The singer-songwriter Nick Hakim unexpectedly joins forces with jazz saxophonist Roy Nathanson on 'Small Things' album, to be released on April 16th.
The New York-based musician, Nick Hakim, has emerged over the course of the last few years as one of the most smooth and exciting new voices in the modern continuation of the "neo-soul" movement, if you will. Six years have passed since his break-through self-released 2-part EP 'Where Will We Go' and he has been wonderfully widening his scope and pushing the sound forward ever since. In the recent transformations of his, he seems to be gravitating towards a more experimental sound, radical self-awareness, humility and pure expression of his voice, which really came through in his last years 2nd studio album 'WILL THIS MAKE ME GOOD' and a remix album to that title early this year. These two projects were a highly anticipated follow-up to his record-store-day collaborative album with Onyx Collective. Both Nick and Roy have collaborated on the Collective's 'Manhattan Special' album last year and, as it turns out, we have even more goodness to look forward to now.
The unexpected first time collaboration between the soulful musician Nick Hakim and jazz saxophonist and poet Roy Nathanson, also co-founder of the legendary Jazz Passengers (collaborating with Debbie Harry, Elvis Costello, Mavis Staples and more), will be the debut release on the New York based Onyx Collective's newly established label NYXO. The combination of Nick's soothing voice and Roy's seductive sax melodies is gonna give you some real goosebumps if you close your eyes and give the track a proper listen. Seriously, it's so good... Some members of the Onyx Collective are also actively participating on the musical creation and Executive Production of the album, titled 'Small Things', announced recently with the release of the lead single, 'Moonman', along with some wonderfully spacey visuals that feature the duo travelling to the Moon on the hunt for their album together:
Roy Nathanson and Nick Hakim are frequent collaborators with the experimental Onyx Collective, both on stage and in the studio. Apparently, the joining of these two creative souls has been a result of a quite organic meeting at an Onyx Collective show, where both of them performed. At the gig, Hakim spontaneously sang one of Nathanson's poems, which ended up creating the foundation for the exciting upcoming project.
"Then long story shortish, Nick finally came by my house in Flatbush and we went down to my fusty old basement and I handed him some poems from my new book. And just like that, Nick just stood behind my old fender Rhodes played the chords for ‘Moonman’ and ‘New Guy to Look At’ and I played along and that was that. Of course we spent the next almost year working out the arrangements re-recording and doing the work that you do but that was really that.”
Nathanson puts it best:
"It seems we were lucky. Looks like we got ourselves on the Moon the old fashioned way."
The full 'Small Things' album comes out on April 16th and we're already counting down the days to experience the sort of magic they've built together. To the Moon and back!
01 Small Things
02 Things to Like and Not Like in America
03 Moonman
04 Cry & Party
05 New Guy to Look At
06 All the Things You Are (Reimagined)
07 Small Things 2
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