Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes OUT NOW all digital music platforms /// #10 on Billboard Contemporary Jazz /// "Arpy" Live Video /// LA, CHI, NYC shows
Gregory Uhlmann, Josh Johnson, Sam Wilkes
UHLMANN JOHNSON WILKES
** OUT NOW **
ON ALL STREAMING PLATFORMS
"Melodious hallucinations, strained misty breathes, subtle ambient and trance-y beds and wisps, vapours of synthesized effects, and plastique and pad pattered tubular rhythms."
- Monolith Cocktail
“...like winter light through a lace curtain into a mostly empty room, draping the scattered furnishings and making them softly glow.”
- Hearing Things
“...a stunning instrumental interplay that demands closer listening and headphone immersion…”
- TREBLE
"...a mood music of the dreamy, introspective, soulful, ebbing and amorphous."
- Monolith Cocktail
“a warm, elegantly woozy set which combines free playing with composition, and moves between ECMish chamber music and airy, soulful jazz.”
- UNCUT
"pretty laid-back – you might even say ‘smooth’ – but the more you stick with it, the weirder it gets."
- The Quietus
“The musicians offer simple, repetitive patterns that interact in unexpected ways, indulging harmony one moment just to embrace collision the next.”
- Bandcamp
"Enrapturing from start to finish"
- FADER
Following the album's March 14th release on LP, CD, and Cassette, Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes debuted #10 on Billboard's Contemporary Jazz Albums chart last week!
New Video
for "Arpy" (live)
Also today, the trio present a new live video for "Arpy" documenting a performance of the placid and serene composition from inside of an igloo full of floating balloons.
(( photo by Roman Koval ))
Gregory Uhlmann, Josh Johnson, Sam Wilkes
UHLMANN JOHNSON WILKES
Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes is a collection of eleven instrumentals that bring to life a jazz-informed take on progressive electro-acoustic chamber music. It fits firmly in the form-smashing lineage of its principals' past projects — from Music For Saxofone and Bass Guitar, Wilkes' beloved collaboration with Sam Gendel put out by Leaving Records in 2018, to last year's Small Medium Large, the breathtaking debut from Uhlmann and Johnson's group SML — that have become era-defining documents of Los Angeles's thriving new jazz scene.
Conceived during two live shows at ETA (recorded by Bryce Gonzales) and a session at Uhlmann’s house in Los Angeles, Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes's skeletal grooves and ghostly moods revel in a kind of minimal, post-modern swing. Even in its more metaphysical and contemplative moments, the album's compositional restraint feels daring and alluring, inviting close appreciation of Uhlmann’s fingerpicked electric guitar, the hybrid rhythm-lead of Wilkes’ bass chording, or the harmonic world-building of Johnson’s transmogrified alto saxophone.
The arc of the group’s story is one of camaraderie and mutual admiration. That instantaneous cualidad simpático that makes this Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes trio special. A friendship between high-level improvisers is translated into musical moments, and executed with such curious precision that the lines between supposed opposites — composition and improvisation, jazz and chamber music, ennui and contentment — are delightfully blurred.
Los Angeles Release Show
April 16th @ Barnsdall
The trio are set to celebrate the album release with a live performance at Barnsdall Gallery Theatre in Los Angeles on April 16th — tickets and info here.
Chicago Release Show
August 7th @ Constellation
The trio are set to celebrate the album release with a live performance at Constellation in Chicago on August 7th — tickets and info here.
New York Release Show
August 9th @ Public Records
The trio are set to celebrate the album release with a live performance at Public Records in Brooklyn on August 9th — tickets and info here.
Deluxe Vinyl Package
Uhlmann Johnson Wilkes comes on a 140g vinyl LP in heavyweight reverse-board jacket, with IARC 2025 obi strip & poly-lined inner sleeve. Pressed at Pallas in Germany, with lacquers cut by Daniel K @ SST.
Available on limited edition "Concord Grape" color vinyl for $29 USD.
Also available on classic black vinyl for $24 USD.
