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Black Focus | Yussef Kamaal

Black Focus by Yussef Kamaal, released 04 November 2016 1. Black Focus 2. Strings Of Light 3. Remembrance 4. Yo Chavez 5. Ayla 6. O.G. 7. Lowrider 8. Mansur's Message 9. WingTai Drums 10. Joint 17 The borders between London’s musical tribes have always been porous. For Yussef Kamaal, the sound of the capital – with its hum of jungle, grime and broken beat – has shaped a self-taught, UK-tipped approach to playing jazz. In the states, the genre’s long-running to-and-fro with hip hop – from Robert Glasper to Kamasi Washington – has reimagined it within US culture. On Black Focus, Yussef Kamaal frame jazz inside the bass-saturated, pirate radio broadcasts of London. Taking inspiration from the anything-goes spirit of ‘70s jazz-funk, on albums by Herbie Hancock or the Mahavishnu Orchestra, it’s a loose template with plenty of room to experiment. The pair, made up of Yussef Dayes and Kamaal Williams (aka Henry Wu), have had little in the way of formal training. Instead, their musica…