• News

• All

Mar 18, 2021 By Emma Goad

Neo-soul artist Nick Hakim and jazz saxophonist Roy Nathanson have unexpectedly collaborated on an upcoming album, titled Small Things. It is the two artists’ first time working together, as well as the band Onyx Collective’s debut release on their new label called NYXO, and it will be out April 16. They have shared their new song “Moonman” along with a music video for the track. Check out the lead single and video directed by Onyx Collective’s Mike Swoop below, as well as the album’s track list and cover art.

Nathanson speaks on how the collaboration came to be in a recent press release, stating: “Over these last few years I’d been a guest in projects with my wonderful former student (and person) and the great young band, Onyx Collective that he co-founded with the wonderful drummer (and person) Austin Williamson. So anyway, I met Nick doing one of these concerts. Nick sang one of my poems at the gig and afterwards said he wanted to come by my house and sing some of my other poems. Then long story shortish, Nick finally came by my house in Flatbush and we went down to my fusty old basement and I handed him some poems from my new book. And just like that, Nick just stood behind my old fender Rhodes played the chords for ‘Moonman’ and ‘New Guy to Look At’ and I played along and that was that. Of course we spent the next almost year working out the arrangements re-recording and doing the work that you do but that’s was really that.”

Their debut album Small Things is arriving to the music world after Hakim’s record released in 2020, WILL THIS MAKE ME GOOD, and Nathanson’s collaboration with Onyx Collective on their album Manhattan Special, also released in 2020. The video for “Moonman” is an introduction to the rest of the album, as it features the duo travelling to the moon on the hunt for their album together.

On the content of their video, Nathanson explains: “It seems we were lucky. Looks like we got ourselves on the moon the old-fashioned way.”

Small Things Tracklist:

1. Small Things
2. Things To Like and Not Like in America
3. Moonman
4. Cry & Party
5. New Guy To Look At
6. All The Things You Are (Reimagined) [Cover of Jerome Kern & Oscar Hammerstein II]
7. Small Things 2

Support Under the Radar on Patreon.