Josh Johnson - "It Can Be Everywhere" single/video out NOW /// new album ANIMATIVE out October 23rd
Photo by Atiba Jefferson
Chicago-raised and Los Angeles-based composer, producer, saxophonist and synthesist Josh Johnson (SML, Jeff Parker ETA IVtet, Flea and The Honora Band) shares “It Can Be Everywhere” today, a new track from his forthcoming solo album Animative (out October 23, 2026 on physical formats and digital download, with streaming release to follow on November 10). The new track also comes via a video directed by Mikel Patrick Avery, which can be seen here.
Mikel Patrick Avery’s video for “It Can Be Everywhere”
On “It Can Be Everywhere” Johnson creates a dreamscape with glittering synths, ethereal saxophone pads, and elegiac saxophone/violin melodies. The track has more in common with Cluster, Bitchin Bajas, Tangerine Dream, or Michael Hoenig’s classic Departure from the Northern Wasteland than with any jazz standard. Repetitious low-end synthetics and oscillating tonal polyrhythmics build to a hypnotic drone for Johnson’s intimate sax melody to sit atop, eventually overtaking the listener’s focus and transmuting into an almost orchestral high-register siren ring, no doubt due in part to violin contributions from Macie Stewart.
Johnson says of the track: “‘It Can Be Everywhere’ is both statement and prompt — to imagine something greater, beyond where we currently stand, and to know that we can also carry that imagined place with us.”
The track also comes via video filmed and directed by Mikel Patrick Avery, who doubles down on the dreamscape with visions of a masked family doing domestic duties, nature walks, and dancing in their living room, all over long, Fellinian stares through the fourth wall.
Animative album cover photo by Anna Powell Denton
Throughout the 2020s, the Chicago-raised and Los Angeles-based saxophonist, keyboardist, synthesist, producer, and composer 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 renowned 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 producer for Meshell Ndegeocello’s GRAMMY-winning 2023 album The Omnichord Real Book as well as Flea’s acclaimed 2026 album Honora.
Animative embodies 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, often using the saxophone to control a sampler or a drum machine, triggering changes in a loop or an effect. But it’s 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 (as on the stirring “Aughts Hymnal”), stumbling funk that pulsates with the glow of otherworldly deep sea life (“High Step”), surrealist dancefloor cuts (“Jazz Chord Possession”) or cloudy collages of shoegaze saxophone (“Upstairs 2021”), Animative coheres into a strange and beautiful whole — a generous and spellbinding reflection of its auteurist creator.
Animative is out on LP, CD, and Digital Download October 23, with streaming release to follow November 10.
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.
Deluxe Vinyl Package
Animative comes on 140-gram vinyl inside a heavyweight matte jacket, with IARC obi strip and poly-lined inner sleeve. Lacquers cut by Daniel K at SST, pressed at Pallas in Germany.
Limited Edition Exospheric Blue Color Vinyl — $32
Classic Black Vinyl — $27
