Trumpeter Nicholas Payton has released Quarantined With Nick, a trio album recorded with Cliff Hines and Sasha Masakowski over two days before their native New Orleans went into pandemic lockdown.
An album-length collaboration with Hines and Masakowski had been on the cards for Payton for a while, but it took New Orleans’ city-wide stay-home mandate (that was ordered by Mayor LaToya Cantrell on March 20) for the trio to make it a reality.
As Payton explained to NPR Music: “We did a gig a couple of days before the quarantine, and when they shut everything down, I was like: ‘Yo—y’all want to get together and do this?’ Everybody’s schedule was clear, so we knocked it out in two days at my crib.”
The ten-track album, released over the weekend of 28-29 March, is a self-aware, occasionally humorous and unapologetically political document of the current moment. Opening track “Social Experiment” loops dialogue about how the pandemic is “an experiment about whether people will listen to scientists,” while the title of “Charmin Shortage Blues” says it all.
Elsewhere, “Baby Got Bot” and “Cyborg Swing” allude to the beats and glitches that the trio experiment with on the record. As for influences, Payton told NPR Music that Miles Davis, McCoy Tyner and Freddie Hubbard, among others, guided his playing on Quarantined With Nick. “There were distinct moments through this album where I felt connections to the ancestors, almost as if they wanted to walk through and contribute and play on the project.”
-lab.fm
© all rights reserved
Cart is empty 