I’ll admit, jazz was never a genre I listened to all that often. Growing up in the 90’s and 00’s, jazz to me was coffee shop or background music played at Barnes & Noble. I remember Sim City 2000 had a jazz soundtrack that would play while I failed time and time again trying to build a city of the future. It was until around the 2010’s that I attempted to try and understand jazz better. I am a huge fan of the Hip Hop producer Madlib so I let him guide me on my jazz journey. I started with Miles Davis, Coltrain, Sun Raw, Herbie Hancock and eventually I would start listening to Thelonius Monk, Cannonball Adderley, Dave Brubeck and Art Blakey. I started to get it but still safe to say not a genre I am an expert in.
Andrew Milad is a jazz pianist and composer from Cairo who is currently studying jazz at the University of North Texas. Over the weekend, he released his debut album titled “Sultan” with Memphis Records. This isn’t a typical jazz record by any means, or at least to my inexperienced ears (ok, maybe it reminds me of 70’s Herbie Hancock). Its psychedelic, funky and electric. Milad likes to tell stories with his compositions and the piano work and instrumentation do just that. Each track on the LP sounds and feels different from the next. Milad pulls you in and keeps your attention, putting the listener into a hypnotic state until the final note.
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