2018 · Album
Lucent Waters
Recorded 2018 · Enja Records · Produced by Nasheet Waits, Florian Weber
Waits Emerges as a Bandleader in Full Command
Lucent Waters announces Waits as a composer and conceptual thinker, not just a timekeeper.
Lucent Waters marks Nasheet Waits' transition from accomplished sideman to bandleader with something to say. By this point in his career, Waits had spent years anchoring sessions for major figures across jazz — his playing was already trusted and sought after. What this album shows is that his real ambition lay elsewhere: in organizing sound around his own ideas, his own compositional voice, his own sense of what a rhythm section could accomplish when given room to breathe.
The band—Florian Weber on piano, Ralph Alessi on trumpet, and Linda May Han Oh on bass—plays with uncommon restraint and clarity. There's no rush here, no need to fill every space. Waits' drumming sits deep in the pocket, suggesting more than it states, and the conversations between him and Oh establish a foundation that feels like actual dialogue rather than timekeeping. Weber's approach is spacious and responsive; Alessi adds color and counterpoint without dominating. The record moves at its own pace, letting individual pieces develop their logic rather than chasing virtuosity.
This is a album about listening—to each other, to silence, to the shape of a single phrase. Waits sounds like a drummer thinking like a bandleader, which is exactly what he is here. If you've only known him through his work with others, Lucent Waters is essential.
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