Article Contributed by 23 PR
Published on 2026-10-25
Chicago-raised and Los Angeles-based composer, producer, saxophonist and synthesist Josh Johnson (SML, Jeff Parker ETA IVtet, Flea and The Honora Band) releases the new solo album Animative on physical formats and digital download, with streaming release to follow on November 10. He also shares the album’s third streaming single, “Jazz Chord Possession.” Listen to “Jazz Chord Possession” and purchase Animative here.
Of the single, Johnson notes: “A synth preset questionably titled ‘Jazz Chord’ was the springboard for this off-kilter genre-morphing dance piece with interwoven and overlapping tactile saxophone textures. You feel and hear the air in the sound, much like a noise oscillator in a synthesizer. The gentle organic layers are placed alongside a phased ear-tingling bottle-ensemble, ultimately morphing into an extraterrestrial dance party (for the freaks).”
On recent single “It Can Be Everywhere,” Johnson creates a dreamscape with glittering synths, ethereal saxophone pads, and elegiac saxophone/violin melodies. Watch the “It Can Be Everywhere” video, directed by Mikel Patrick Avery, below.
The album’s lead single “Reece” is “a horn-centric instrumental [that’s] rich and layered” (Stereogum). Animative is the third album Johnson has released under his own name, and his first for International Anthem/Nonesuch. The ten-track album is co-produced by Johnson and Paul Bryan and features contributions from Meshell Ndegeocello, Macie Stewart, Marquis Hill, Ben Lumsdaine, and more.
Last month, the New York Times included Animative in 33 Albums and Shows We’re Looking Forward to This Fall. Hank Shteamer wrote of Johnson: “The genre-bridging saxophonist has led the West Coast charge [and] has advanced an inviting brand of experimentalism … His upcoming solo effort, Animative, offers vibrant electroacoustic music well-suited to dancing or daydreaming.”
Throughout the 2020s, Josh Johnson has emerged as a vital and innovative force in various realms of progressive music. He has thrived as a sideman and collaborator, helping to shape the sound of Jeff Parker’s ETA IVtet; he co-leads all-star creative ensembles like SML, the Openness Trio and his collective with Sam Wilkes and Gregory Uhlmann; and he served as the producer for Meshell Ndegeocello’s GRAMMY-winning 2023 album The Omnichord Real Book as well as Flea’s acclaimed 2026 album Honora.
Animative is a culmination of the harmonically rich, loops-inflected sound that first germinated on Johnson’s 2020 full-band release Freedom Exercise and on his immersive 2024 solo album Unusual Object. Throughout the album, Johnson puts sophisticated technologies to work, but always in service of a feeling—working to escape the trap of mastery. “I'm looking to make it feel more human,” Johnson says. In particular, he cites fellow Chicagoan, saxophonist, and 360-degree artistic thinker Eddie Harris and the brilliant piano eccentric Mal Waldron as influences on his approach to breaking form and emphasizing the corporeal elements of performance.
Johnson’s thoughtful and reserved nature made Animative’s title something of a puzzler to his friends. “I said the name to a few people, and they were like, ‘Animated is not how I would describe you,’” Johnson laughs. “But I'm really thinking about it from the perspective of causing animation, giving spirit, or connecting with spirit.” He thinks often of the lessons of Wayne Shorter, one of his teachers, who instilled in him a sense of reverence for the mystical, and emphasized the musician’s duty to “conjure and transport.” Johnson also found inspiration in the West African philosopher Malidoma Somé’s writings, and the “non-Western ways of thinking about time and being” that they propose, as well as Italo Calvino’s inventive, often-dreamlike short fiction.
The spectrum of influence, clarity of intention, and confidence in craft present in Johnson’s approach yields stunning results on Animative. Whether it’s spiritual and wandering works augmented by the idiosyncratic overloads of hardware technology, stumbling funk that pulsates with the glow of otherworldly deep sea life, surrealist dancefloor cuts or cloudy collages of shoegaze saxophone, Animative coheres into a strange and beautiful whole—a generous and spellbinding reflection of its auteurist creator.
Johnson will be performing Animative album release shows in Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago and Brooklyn this fall. His live ensemble for the shows will be a trio with bassist Anna Butterss and drummer Ben Lumsdaine. Details and links are below.
Animative is out now on LP, CD, and digital download. Purchase it here.
Animative Tracklist
Idiofone
Reece
Jazz Chord Possession
Aughts Hymnal
Mill
It Can Be Everywhere
Strays
High Step
Close
Upstairs 2021
Credits
Produced by Josh Johnson and Paul Bryan
Recorded by Paul Bryan in Nashville, and Josh Johnson in Los Angeles & Brooklyn
Mixed by Paul Bryan
Drums on “Reece” recorded by Ben Lumsdaine
Mastered by Dave Cooley at Elysian Masters
Sequenced by Scott McNiece
All compositions and arrangements by Josh Johnson (Sky and City Music BMI, administered by International Anthem Publishing).
Josh Johnson: Saxophone, synthesizer, sampler, piano, Rhodes, percussion, bass clarinet, guitar, drum synthesizer
Paul Bryan: Bass (“Close”)
Meshell Ndegeocello: Bass (“High Step”)
Ben Lumsdaine: Drums (“Reece,” “High Step”)
Marlon Patton: Drums (“Close”)
Brandon Combs: Drums (“High Step”)
Macie Stewart: Violin (“It Can Be Everywhere”)
Marquis Hill: Trumpet (“Upstairs 2021”)
Aaron Steele: Additional production, sampler (“Mill”)
Cover photo by Anna Powell Denton
Design & layout by Aaron Lowell Denton
Album Release Shows
October 27 — Los Angeles, CA — Zebulon — Tickets
November 1 — Chicago, IL — Empty Bottle — Tickets
November 3 — Minneapolis, MN — The Cedar — Tickets
December 10 — Brooklyn, NY — Public Records — Tickets
