Guitarist Ari Joshua has been digging into his vault of unreleased music with the latest single, “Contact,” including contributions from keyboardist Robert Glasper, drummer KJ Sawka (Pendulum) and bassist Jason Fraticelli (Spaga). The Seattle-based musician channels Jimi Hendrix on the seven-minute instrumental.
“Contact” is the third song Ari Joshua pulled out of his archives with future installments expected to feature work with Marco Benevento, Joe Russo, Delvon Lamarr, Skerik and members of the Trey Anastasio Band. “This is a Vault in which I’ve been storing music for years,” explained Joshua. “Opening it up to the world is the result of coming to terms with reality. The new Covid world created the circumstances that caused me to face some stuff, to unlock the vault, and start releasing this treasure trove of albums and projects to align with a higher purpose.”
The recently released track came from a session held a few years back with Glasper, Sawka and Fraticelli. Ari Joshua attended New York City’s The New School with Robert and Jason, while KJ is a longtime collaborator. Joshua described “Contact” as “one being more of a Hendrix style guitar driven track” and added “the session was all over the place and dripping with goodness.”
Ari Joshua also shared the following in regards to “Contact”:
“I was in NY on a gig with my dear friend and super unique Drum-n-Bass/EDM drummer Kevin Sawka, and I had been in touch with Rob about wanting to do a session and it fell into place. I had played Rob and his band a few songs I had recorded with Sawka, and they really dug it. We spent two days recording there in Brooklyn. There is some really wonderful material there. The chemistry was amazing and material ranges from Jazz to Free Jazz to Rock to Drum-n-Bass. I think Sawka’s fans will get to hear him playing in a new and different way, completely unedited and with no laptop; same with Robert and his fans, there are ways he plays on some of the songs where I am like – Damn! I haven’t even heard Rob play like that before. The material we recorded was based mostly off of charts I brought in, but there was a lot of improv as well,it was just fun.
The song sort of starts off out in space, and the dna of the four of us mixes up like a stew and results in a musical orgasm, it sounds like what I imagine it would sound like if a UFO beamed an astronaut up in a parallel dimension. Hence the name ‘Contact.’”
Stream Ari Joshua’s “Contact” single below:
