Style: Jazz, Jazz Fusion (instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: Sungazer, Snarky Puppy
Country: United States
Release date: 28 September 2025

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Say “jazz” to a prog rock fan and you’ll typically create one of a few images in their head: old-timey black-and-white-photograph jazz club jazz a la Louis Armstrong, smooth jazzy yacht rock like Steely Dan, or the progressive metal-influenced djazz of artists like Tigran Hamasyan. It’s easy to forget that modern jazz does not have to be an all-or-nothing exercise in excess, where everything (melody, intensity, time signatures) is turned up to 11. Sometimes, jazz can be—like the proverbial chair, porridge, and bed—not too simple, not too complex, but just right. On their latest EP, Everything Yes embody this restraint and show that it’s the notes, but also the spaces between the notes, that matter.

Volume 2.5 opens with “Midnight Fistfight”, an uptempo, odd time signature piece built around an ascending keyboard melody, imitated first by the alto and tenor saxes in a call-and-response style, and then by the bass as well. The ubiquity of this riff across instruments, and its repeated occurrences throughout the song, make for a really powerful hook, drawing in the listener and providing a familiar place to return to after a long, airy keys-and-drums solo. This same compositional philosophy underlies “No Tip”, the second track on Volume 2.5: introduce a riff, repeat it on additional instruments, and use it as a hook in the absence of vocal melodies or lyrics. This is a solid strategy for making an instrumental track memorable, and Everything Yes largely follow it throughout this latest EP.

Despite its short run time and largely consistent instrumentation, Volume 2.5 provides some measure of variety to listeners. In “Midnight Fistfight”, the energetic, off-beat bass churning underneath soaring saxophones and synths will be familiar to fans of Sungazer (see: “Cool 7”), while the smooth almost-muzak jazz of “Overlook” should appeal to fans of Snarky Puppy‘s recent work with Metropole Orkest. However, Everything Yes do more than pay homage to their forebears, dipping their toes into nu jazz with tracks like “Squidward Shuffle” and incorporating just a splash of spa-core ambient in “Overlook” via some alternative percussion—chimes and an arpeggiated marimba provide some texture in the background of the mix. It’s a short tour of the landscape of modern jazz, but a relatively scenic one.

Volume 2.5 is a small but punchy package of fun, interesting jazz that won’t bore you to tears, but won’t knock your socks off, either. It’s a solid collection of well-composed tracks, with impressive performances from a group of talented musicians. Moreover, each piece is given a unique identity without incorporating a huge swath of studio-only instrumental performances that wouldn’t be recreatable in a live setting. It’s very good. And sometimes that’s good enough.

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Recommended tracks: Midnight Fistfight, Paradigm, Squidward Shuffle
You may also like: ZackGrooves, Shubh Saran, Milton Man Gogh, We Used to Cut the Grass
Final verdict: 7/10

Related links: Official Website | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Royal Artist Group

Everything Yes is:
– Zack Graybeal (drums)
– Sean Reeser (composition, tenor sax)
– Cole Sipe (bass)
– Nathan Graybeal (alto sax)