And So It Is was meant to be a jubilant debut album after years of apprenticeship and work with and for other musicians. Aaron Shaw has played with just about everyone in Los Angeles who moves within earshot of shakers: Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, Carlos Niño and Kamasi Washington. But Shaw is known well beyond the city’s and the genre’s boundaries too – he learned from Phil Ranelin and Herbie Hancock, and has played with Tyler, The Creator, Anderson .Paak and Nightmares on Wax.
Yet And So It Is has not become the result of the multitalented musician’s released and culminating energy. It stands instead as testimony to something greater still: the ability to accept the unavoidable. Diagnosis: bone marrow failure.
The music does not stomp, leap or explode. Slowly, the spirit the opener is searching for begins to arrive. And then, after all, it finds a groove. It feels like an attempt at normality. Only behind it, the strings hang like an omen. A little later, the album reaches its strongest moment in »Windows Of The Soul«. The restrained saxophone would always have been divine, even without the surrounding story, but once the piano begins to dance and tiptoe, once it starts to sound like McCoy Tyner, once those notes of joy and lightness venture a cautious dance through the room on narrow legs, then everything around it lends the moment an added weight.
After that, there is perhaps too much Carlos Niño in the creative direction – or so it seems, at least. »The Path To Clarity« is meant to function as a passage, but the synth piece with sea sounds remains flat. »Jubilant Voyage« carries very particular LA spiritual vibes. You have to be able to like that sort of thing. The flute is irritating – there can really be no two opinions about it. It is strange: as the album goes on, it tends to lose focus rather than gain it. The concept imposed by fate might have suggested otherwise. Right at the end, though, it becomes truly strong again. Dwight Trible is deeply feeling it. Alongside him: calm, assured drumming, Sam Reid’s remarkably beautiful piano playing here as well, and Aaron Shaw on saxophone, fully present with the material.
And So It Is
