Shane Sato

Shane Sato came through the Southern California jazz community and built outward from there: drummer first, then multi-instrumentalist, producer, songwriter and collaborator. That widening vocabulary is the story behind Wavelength. The album is not a retreat from jazz but an expansion of what the form can comfortably hold — pocket, melody, electronic texture, indie R&B color and the shared language of collaborators from adjacent scenes. By the time the project reaches Campus JAX, the homecoming matters because the music no longer sounds like a young player proving he belongs to a tradition. It sounds like an artist deciding what the tradition can become.