Kings Highway

Brian Blade & The Fellowship Band

Released on 7/07/2023 by Stoner Hill Records and Press
Main artists: Brian Blade & The Fellowship Band
Genre: Jazz

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Language available : english

The seventh album from drummer Brian Blade & the Fellowship Band, 2023's Kings Highway finds Blade and co-leader pianist Jon Cowherd pushing the stylistically wide-ranging ensemble toward a spectral, '70s fusion-influenced sound. Much of this is due to the return of guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, who amicably parted ways with the group prior to 2014's Landmarks. In Rosenwinkel's absence, Blade brought on several other guitarists, including Jeff Parker and Dave Devine. While equally talented players, Parker and Devine favored a more diffuse, sonically textural approach, one that evoked the influence of Bill Frisell. In contrast, Rosenwinkel has a more melodic style, marked by a bright laser-tone motivity, bringing to mind players like Pat Metheny and Larry Coryell. It's a sound that propels Kings Highway forward and nicely complements the work of bassist Christopher Thomas, as well as the dual sax front line of Melvin Butler and Myron Walden. There's a golden-hour warmth to the Fellowship's sound on Kings Highway, and the album has the cinematic feeling of an outdoor nighttime concert. Images pop into your mind with each song, as in the opening "Until We Meet Again," which feels like a spaceship ascending Earth's orbit with Rosenwinkel's shimmering guitar arpeggios cascading rainbow light through Cowherd's dewy synth clouds before Butler and Walden join in with their own alien harmonies. The rest of the album follows suit as Blade and his group slide into the muted, minor-key atmosphere of "Catalysts" and conjure a shadowy gospel noir dreamworld on the ballad "People's Park." While Kings Highway is completely instrumental, it plays like a low-key amalgam of Pink Floyd's stadium psychedelia and Weather Report's soulful jazz-rock fusion. It's a vibrant combination they further underline on "Look to the Hills" and "Migration," tracks that find the group taking far-reaching solos over Cowherd's dusky chordal keyboard palettes and Blade's swinging, polyrhythmic grooves. The album glows to the end as they settle into a church organ-accented rendition of the 1880s hymn "God Be with You," cocooning the listener in their warm group vibe.

© Matt Collar /TiVo

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Kings Highway

Brian Blade & The Fellowship Band

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Until We Meet Again