The best journeys don't announce their destination. You find out where you're going by looking out the window and noticing you're somewhere you didn't expect. Vol. 3 is built on that principle.
Yussef Dayes opens it with For My Ladies — recorded with Rocco Palladino and Charlie Stacey, two musicians who have made a habit of being exactly where good music is happening. Dayes is one of the most exciting drummers working in jazz right now, in the specific way that his rhythmic vocabulary comes from everywhere at once: jazz, Afrobeat, soul, something harder to name. This track is the best version of that synthesis.
Emanative and Nat Birchall take it somewhere more mystical with Spice Routes. Birchall's saxophone has the quality of an instrument from a tradition older than jazz itself — something in the scale choices, the sustained notes. It fits the title precisely.
The session finds its strangest and most satisfying moment in Emapea, who appears twice — Stinky Freaky Sticky Icky followed by Strange Seed, back to back. It shouldn't work as well as it does. The beat architecture is so particular that two consecutive tracks would usually wear out their welcome. These don't. Karate Boogaloo return between the two Emapea tracks and John Surman's Edges of Illusion — from the legendary ECM label — is the oldest thing on the playlist and sits there like it was always supposed to.
Skinshape close with After Midnight. It earns the title.
The unexpected sounds are the point. Your ears have been to too many places they already know.
Nine tracks is the right number for a journey like this. Enough time to go somewhere real, not so much time that the return trip feels long. L'Eclair's Si o No closes it with something danceable and Swiss and slightly mysterious — which is more or less the feeling Vol. 3 was always heading toward.
This is a session for when you want to be surprised. When the shuffle algorithm has been too predictable and you need music that was actually chosen, track by track, for the way one thing prepares you for the next. The herbal blend is optional. The willingness to go somewhere unexpected is not.
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