New Jazz Underground, Hoodies Review

New Jazz Underground: The Sounds Of Today’s Jazz

By Nolan DeBuke

New Jazz Underground’s debut album Hoodies blends styles for a current modern jazz sound because the ensemble understands how to make them belong to one another.

Across its thirteen tracks, the trio moves comfortably through hip-hop-inflected grooves, blues forms, gospel undertones, post-bop improvisation, contemporary swing, and Afro-diasporic rhythmic concepts. Yet Hoodies rarely feels like a survey of influences. Instead, it unfolds as a remarkably coherent musical statement built on a simple but powerful principle: musical ideas are allowed to grow. Small melodic fragments, pentatonic figures, rhythmic riffs, and blues gestures reappear throughout the album in new forms, creating a sense of continuity that binds together its stylistic breadth and formal ambition.

The opening track, “Oney Ones One,” has Sebastian Rios introducing a bass riff colored by Phrygian inflections while Abdias Armenteros answers with a minor pentatonic melody that is rooted in the blues and open to modern jazz vocabulary. What begins in a hip-hop-informed groove gradually gives way to contemporary swing. The transition is natural and the melodic musical material remains recognizable. As Armenteros pushes into wider intervallic leaps, chromatic approaches, and harder-edged post-bop phrasing, the improvisation still pulls from the composition, sounding like an extension of it.

This drives “Sidetracked,” one of the album’s many examples of contrast within cohesion. Moving between a groove reminiscent of Horace Silver’s “Señor Blues” and a more spacious modern 6/8 feel, the composition continually returns to memorable pentatonic and blues-derived ideas that keep the listener oriented. Armenteros builds his solo with motivic clarity, developing concise melodic statements through rhythmic variation and subtle expansion. Meanwhile, drummer T.J. Reddick is essential to the trio’s chemistry. While marking time, he functions as a connective force, linking the momentum of the bass with the melodic direction of the saxophone while constantly reshaping the music’s energy.

The album’s second half reveals an even larger compositional vision. Beginning with “las salinas (prelude),” the interconnected suite unfolds through a sequence of blues-informed movements that explore groove, melody, and emotional character from multiple perspectives. New Jazz Underground treats the blues as a flexible musical framework capable of accommodating contemporary rhythmic language and modern improvisational thinking without losing its expressive core.

“how do you do (ii)” provides one of the clearest illustrations of the trio’s compositional instincts. The vocal lines, delivered by Armenteros with a soulful directness and gospel-inflected warmth, serve as more than lyrical statements. Their melodic contours become the source material for the ensemble itself. Vocal phrases evolve into saxophone figures, background harmonies become contrapuntal textures, and recurring motifs help shape the track’s larger form. The effect is one of continuous conversation, with each new section emerging naturally from ideas already introduced.

One of the album’s most compelling qualities is the way musical ideas circulate among the players. Phrases remain attached to a phrase, to be developed by all. A gesture introduced by the saxophone may reappear in the bass. A rhythmic figure established by Rios may become the foundation for one of Reddick’s responses. Throughout the record, the trio demonstrates a collective approach to improvisation in which ideas are shared, reshaped, and returned in altered forms. The music feels less like a sequence of individual statements than a process of ongoing collaboration.

The brief but memorable “hoodieJig (iii)” distills this philosophy into miniature form. A bass-driven motif reinforced by handclaps anchors the movement while shifting textures—including artificial harmonics and elongated saxophone phrases, provide contrast without sacrificing identity. Even when the spotlight turns toward the drums, the performance remains tethered to the movement’s established groove and melodic character, reinforcing the suite’s broader coherence.

Rios emerges throughout Hoodies as a particularly important presence. His bass lines do far more than outline harmony or reinforce pulse. Again and again, he serves as the trio’s structural guide, navigating transitions, reinforcing recurring ideas, and helping disparate sections feel connected. His leadership is rarely overt, but it is deeply felt in the way the music moves from one environment to another without losing its sense of purpose.

For all of its sophistication, however, Hoodies remains approachable. The trio understands that memorable musical ideas create stronger connections. New Jazz Underground invites the listener into a process of recognition. Familiar motifs return in altered forms, grooves evolve, and ideas acquire new meanings as they pass through different contexts. The result is music that rewards close listening while remaining immediately engaging.

That balance ultimately becomes the album’s appeal. Hoodies demonstrates that stylistic breadth and formal ambition need not come at the expense of clarity. By allowing small musical ideas to travel through changing grooves, textures, and emotional landscapes, New Jazz Underground creates a debut in which every element feels connected to a larger whole. The album’s many influences may come from different places, but they sound as though they were always meant to belong together.