Fastness @ The Compound, 2/5/2017

November 30, 2017
by host

You have to hear the Fastness album that came out this year. Emme Williams wrote a batch of songs that’s like a Big Gulp full of all the sodas blended together (a “suicide” I believe?) but instead you’re sipping all of the human emotions. Fastness’s singular electric piano vocal jazz is a classic example of “they just don’t make it like they never used to, anymore.” In this host’s opinion, the two Chicago songwriters who should be putting out records on the biggest labels doing it are EW and Brett Koontz.

This may be the last performance Fastness has done with a full band, and it’s a real delight to hear the EW’s material get this exquisite jazzy treatment. The way EW uses her voice and piano as one instrument puts her performance front and center always, and that means she managed to make some real heavy hitters melt into the background here. In this video, she’s joined by Carlos Chavarria on sax (of ADT, Tarnation), John Daniel (computer ambient maven behind Forest Management) on drums, and Brian Sulpizio (aka Health & Beauty) on guitar. Beautiful performance from a fleeting combo. Really, check out that tape.

This video was shot by Erica Mei Gamble at a show organized by Emme Williams.

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