Gearing up for an upcoming album, ‘Lion Dance’, Singapore-based composer, musician and visionary Dan Webb has recently unveiled a new single, ‘Thai Basil’, a record that features a stellar lineup of musicians, including drummer Micah Hummel (Quickly, Quickly) and percussionist Nate Werth (Snarky Puppy, Ghost-Note), as well as Ron Blake and James King as the horn section (former The Rolling Stones collaborators).
Compared to its predecessors, like ‘Things Rise and Fall’ and ‘Hungry Ghosts’, ‘Thai Basil’ feels less hypnotic and reflective, focusing on a bold, kinetic, and playful aural livery. Gone are the cinematic textures and epic arrangements; they are now replaced with bright fusion-funk mastery and a punchy horn section. Yet, Webb’s psychedelic factor still persists, with ‘Thai Basil’ slowly fading out into a bit of a repetitive mist. In that sense, we observe the transition from a dry, retro arrangement to a fuller, kaleidoscopic one.
Delving deeper into the intricate horn patterns that we can hear in the track, Webb explains how it’s done by “layering the horn section on top of itself repeatedly until it became a three-part contrapuntal arrangement, then stacking additional synth parts over the top”. There’s musicianship for days here, but that tends to always be the case with Dan Webb. We look forward to ‘Lion Dance’ and all of the new music that’s coming out soon.
Recommended! Discover ‘Thai Basil’ now: