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How often do you walk into a situation without knowing what will happen? Do you fear it? Or do you embrace it? The unknown is a ubiquitous phenomenon that can be found in the essence of a person, place, or thing. Many musicians welcome musical situations where they are unaware of what will happen. That could be during improvising or performing with musicians for the first time. Both take an incredible amount of vulnerability and trust. The unknown seems to drive them into a space and time that controls them, not the other way around. And more than likely, that’s what they want it to do. Musicians prefer the unknown to utilize them as vessels to reach their audience or even to experience their own liberation.
The concept of Spherical was unknown. The only thing that John King knew was that he wanted this album to be rock, funk, blues, noise, and experimental, and so by instinct, Cindy Blackman and Bernie Worrell were the perfect musicians for accomplishing this. It’s one thing to understand the level of expertise behind each musician, but you could never predict what would happen if you put them together in one room. They found funk, rock, the blues, and an abundance of trust, within an eight hour improvised recording session in 1994 at Baby Monster Studios in New York. It was at this moment they went on a ride to the unknown.
There were no expectations or preconceived notions about what the outcome of their creations would be that day. It was only the conviction between these three musicians to create something unknown. That conviction is what audiences feel while listening to this record. The music does not attempt to articulate what they should feel, nor does it simultaneously take every listener to the same place. This reason is why the unknown is ubiquitous and even malleable. The trio lay into the depths of a sphere, and the music reaches the surface in every direction to find us listeners, wherever we are. The music places us in passenger seats, drawing us into the core like a gravitational pull. Unsurprisingly, being without expectations meant that this three-dimensional power trio would take the music into liberating spaces.
It’s an impressive, yet unintentional, stunt when a power trio makes you question if there was a touch of overdubbing. These three musicians, who are all powerhouses in their own right, transformed vague ideas of riffs and melodies into a melting pot of their genius. The humble King constructs sonic walls using a plethora of processed effects from amplitude modulators, phase shifters, delays, fuzz/distortion pedals, and a wah pedal. The wall he builds is where you’ll hear Muddy Waters and Jimi Hendrix, two of his earliest influences. He compliments the boldness that Cindy Blackman brings to the session as a drummer with hardcore rock and jazz chops. At times, her right foot on the kick in ‘Stomp Time Shuffle’ seemed to want to fly away, playing on the off beats of 16th notes. She had worked with Worrell before, but had only met King briefly before this session a few months prior. She immediately conveyed her trust in him by kicking off the first tune of the album called ‘Future-Blues’ with an explosive drum fill instead of a traditional count-off. It’s the perfect album intro. In the spirit of trust, she didn’t reveal what was coming when they asked for a count off. She makes a simple yet valuable statement that students of improvisation should remember —“trust your bandmates”.
An innovative mastermind on what we refer to as vintage synths, Bernie Worrell’s talents stretch far beyond funk. Just a few days after learning about the passing of his mother, Worrell expressed his feelings into the Clavinet, B3 organ, and a synthesizer. Worrell’s Hammond B3 opening solo on ‘Sunday Sunrise’ begins in outer space. Yet, that gravitational pull at the core of this sphere takes us back to the blues and gospel. The synth patch that Worrell uses for his solo on ‘Unfunkingstoppabble’ is so calming and meditative that, for a moment, you forget that this is probably the edgiest song on the album. King describes how Worrell played a single note on the Clavinet that resonated the walls and made him feel the entire history of funk. The only way for this album to ever exist was for all three musicians to put their trust in the unknown.
Interestingly, the unknown embraced this project by manifesting itself into a domain of the lost, otherwise known as... an unknown space. The lost and found is a mesmerizing place that exists because we simply overlook it. This project had been missing for 29 years until John King found it in a place we’re all too familiar with, in a box of unlabeled CDs, cassette tapes, and DAT tapes. During a time of cleansing, the lost was now found. Perhaps Spherical’s whereabouts were unknown because sometimes life has its own timelines, which can be distracting. Is it possible that music does, too? Conceivably, the music was ahead of its time and wanted to be known when it was this time. And maybe, this time is the right time to be known.
—JoVia L. Armstrong
credits
released October 20, 2023
Bernie Worrell | Hammond B3, Clavinet, Mini-Moog
Bernie Worrell — the Wizard of WOO — came to prominence as a keyboardist, composer, arranger, and producer for Parliament/Funkadelic in the 1970s. He was the driving force behind the band’s greatest hits, including the legendary bassline for ‘Flashlight’. Bernie’s classical training (Doctor of Music/The New England Conservatory of Music, where he Majored in Classical Piano) and much-coveted perfect pitch placed him in an ideal position to propel the band forward. Bernie also helped the Talking Heads develop their new sound in the 1980s. Bernie was a prominent voice in R&B, pop, rock, jazz, reggae, classical, and the jam band scene, appearing on an eclectic array of recordings by the likes of Rita Coolidge, Mtume, Public Image Ltd., Keith Richards, Fred Schneider, Deee-Lite, Mos Def, Gov’t Mule, Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker, Bootsy Collins, and Praxis. He also played a key role in recordings produced by Bill Laswell. His legendary musical voice was achieved by way of piano, harpsichord, synthesizers, clavinet, melodica, and organ. As a leader, he mentored young and experienced musicians alike via Bernie Worrell and the WOO Warriors, and the Bernie Worrell Orchestra. He also played a prominent role in albums by the Seattle-based band Khu-éex’, a band that uses the rhythms and poetry of the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest, augmented with funk and R&B. That band continues to release recordings from the hundreds of hours of material they recorded with him. Bernie passed in 2016, but his genius, guidance, and influence will resonate in the musicians with whom he worked, and with those who heard him from the audience, for years to come.
Cindy Blackman Santana | Drums
Cindy Blackman Santana is a virtuoso drummer whose artistry spans the realms of jazz and rock. As a bandleader and as a musician, Cindy is a sound innovator with a passion for pushing creative boundaries and exploring movement and change. She has been creating magnificent musical time and space since the beginning of her career as a busking street performer in New York City in the 1980s. She has toured and recorded with artists including Pharoah Sanders, Cassandra Wilson, Bill Laswell, Joss Stone, Lenny Kravitz, Joe Henderson, Buckethead, Don Pullen, Hugh Masakela, and Angela Bofill. In 2010, she was part of the all-star line-up performing ‘Bitches Brew’, a tribute to Miles Davis’ seminal album staged at the San Francisco Jazz Festival and NYC Winter JazzFest. More recently, Cindy has become the regular touring drummer for Santana. Having met several years earlier at a festival in Europe while she was touring with Kravitz, Cindy first played with Santana in spring 2010. Carlos proposed to Cindy during a July 2010 concert, and they married that December. Looking ahead, they will collaborate artistically as well, on projects that will no doubt reflect their shared passion for improvisation and belief in the transcendent nature of music. On her own, Cindy is continuing to develop the heady jazz-rock fusion that she drives so powerfully on 2010’s Another Lifetime, a tribute to her mentor, the legendary drummer Tony Williams. She continues to build a body of work and artistic legacy that make her one of the finest drummers and recording artists of this or any generation.
John King | Guitar
John King is a freelance guitarist who has been working in New York since the mid-1970s. He has played and recorded with David Moss’ Dense Band, Butch Morris’ various ‘Conduction’ projects, and William Parker’s Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra, as well as leading his own trio Electric World. With various lineups, they toured the US and Europe throughout the 1990s, recording three albums on the Ear-Rational, Enemy and P-Vine record labels. In 1992, Jazzthetik wrote regarding the Enemy release Hot Thumb In A Funky Groove: “his guitar solidly and confidently plays 21st Century blues.” Electric World’s final members were Abe Speller (Sonny Sharrock Band) on drums and Amin Ali (James ‘Blood’ Ulmer) on bass . That band’s recording Life = Love featured Bernie Worrell as special guest on keyboards for some four tracks, recorded at Bill Laswell’s studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In the summer of 1994, King first heard Cindy Blackman at a Summerstage gig in Central Park in NYC. That fall, he invited Bernie and Cindy into the studio to form this collective creative trio. The recording from the one-day session was long thought lost, but was recently unearthed in a pile of archival material and has since been remixed and remastered for this release.
recorded at Baby Monster Studios
mastered by Kevin Ramsay
album artwork by Elenora King
photos by Brian Diescher (Bernie Worrell), Jérôme Brunet (Cindy Blackman Santana), Jean-Yves Leroi (John King)
graphic design & layout by Golden Feelings
Bernie Worrell, Cindy Blackman Santana, and John KingNew York, New York
Spherical is a power trio: guitarist John King wanted this album to be rock, funk, blues, noise, and experimental, and so by instinct, Cindy Blackman and Bernie Worrell were the perfect musicians for accomplishing this.
My listening connection here is Colin Stetson. This immediately caught my ear as something oddly alluring that I couldn't pull away from. Drop in to any random thirty seconds of Void Patrol and it might feel a bit lacking of focus, or purpose. But that's not how you listen to music, and it's not how these musicians play it either. This is an ultimately captivating journey of expertly crafted, unique soundscapes. rvss.eel
UK jazz-rock icons pay tribute to British trumpeter Harry Beckett in the second entry in My Only Desire Records’ Brit Jazz 45s series. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 1, 2024
