Track By Track Analysis: James Francies Talks To Us About Debut Album ‘Flight’

 

At 23-years old, James Francies has a career that defies his relative young age. Those who have kept tabs in the jazz scene’s up-and-coming young musicians would remember Francies playing under luminaries like Jeff “Tain” Watts, Pat Metheny, Chris Potter, Eric Harland, Stefon Harris, and Terrace Martin.

But what makes it even more impressive is how he Francies is able to seamlessly feel comfortable in hip-hop and R&B settings having rocked alongside Common, Nas, Chance The Rapper as well as appearing in The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon alongside The Roots.

With credits listed above and given Francies’ instrument and where he hails from, it’s easy to compare him another Houstonian pianist. But a listen to Flight would suggest that this young pianist is ready to forge a path completely his own — kind of like how the older Houstonian pianist did with his career. In a genre of music where the primary concern for many is to set up mics in the studio, hit record, and call it a day, Flight takes it a step further with by applying modern post-production techniques. While we really tried not to make the comparison between Glasper and Francies, we think it apt to say that if Black Radio presented a paradigm shift in how musicians thought about what was acceptable in a jazz set, Flight re-vamps the idea of how jazz records should be produced.

We spoke to Francies in this first part of our special Track By Track Analysis to discuss the first half of Flight. Scroll below to dive into the details of his album.

“Leaps”

Revive: It’s easy to add the term “modern” to any jazz record that comes out today by virtue that it’s a recent release, but Flight really does feel like a contemporary record with its use of post-production magic. Your piano solo in “Leaps” sounds like it’s effected or it’s a patch from one of your keyboards and it really adds this nice texture that you don’t hear so often.

James Francies: For this whole record I wanted to make the sounds more — like you’ve said — modern. But it’s normally how I would treat a song. I usually add different layers and tweak the piano to sound a different way just to have something different. I like to have different effects going on and different sonic textures just to keep interesting for me.

I’ve always been fascinated with sounds. Weird sounding stuff have always been a part of my playing and my style of writing. This record is textural based but there’s live instruments at all times. Nothing was really tracked except for “Dreaming.” Everything else was recorded in real time.