Out on June 26th via legendary Jazz label Blue Note is the the third album from bass plater and two time Grammy winner Derrick Hodge. Called Color of Noize it’s an album of substance with Hodge mixing it up with his jazz roots, with hip-hop, soul, spiritual influences and he went old school on the sesssions – using a live band, playing together for the first time, using brand new charts. Overseeing it all as co-producer was legendary producer / artist and Blue Note label head Don Was.
“It was powerful to see this group of young, brilliant improvisers set up in a circle at Hollywood’s historic United Studio A,” says Was. “It felt like a throwback to what it might have been like on the floor of a Blue Note session at Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in the mid-sixties. These were ‘old school’ sessions yielding modern music so forward-looking and visionary that there is no existing genre within which to categorize it.” “Don has this selflessness where he really wants to get to the root of what makes a musician tick and what’s pushing them in the moment,” says Hodge. “It felt invaluable to have someone like that in my corner for a project like this, to help see everything through a different lens.”
The first track to be released from the album is ‘Not Right Now’. There’s a gentle introduction to the track as it bubbles away, before the bass and synths play together on this sprawling melody that manages to be a smooth as it is complex. Underneath there’s a sheen about the chords which are warm and light as it sways between ECM and 80s Blue Note with this sort of smooth chaotic abandon which makes for something thats deeply satisfactory.
Check it out, here
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