What got you interested in the recording aspect of making records?
I'm coming out of an instrumental world, where we're expected to come in the studio, perform, and leave. To me, that was pointless, because it's like, "Man, we're not using all of this gear. We're not doing the most we can do and figuring out the coolest thing we can with all of this studio equipment." It started back with my album Escape Velocity. I wanted to start taking advantage of all we can do in the studio. When it came time to make this newer record, I had an unusual amount of time on my hands to sit down and shape out every song before I even entered the studio. I did that using Ableton [Live] and [Avid] Pro Tools. At the crib, I have a Fender Rhodes I bought during the pandemic as well as a little MIDI keyboard. Having every song already shaped out and creating a sonic palette, most of that was already done at the crib before we came into the studio. When I did inject the band members into it, they were playing into these already prefabricated little universes for each song. That was me wanting to really produce it. I wanted to do exactly what one would do on a hip-hop record, where they gotta do hella shit because there can't just be a beat and somebody talking. They've got to have all this weird shit going on. A lot of those samples [on this record] are coming out of the '70s, from Gary Bartz and Donald Byrd. I was thinking, "We should revert this back to being about the instruments and everything again. Seeing how much of a universe we can create for each song.
That's a very different process than say an early-'50s Charlie Parker record or a Miles Davis album. They came in, had lead sheets, and guys would just blow. You've made records both ways.
Yeah, I have. Those cats were masters, in general. They would go in the studio for half a day and play a whole bunch of shit that they'd never played before – songs that they're handed – and they would make them work. People in that genre try so hard to do such "perfect" albums, when all those old Blue Note recordings are not perfect at all. A lot of the cool things that happened had been by chance. It was what they did while they were trying to learn the song. It wasn't so purposefully, "Oh, we're going to make this the 'next level' album." No. Miles was like, "Herbie, sit on your left hand and just play one-handed." It's not next level. That's just searching for something next level. Because I had pre-fabricated so much of the landscape and soundscape [of this record], the band was able to do full takes instead of overdubs. I would say 90 percent of this record is us playing something from start to finish, or playing a song – the same song – over and over again for 20 minutes without stopping, but restarting it. After we'd play it, we'd play it again. We're trying to capture that energy of playing live. The energy of "We can't stop the train once it leaves the station." Any musical thing or obstacle that came up, we'd have to find a creative, in-the-moment solution for it. I wanted that element inside of it, and that comes from the whole jazz aesthetic of going in the studio and recording a take. It was trying to put the two worlds together in a way that came out with something unique.
That sounds like [Miles Davis'] Bitches Brew in reverse. That was constructed after the band had been in the studio playing, and the sonic universes were created after the fact. You created a sonic atmosphere, and let people come into it and be affected by that.
Right. It's different to have a group of jazz musicians and say, "Okay, this song is going to be exactly this long, and at these points these types of things need to happen. Here's this little universe I want you to play inside of." Basically, we would loop the universe. The Ari Lennox song ["Every Part of Me"], was a 20 minute loop that we would play from start to finish. Every time it would go back to the top, we would start over again. I had count-offs into the track, and we would hear it. That kept the energy of it. It can be very hard in the studio to start a take and have that energy, like a show, because we're not doing that. That's how we did that. It was the opposite of Bitches Brew. Of course, there are things we did afterward. It was important to me and the engineer [Todd Carder] that when we did this record, I knew I wanted the drums to sound a certain way on a certain song. Also that we were going to get as close to that sound while we were tracking, instead of, "Record clean drums and we'll start over when we mix it." It was like, "No, I'm leaving here with the vibe." That way, when we did go to mix, we were able to spread out on a board, go analog, and add all these little live elements.
Did you compile takes out of these 20 minute loops, and pull the best parts from each section? Were you moving sections around?
Nah, it wouldn't be for each section. I picked the best take. We didn't stop between takes. Like the Iman Omari song, "No More Maybe," we played that four or five times in a row because we had his vocals. The fifth one was super high energy. It came with that energy, so when we get to track seven, I want it to feel like the seventh song of a live show. Where's the intensity? What's happening? What do I want the audience to experience now? Instead each song is its own thing. When I play a show, I want to ease the listener into this, and then I want to shock them with this and hit them with this. It was that same format. There was very little moving around of anything. If we played a three minute song for 20 minutes, there would definitely be one version that was start-to-finish "the shit." That's what we were looking for. That's what is hard to get on an, "Okay, 1, 2, 3, go, just beat it." That's so unnatural to us. It had to be the other way around.
That makes sense. Regarding the drum sounds, what are specific examples of sounds you were going for?
We had a lot of references. At one point, Outkast's Aquemini was a good reference for drum sounds. We'd sit there with Spotify; I'd pull something up and say, "Oh, okay. The way this kick sounds." We'd spend hours doing that, finding a good reference. I also had already come in with drums sounding a certain way. There's a certain way I do drums on my laptop. Everybody, musically, has their own thing, whether it's intentional or not. I like drums really heavy. I don't like the drum set to sound like it's "over there." I want the drums to feel like you're at a show, you're in the third row, and you wish the drummer would stop playing so loud. I want the drums to enclose the listener. We had a huge drum kit, six or seven toms, and two or three different bass drums. We even had different bass drum pedal heads. For "Where Will You Go," we used a big round tennis ball-sized fluffy kick [beater] to make the kick go, "Boom." He's [Shekwoaga Ode] playing really soft on that song, but we turned all the gain up high on the mics. If he were playing loud, it would be distorted. But because he was playing so soft, the kick sounded like a [Roland TR-]808. Because the sensitivity was really high, he had to play super soft and precise. It was shit like that in every song. I'm very hands-on, so I would do a lot on the board. I would pull up the EQs, move it, and trust it. We would record it that way and not worry about, "Oh, what if we've gotta go back?" Fuck that! This shit sounds popping now. It's going to sound crazy when we start over with a flat mix. We also used a program that analyzes the snare drum; that way we could add a sample to it. There was a lot of that. I'd tune the snare a certain way and we'd sample that and then put that in. So, we did a lot of resampling.
You're using a lot of singers/guest vocalists. As a trumpet player, you're the "front man." What's your calculation on bringing in other voices?
Well, that kind of is the problem. "You're a trumpet player, so you go in this box." It's the idiocracy of the industry's complete disregard for instrumentalists being artists, producers being artists, and composers being artists. It's like, "You're only an artist if you're shaking your ass and singing in Auto-Tune." There's more to it than that. If you take my trumpet off of this record, anybody who knows my music will still know it was me. I wanted to get out of the way of that and make people realize that's me. With voices, I wanted to have some lyrics to help tell the story – so that it could have a little more of a story format. I wanted the vocals to interact with me and not be the main thing. I also wanted to take each of those vocalists and put them in a situation they're not normally in. Ari Lennox doesn't usually sing songs with that type of literature, those types of melodies, or those types of progressions. Even that type of structure. That was intentional. Or Iman Omari singing over a cadenza of drums that are going fucking free jazz crazy. I wanted to reach the listener another way. Once you involve words and a voice, people tend to receive what comes with it with less resistance. The vocals are there to enhance what I'm playing, honestly. Every vocalist involved knew that ahead of time. The trumpet is still the main character. It's just not in your face all the time. On this record, I'm not playing in a way that's like, "Look how good I am as a trumpet player." That doesn't interest me anymore. That's not the point. It's an album concept. I still make albums. I don't know if I'll ever not be able to do that. I grew up like that: Hearing albums, buying a CD, and listening to the whole thing. I can't break out of that. Michael Jackson, Queen, Prince, and Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life. Why are we not doing this?
Drummer Nate Smith [Tape Op #143] talks about the musical references that we have as musicians and producers being our "hard drives." If everybody has a good reference library in their head of music listening, that communication is so much easier.
Yeah, definitely. Everybody in my band who made this record has similar music tastes. What we like jazz-wise and what we like outside of that is similar. We all like the same kind of trap music. That helps a lot. We're rarely referencing anything jazz. It's more throwing on a Björk record or something obscure that I found on Spotify. We all have the common vocabulary from having studied jazz so intensely, and all the people we've studied with. What we know how to do as a jazz band translates into any genre we want. We're always coming at it with an understanding that we can, at any point in time, change something for the better. We can reach behind what we've established we're going to do, and that will be received well and supported. If we say we're going to play in this type of groove, we can do it; but if that groove starts to evolve into something else, we go with it. We're not saying, "Oh, no! Wait; come back. It needs to stay this way." It's more, "Yeah, keep going! Let's do another take. Let's push that even further." Always trying to find that edgy thing.
It's a service to the greater listening community to provide access points to music that they normally might not hear. Having Wyclef Jean on a track opens up a whole new audience.
That's why Wyclef did it. He wants to get people opened up to it. We were talking about your expectation that it was a trumpet player's record. It very much is a trumpet player's record, but the connotation that comes along with what somebody would expect from that would probably cause 70 or 80 percent of people to not even listen to it. It's establishing a way for people to realize, "Oh, this cat's a composer and an artist." Many people come to our shows having no idea, or assuming they're not going to like it. Then later they're like, "I had no idea that I rocked with this until I was here in front of it." That's my goal and mission. Nate Smith does the same thing. You think you're listening to a drummer's record. But when you put it on; it's so lush and full of so many elements that give you something to hold on to. I think of Michael Jackson's HIStory[: Past, Present & Future, Book 1], and also of Outkast's Aquemini, and how those records gave us so much material and told a grand story. But every song had its own palette that went along with the other songs and had as much integrity instrumentally and acoustically as it did in the lyrics. They were always working with each other. It's the only way that I want to do it.
You spent some time in China. How did you end up there, and what it was like working in studios?
