Stew Headquarters, October 2024
There’s something special about close friendships formed in one’s undergraduate years. Neither are you a full-fledged adult with overconfident opinions, nor are you the barely-sentient high school adolescent bumbling through high school. Instead, you’re at that crossroads, a place of possibility and danger, where you may take or leave new ideas, discover and unfold fundamental aspects of your personality. It’s no surprise, then, that we become bound closely with those who travel with us in this perilous period.
i///u channels the energy of those friendships. Seven friends, to be exact. Founded almost eight years ago by a small crew of University of Washington undergraduates, i///u has matured alongside the scene it’s come to call a home. After winning MoPOP’s 2019 SoundOff! Competition, performing live on KEXP, and securing the Earshot Jazz NW Alternative Jazz Award of the Year in 2022, the band put together an album to crystallize their efforts in live performance last year. And while their crew list has evolved over the years, that sense of collegiate whimsy and play comes through in their debut album.
It’s called: Play For Someone You Love. The neo-soul work has a jazz affect that comes through in a sense of improvisation and the camaraderie of the band. One of the major feats of the album is to showcase each of the members—Scott Elder (bass), Katyrose Jordan (vocals, flute, saxophone), Billy Wu (drums), Jason Chan (keys), Julio Estrada (guitar), and Andrew Sumabat (saxophone, trumpet, flugelhorn, trombone, EWI)—without ever losing the groove of the group. “We are students of this music and this craft,” said Jordan in an interview. “We feel honored to even play it and to represent it.… To create our own ideas from that background is a privilege.”
“Seattle Heat” builds on that groove with a guest appearance from Baton Rouge rapper Wakai. Recorded, apparently, during a Seattle heat wave, the simultaneously sultry and stifling sensation of overheating is brought to life by the twin vocals. And the album is bookended with an extended play on the band’s focus on the intimate, interpersonal nature of making and listening to music. We stand on the “Precipice” before setting off and finally we come to the realization that we can no longer “Go With” (You) when the process of transformation is complete. To play for someone you love is no guarantee that they are game to play, too.
What i///u has done is translate the in-group language of their friend group—including complex, occasionally abstract chord changes—into something accessible and energizing for those of us in the audience. We’ll have to see what’s next from this Seattle-born crew. Hopefully they will let us go with them in the journey.
