Gregory Uhlmann, Josh Johnson, Sam Wilkes - Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes [International Anthem]

Format: Classic 140g black LP in heavy-duty reverse board jacket with IARC OBI strip & poly-lined inner sleeve. Pressed at Pallas, Germany, with lacquers cut by Elysian Masters.

‘Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes’ is the debut album from Gregory Uhlmann (SML, Anna Butterss, Duffy x Uhlmann, Perfume Genius), Josh Johnson (SML, Jeff Parker ETA IVtet & New Breed, Meshell Ndegeocello, Anna Butterss, Leon Bridges), and Sam Wilkes (Sam Gendel, Louis Cole, Chaka Khan). All three improvisors, arrangers and producers boast impressive individual credits spanning such a broad stylistic spectrum, any group collection of music between them could explore diverse sonic territories with masterful results. Across these 11 instrumental compositions, the trio leans into a lyrical and spacious curiosity that might be best described as a jazz-adjacent approach to progressive electro-acoustic chamber music.

Conceived across two live shows at ETA and a session at Uhlmann’s home in Los Angeles, the album maintains a focus on beauty, melody and movement as the pieces unfold, with the trio bending their highly refined instruments and effects toward creating otherworldly sounds, all with the collective sensibility of a rhythm section. The philosophy of these instant compositions is arrangement-minded improvisation that highlights the melancholic beauty of Uhlmann’s finger-picked electric guitar, Wilkes’ hybrid rhythm-meets-melody approach to the bass, and Johnson’s harmonic and textural world-building on his effects-laden alto saxophone.

However, the trio’s explorations are rooted in more than just musicianship. The group’s narrative arc is also a story of friendship and mutual admiration. Uhlmann and Johnson have known each other since their formative days as teenagers studying jazz. Shortly after meeting in an educational setting, they began making music together informally during casual hangs in Chicago. At the time, they were unaware that they both had taken lessons from a common figure — the legendary guitarist and composer Jeff Parker.

Following high school, they went their separate ways, Johnson to the Jacobs School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana, and Uhlmann to CalArts in Santa Clarita, California. But soon they reconnected in Los Angeles, where shared opportunities in studios and rotating free improvisation sessions at small clubs around town solidified their collaboration. Uhlmann played and programmed, creating platforms to collaborate at the Bootleg Theater, while Johnson went from mentee to collaborator with Jeff Parker via his weekly performance at ETA in Highland Park. In the midst of all this was bassist Sam Wilkes, a consistent collaborator known for moving between the multiple creative music scenes in Los Angeles.

“I was playing with some musicians who studied at CalArts,” Wilkes recounts. “I started going down there a lot, and Greg had a great band called Fell Runner. A group I was in shared a bill with them at the old Bootleg Theater, and that solidified my appreciation and deep respect for the band and for Greg’s playing. They were doing totally unique stuff. We’ve been friends ever since.”

Wilkes and Johnson first collaborated after years of knowing each other in LA, and their musical connection and mutual respect were immediate. “It was at a session with the Louis Cole Big Band,” Wilkes recalls. “One of the pieces had every musician take four bars to improvise, and Josh did a really unique solo that stood out a lot. At the end of the session, Louis looked at me and said, ‘Josh Johnson!,’ and I was like, ‘I know!’”

In 2021, even before Uhlmann and Johnson began working on what would later be SML, Wilkes and Uhlmann played together on a Miya Folick album, which left them with the feeling that there was still more music to be made together. Uhlmann then proposed a live trio date with Johnson at ETA. With engineer Bryce Gonzales at the helm, the group worked through a short list of prepared material, interspersing improvised passages. “We agreed it was important to have a strong melodic repertoire as a starting point for free improvising,” Wilkes says. “Landing zones, essentially, while we’re out there.”

Those “landing zones” include a stunning take on “The Fool On The Hill,” arguably McCartney’s most haunting ballad in the Beatles’ catalogue. Johnson’s sensitive rendering of the classic vocal melody entwines with the rainfall-esque leslie-type effect of Uhlmann’s electric guitar and Wilkes’ pulsing, understated bass with such naturalness that any subsequent movement feels inevitable as the trio begins to open the track up to improvisation after the two-minute mark. What follows is a sublime reading of the type of gentle consonance that rarely surfaces in the best moments of catalogues such as ECM or Windham Hill. Even more impressive to know is that this recording was the first piece the trio played together, captured from the earliest moments of their first ETA show.

That quality of instant connection is what makes this trio special. What we hear is a friendship among high-level improvisers translated into musical moments executed with such curious precision, that the lines between apparent opposites — composition and improvisation, jazz and chamber music, melancholy and serenity — blur delightfully.

“Frica” is, perhaps, the track where this fusion is most evident. The piece incorporates the stuttering and staccato repetitions that run throughout the album but goes further thanks to subtle post-editing by Johnson, which accentuates the trio's live trance through a floating phrase cut and mixed. The fact that these concepts are already intuitively present, prior to editing, is precisely what makes the post-production work stand out. It’s hard to distinguish what is a sampler cut and what is a real-time reaction, and it’s precisely that mystery that captivates us.

“Marvis,” which opens the album, makes this clear from the start. This new version of a track from Johnson’s solo album Unusual Object hits many of the same points as “Frica” in terms of production, but everything is in service of a truly twisted and understated groove. The trio moves in perfect sync, though it's unclear how many legs are taking the steps or whose they are.

In contrast, Uhlmann’s composition “Arpy” is a slow meditation on four descending chords, charged with life thanks to the reverberated triplet repetitions of his guitar, and sustained by the firm chords of Wilkes’ bass, which sometimes ventures into high-register flourishes. Johnson’s gentle saxophone treatment mutates in tonality until it becomes a sonic echo reminiscent more of an Ondes Martenot or some distorted version of Clara Rockmore.

Altogether, Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes is a beautiful photograph of three infinitely interesting musicians at the top of their craft, rendered with such mastery that its inherent quality flows effortlessly, making both passive listening and deep immersion equally pleasurable and stimulating.