, even in its most outré moments. This is partly down to the talents of the band—Out Of/Into’s vibraphonist Joel Ross and drummer Kendrick Scott, flutist Elena Pinderhughes and trumpeter Marquis Hill—and Clayton’s writing, which distills the freedoms found in Bells on Sand into tightly focused new songs. But it may be the production that compels Ones & Twos most vigorously. Electronic processing techniques accents flavors of modern R&B and dance music seamlessly in the mix, with production co-credits from acclaimed jazz futurist Kassa Overall on three songs and homebrewed wack applied in varying amounts elsewhere. These methods, while not new by the standards of Miles, Herbie and the wiggy ’70s outings of others, allow Clayton to access another level of his music. Heady conceptual proposals of side one/side two dualities are interesting but ultimately unobtrusive; this is impeccably played, compelling modern jazz coming from a place of engagement and inquiry. – Rian Murphy

Tracklist:

1-1. Gerald Clayton – Angels Speak (03:55)
1-2. Gerald Clayton – Cinnamon Sugar (04:15)
1-3. Gerald Clayton – Sacrifice Culture (02:35)
1-4. Gerald Clayton – How Much Love? (03:44)
1-5. Gerald Clayton – Count M (02:25)
1-6. Gerald Clayton – Just Above (05:22)
1-7. Gerald Clayton – Lovingly (03:55)
1-8. Gerald Clayton – Rush (04:15)
1-9. Gerald Clayton – For Peace (02:35)
1-10. Gerald Clayton – More Always (03:44)
1-11. Gerald Clayton – Space Seas (02:25)
1-12. Gerald Clayton – Endless Tubes (05:22)

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