Earshot Jazz Presents: Bilal w/ D.E.D. Sirius

“I realized a long time ago that, with the specter of AI and streaming, we risk losing our humanity,” Bilal says. “With Adjust Brightness, it was like: let’s make some shit that is going to confuse the damn computer. We’re bringing a love frequency — emphasizing the warmth, the love. It’s an intimate record.”

Eight years following 2015’s In Another Life, a collaboration with Adrian Younge that mined inspiration from the live but psychedelic verve of vintage funk, and immediately following 2024’s Live at Glasshaus performance, which reaffirmed Bilal’s unparalleled status as a performer and interpreter of his own work, Adjust Brightness is a giant step forward. Bilal blends his unmatched command of soul, jazz, and R&B with abstract electronic touches for an afro-futuristic project rooted in organic earthiness.

As the industrial squelch of album opener “A To Z” lurches into motion, it’s clear that Bilal is tapping into a modern vein of creativity. He cites artists like The Internet, Sault, Tame Impala, Bonobo, Little Simz, and Solange as inspirations, who’d all likely say the same about Bilal. In a way, Adjust Brightness is a reciprocal, generous act — Bilal appreciating the new frontiers younger artists are discovering, and incorporating their innovations into his approach.

As Bilal shares, Adjust Brightness was long labored over. “It’s more assembled than as is — these different fragments that I was experimenting with brought together into completely different shapes.” It’s an approach that recalls Miles Davis’ tape-splicing method from fusion classics like In Silent Way or On The Corner — recontextualizing human performance with electronic tools.

Specifically, the process was ignited by a new experimental jazz group he was forming. “We’d done a few experimental gigs and it inspired me to try and compose in this idiom that was expressed via samplers and other modern tools. I was putting my voice through different guitar pedals and things like that live. Through learning those different sounds and playing with this new band, it just got me into writing in that mindset.” Bilal found particular inspiration in the impressionistic, mood-focused performances of the Japanese musician Yuki Hirato; he strived to write in a way that emphasized mood over traditional structure.