Jazz artist Mike Casey has launched a new solo project, For Heads Only, with a debut EP on the way.
Led by singles “Cactus Fade” and “Grain & Ember” – the latter out today – Casey’s project focuses on his intricate beatmaking skills, self-sampling special fragments of his own acclaimed jazz oeuvre into wonky, off-kilter, cinematic, and earworm-y instrumental beats that tell stories without words.
The LA-based musician has some impressive stats to his name. He was selected for the Grammy ‘Next’ Class of 2023, has featured in several ‘Best Jazz’ playlists across Amazon, Pandora, and Spotify, and boasts over 100 million streams across his catalogue. Plus, his previous release, “Valencia” (2024), hit No. 1 on Bandcamp’s Jazz/Fusion page.
Described to represent a “shadowy, introverted studio mastermind at work”, Casey treats his own diverse jazz catalogue like a late-night digging-in-the-crates-for-samples excavation mission, inviting jazz and hip hop fans alike to rediscover his music in a new creative light.
“One of the most beautiful things about jazz composition and jazz improvisation is that there are infinite options to connect and re-connect phrases and assign or re-assign meaning to them,” he said.
“So while this is definitely an instrumental hip hop (and maybe even a bit of electronic!) project… I also view it as not that disconnected from how I naturally think when composing or improvising in jazz…but in slow motion and of course loop based.”
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Last month, he kicked off the project with “Cactus Fade”, sampling his funky, soul-jazz fusion single “Space Chill” off his Public Access: WPAA TV Session EP. He has followed that up with today’s release, “Grain & Ember”, which samples “Dusty Wheel”, a song (also from Public Access) inspired by staying in one-street towns across the US on a cross country road trip in 2021.
Both singles, and more, will appear on For Heads Only’s debut EP, Only This, due out on September 23rd.
