The self-titled new album by Gregory Uhlmann, Josh Johnson, and Sam Wilkes is proof that you don’t have to forsake traditional aesthetic notions of melody to make something experimental, and that masterful improvisations don’t have to be sprawling epics. The longest track by some distance on Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes clocks in at seven and a half minutes: it’s a cover of the Beatles’ melancholy masterpiece The Fool on the Hill, and it closes out the record in quietly sensational style. Josh Johnson’s sax takes up the melody, Gregory Uhlmann’s guitar falls in bright droplets – listening to it is like standing behind a waterfall – and Sam Wilkes’ bass seems to tunnel underneath, both underpinning and destabilising the melody. The middle section is given over to improvisation, though the mood remains constant: muted, somewhat languid, always engaging.
Here and throughout the album, the trio do a great job of treading the fine line between absolute musical freedom and complete control. It shouldn’t be a surprise: all of them have pedigree, playing with acts on the International Anthem label and beyond. Uhlmann has worked with Anna Butterss, Perfume Genius and SML, Johnson collaborators also include SML and Butterss along with Jeff Parker and Leon Bridges, while Wilkes has backed Lewis Cole and the great Chaka Khan. What is surprising is how quickly it all came together. The Fool on the Hill is a live recording of the first time the band ever played together at the now-defunct ETA in Highland Park, once one of LA’s best-loved independent venues.
The rest of the album is made up of this and one other ETA set, along with a session from Uhlmann’s home studio. This technique – organic, on-the-hoof – has become something of a calling card for International Anthem projects, and here it results in a stunning set. Opener Marvis – a new take on a Johnson solo track – is a wonderfully jumpy groove, while Fumarole is minimally spacy in a Sun Ra kind of way. Neither track breaks the three-minute mark, but both create their own worlds, fluid and dynamic. Arpy is more sedate, with Johnson’s fluttering alto painting a bucolic picture, blurring the lines between jazz, contemporary composition and ambient, while Frica is enormous fun, a disjointed melody giving easy to some genuinely weird and dreamy post-production effects.
That sense of fun continues with Hoe Down – Johnson’s sax is birdlike, and Wilkes supplies a pointilist bassline – and Schwa, which feels both delicate and futuristic, a transmission beamed in from a Studio Ghibli landscape. Jiacama brings the trio’s minimalist tendencies to the fore, with everything seeming to point towards a single, final note. Unsure plays with the ponderousness of its title, giving ample room to the space between the notes and coming up with something slow and meditative, beset in its final third by a paranoid, high-pitched guitar. The bass in Fields seems to be steering the piece into more conventional rock or chamber pop or even folk territory, but only for a moment, then you realise that the minimal guitar motif has lulled and lured you somewhere decidedly less conventional.
Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes is an album of contradictions. Electronic wizardry plays off against live improvisation. Melody is abundant, but so too is the lack of melody, though lack doesn’t seem like quite the right word. Often, the trio occupy the spaces around the melody, and their playing becomes something like melody’s shadow. This is music deep and alluring enough to get lost in and sparse enough to find yourself in.
Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes (March 14th, 2025) International Anthem
Bandcamp: https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/uhlmann-johnson-wilkes
Arpy (Live)
