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Jazz

Cameron Graves: Planetary Prince

Planetary Prince
Cameron Graves: Planetary Prince
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For a jazz album, Kamasi Washington’s The Epic drew an unusually wide audience after its release in 2015. The four musicians at the core of Planetary Prince—pianist and leader Cameron Graves, drummer Ronald Bruner Jr., bassist Steven “Thundercat” Bruner, and Washington—are long-term West Coast Get Down members who played key roles in The Epic. The musicianship on Planetary Prince is exceptional, starting with a super-tight rhythm section that allows Graves and Washington to take flight on extended improvisations, and the soloists continue to explore new ideas at every turn. On the title track Graves comes in like a whirling dervish and never lets up; on the unabashedly pretty “Andromeda” his rhapsodic approach reveals his classical background. Washington tends to start serenely and gradually build intensity, slowly adding notes and eventually invoking the full weight of the tenor. There isn’t a dull moment on this almost 80-minute record, and much of it is exhilarating. Ironically, in spite of science fiction themes suggested by song titles like “Andromeda” and “Satania Our Solar System,” while listening to Planetary Prince I hear the street, and it sure sounds good.

By Jeff Wilson

This will take some explaining, but I can connect the dots between pawing through LPs at a headshop called Elysian Fields in Des Moines, Iowa, as a seventh grader, and becoming the Music Editor for The Absolute Sound. At that starting point—around 1970/71—Elysian Fields had more LPs than any other store in Des Moines. Staring at all the colorful covers was both tantalizing and frustrating. I had no idea who most of the artists were, because radio played only a fraction of what was current. To figure out what was going on, I realized that I needed to build a record collection—and as anyone who’s visited me since high school can testify, I succeeded. Record collecting was still in my blood when, starting in the late 1980s, the Cincinnati Public Library book sale suddenly had an Elysian Fields quantity of LPs from people who’d switched to CDs. That’s where I met fellow record hawk Mark Lehman, who preceded me as music editor of TAS. Mark introduced me to Jonathan Valin, whose 1993 detective novel The Music Lovers depicts the battles between record hawks at library sales. That the private eye in the book, Harry Stoner, would stumble upon a corpse or two while unraveling the mystery behind the disappearance of some rare Living Stereo platters made perfect sense to me. After all, record collecting is serious business. Mark knew my journalistic experience included concert reviews for The Cincinnati Enquirer and several long, sprawling feature articles in the online version of Crawdaddy. When he became TAS music editor in 2008, he contacted me about writing for the magazine. I came on board shortly after the latest set of obituaries had been written for vinyl—and, as fate had it, right when the LP started to make yet another unexpected comeback. Suddenly, I found myself scrambling to document all the record companies pressing vinyl. Small outfits were popping up world-wide, and many were audiophile-oriented, plus already existing record companies began embracing the format again. Trying to keep track of everything made me feel, again, like that overwhelmed seventh grader in Elysian Fields, and as Music Editor I’ve found that keeping my finger on the pulse of the music world also requires considerable detective work. I’ve never had a favorite genre, but when it comes time to sit down and do some quality listening, for me nothing beats a well-recorded small-group jazz recording on vinyl. If a stereo can give me warmth and intimacy, tonal accuracy, clear imaging, crisp-sounding cymbals, and deep, woody-sounding bass, then I’m a happy camper.

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