The epic

"The Epic is based on a concept, though it's unnecessary to grasp in order to enjoy. The music reflects many inspirations - John Coltrane, Horace Tapscott's Pan-African People's Arkestra, Azar Lawrence's Prestige period, Donald Byrd's and Eddie Gale's jazz and choir explorations, Pharoah Sanders' pan global experiments, Afro-Latin jazz, spiritual soul, and DJ culture. A formidable soloist (he plays his ass off here), Coltrane is [Washington's] greatest influence, but his tone is rawer, somewhere between Sanders and Albert Ayler ... The Epic isn't fusion, retro, or remotely academic. It's 21st century jazz as accessible as it is virtuosic - feel matters to Washington. Holistic in breadth and deep in vision, it provides a way into this music for many, and challenges the cultural conversation about jazz without compromising or pandering".

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"Part of an exploding network of L.A. visionaries, Kamasi Washington is the sax-wielding jazz guru on recent masterpieces by Kendrick Lamar and Flying Lotus. Now he's made one of his own - a three-disc debut on FlyLo's label with a 10-piece band, plus choir and strings. To be sure, it's a jazz album, as much about tradition as expanding it, informed by Coltranes (John and Alice), Miles Davis fusions, bebop and more; yet it's clearly shaped by crate-digger funk and film scores, hip-hop collage and gospel. Patrice Quinn's incantatory soul vocals ground stretches of remarkably mobile group improv".

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"The title isn't kidding - this is a 172-minute spectacular for choir, classical orchestra and jazz band. Leader Kamasi Washington, a flamethrower of a saxophonist with John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders connections, also works for West Coast hip-hop artist Kendrick Lamar. Dedicated to bringing jazz to the uninitiated, Epic features soul and gospel vocals, boiling drumming (Art Blakey was a declared inspiration), swing, funk, and voicelike free-jazz blowing. Swing riffs, wailing Hammond organs, the bebop vehicle Cherokee turned into a slinky soul vocal, a big-band account of Debussy's Clair de Lune - it all goes into a venture that has links to the large-scale jazz of Sun Ra and the 1960s Jazz Composers' and Liberation Music orchestras. Only a shortage of thematic surprises (...) keeps it from being quite the seismically jazz-changing departure that some admirers are claiming".

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"Given [some of the pre-release writing], it's something of a gobsmacking paradox to discover what a hip-hop-free zone The Epic is, and how enamored of jazz's past it turns out to be. This triple-album set is an extravagant love letter to (among other things): soul jazz, John Coltrane (various periods), and 1970s fusion leaders like Miles Davis and Weather Report. The Epic's Disc 1 opener, "Change of the Guard", might as well be titled "We Love All Kinds of 'Trane" ... The opening theme in the saxes is something that could only have been written after "Impressions". And the harmonious writing for Washington's string section recalls posthumous Coltrane releases like Infinity - tracks from which featured orchestral overdubs supervised by Alice Coltrane ... Toward the end of the 12-minute tune, Washington's tenor sax solo veers off into flights of screeching intensity that were the hallmark of Coltrane's later groups - specifically the ones that also included Pharoah Sanders".

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"Kamasi Washington har med sit imponerende triple-album åbnet øjne og ører hos et stort publikum - også langt uden for jazzens gængse rækker ... Washington ejer ikke så lidt af John Coltranes tone og spirituelle tilgang til musikken, men han er helt klart sin egen herre, og hans ekspressive ekskursioner er i sjældent grad målrettede og overrumplende. Han er tillige den gennemgående komponist på albummet, som dog også byder på en fin og funky udgave af den gamle traver »Cherokee« - med den udmærkede sangerinde Patrice Quinn i front - samt på en yderst pompøs ballade-version af Claude Debussys »Clair de Lune«. Kort sagt - farverig musik, hvor Kamasi Washington ganske effektivt får mindet os om, at jazz i bund og grund er en særlig amerikansk blandingskulturform, hvilket ikke mindst amerikanerne synes at have glemt".

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