In early August the announcement of Daniel Villarreal’s latest album Lados B seemed to crest or augur the blissful height of summer, with the introductory track ‘Sunset Cliffs’ lingering in a twilight grove as beyond the insistent tap of two drum sticks, Jeff Parker’s lilting guitar played off the arcing bass of Anna Butterss, which descended like a knife through the proverbial churned cream stuff.
Instead the record proves a more sombre and reflective affair, still animated by collaborative warmth and moments of stretched-out or sun-kissed frolic. The bandleader Villarreal has worked out structures for emphasising the groove while still playing free, drawing inspiration here from the Latinate funk of Fania Records and the otherworldly trance of Brain Records.
Lados B was recorded in the fall of 2020 in the backyard of Chicali Outpost in Los Angeles, with the drummer and bandleader Villarreal joined by Parker and Butterss for the first in-person recording session any of the participants had mustered as an ensemble since the start of the pandemic. Some of the resulting music appeared on PanamĆ” 77, the verdant suite of jazz-laced funk which Villarreal released on International Anthem last year, but most of it has remained on the shelf waiting patiently or urging quietly this very moment.
Parker and Butterss have collaborated before, with the bassist part of the guitarist’s quartet for the slowly-gestating longform jams of Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy. Villarreal here on Lados B shows a similar penchant for close listening and unhurried music-making but the songs are shorter and the structures a little tighter, with some pensive airs and angular connections even as the atmosphere of those two autumnal afternoon sessions lifts us up and carries us with equanimity into the gloaming.
