New Jazz Underground - LYDIALIEBMAN.COM

Hoodies
Release Date: May 29, 2026
Label: Artwork Records

The jazz trio, especially the chordless jazz trio, has long been a genre staple, and has historically provided a vehicle for the boldest of musicians to venture forth and explore new territory. New Jazz Underground (“NJU”), a viral internet sensation of a trio comprising saxophonist/vocalist Abdias Armenteros, bassist Sebastian Rios, and drummer T.J. Reddick has been lauded for this very thing. Described by NPR Music as “classy and classic,” NJU are a group of musicians who “clearly know the jazz tradition, but push at the corners of hard bop and hip-hop.” (NPR, 2024). Assembled during the COVID-19 pandemic to perform in open-air spaces as a way to cope and survive, the trio quickly became a powerhouse of three unified minds whose history-crossing sensibilities took the hearts and minds of their listeners, both in-person and across the internet, by storm. Now, after having performed, as the band poignantly states, “from the streets all the way to the stage of Newport Jazz Festival” in the span of only a few years, an homage to brotherhood, culture, and identity.

Within the wider culture, NJU is arguably best known for their YouTube presence, where they began recording and uploading videos during the pandemic; however, the band's origin predates purely uploading videos. What began as necessity, with the trio playing together in public spaces upon the advent of clubs and venues closing, quickly became the foundation of the band's identity. As the three continued to meet, the group transformed from an informal collective into a serious band, rehearsing, learning each other's music, and gradually building an audience that soon grew exponentially online. The bedrock beneath this experience is a shared belief in brotherhood and resilience, flipping the script on a bleak national state of shutdown to become what the band describes as “a rare opportunity—to play constantly, to grow together, and to transform adversity into something meaningful.”

The title, Hoodies, evokes trifold meaning. The first is a direct nod to the apparel itself, though more broadly it serves as a cultural timestamp, a reference to the defining aesthetics and sensibilities of 2010s–2020s American life. These musicians are unabashedly a product of their era: one shaped by trap music, widespread remix culture, the internet and hypebeast fashion. As the band states, it is “viewing modern street wear culture as personal identity in an established jazz context of suits.” The second tier meaning is found within the etymology of the word “hoodie.” The word is a modern derivative of “hood” and a relation of “brotherhood,” which, for the band, points to shared conditions and a shared survival. “Growing up in Miami and coming together as a band during the pandemic, we often found ourselves in circumstances that were not favorable to success,” they explain. “What made the music possible was being together and holding each other down.” With this perspective, Hoodies represents unity: “Brotherhood is what gets you through when your environment is trying to dictate a lesser result, and where collective strength is the foundation for creating anything meaningful in the face of environmental adversity.” Finally, the title acknowledges how young men of color in America are perceived when wearing hoodies. “The title references figures like Trayvon Martin,” NJU explains, “whose hoodie was a direct justification for violence, and how a hoodie can be used to devalue a boy's humanity.” The band further notes a similar incident involving Israel “Reefa” Hernandez, one of Rios's high school friends and a talented graffiti artist whose life was taken at age 18. The band members saliently note, “This just as easily could have happened to the members of New Jazz Underground (young men of color in America) who dressed and lived in the same hoodies and environments” Hoodies, then, stands as a monument to potential and to equality - an exemplification of what can happen when young men of color are allowed to live, create, and realize their potential.

Musically, the album and ensemble are steeped within the manifold layers of jazz tradition. Having worked and studied with the likes of masters such as Ron Carter and Wynton Marsalis, and all being Julliard graduates, the trio has absorbed the language of each canonical era within jazz history. What remains notable is that the band's influence does not cease there, but continues to be shaped by the sounds of Afro-diasporic popular music. “The album is a living dialogue between past and present,” NJU explains. “Duke Ellington holds as much emotional weight as Kendrick Lamar; Kansas City swing exists alongside modern straight-eighth grooves and hip-hop-influenced beats.” Rather than simply seeking to “blend” or “merge” styles, the trio allows each influence to speak freely, frequently within the same composition.

Hoodies is structured and programmed in two distinct conceptual halves, and represents the culmination of a creative vision shepherded from inception to completion by Sebastian, the band's primary composer, producer, and creative force. The first half showcases the band's direct modern influences, frequently straying from traditional compositional structures. The second half of the album forms a single blues suite, drawing on the ethos and emotional origins of the blues itself: acknowledging hardship, and eliciting endurance. The suite does not rely exclusively on the blues form, but reframes the sentiment of the blues with modern jazz language, compositional methods, rhythms, and influences. In so doing, this suite becomes a dialogue between past and present, showing that the blues is not mere nostalgia but is living and breathing. Sebastian authored all but one composition on the album and oversaw every dimension of its production as well as the curation of the album's visual identity. Central to his compositional approach is a deliberate attentiveness to his collaborators: each piece is crafted to illuminate the distinct strengths of TJ and Abdias, whose contributions as performers, collaborators, and at times composers are integral to the album's realization. It is the convergence of this compositional intent with the exceptional individual talents of all three musicians, and the deep chemistry they share, that gives the work its life and meaning.

The album opens with “Oney Ones One,” hailed by the trio as “a manifesto for the band's musical philosophy of boundless reference.” The piece unfolds in a reverse timeline of three parts. Beginning with a hip hop-influenced groove inspired by producers like Madlib, the composition shifts into a straight 8ths contemporary jazz sound before triumphantly arriving in a hard-driving swing rooted firmly in tradition. The track's defining moment occurs when a short cue from Armenteros's saxophone immediately shifts the entire feel into swing. “It is a moment of clarity and affirmation,” NJU says, “acknowledging modern influences while declaring swing as the core truth beneath it all.”

“Tell Me How You Do” stands out as the second movement within the blues suite and features Armenteros on vocals. His delivery is raw, natural, and channels the affect and impact of the classic blues that affirms this piece as one of the emotional anchors of the album. Notably, the composition was written in a linear fashion rather than a repetitive one, and the piece sweeps through various grooves, including a 5/4 second-line feel, swing, and a driving instrumental 7/4. The continual shifting was written to reflect a broader cultural consciousness which insists eternally on movement, variety, and expansion.

“Ghosts” is a ballad dedicated to those whose lives were lost during the COVID-19, and particularly mourns those whose roles within the jazz community are often unrecognized: the listeners, the audiences, the supporters, the mentors, all of whom breathed life into the music in a manner just as powerful as the musicians on the stage. The piece is structured in two parts, with the first being intimate and reflective, while the second is open and expansive. This track features special guest, pianist Eric Lewis, whose presence adds a stillness and grace to the whole work.

Before this release, New Jazz Underground had already established themselves as a quintessential rising voice. With the advent of Hoodies, NJU unequivocally proclaims their ability to whisper to the soul, speak to the culture, and tie the strands of time and tradition in ways that have seldom been witnessed or conceived prior. Certainly, the combined sound of Armenteros, Rios, and Reddick is one that must be known and heard in the decades to come.