Recording history and tape provenance
Kamasi Washington's core band, later branded the West Coast Get Down, had played together since their teens at Locke High School's after-school jazz program in Los Angeles. In December 2011, the collective pooled resources to rent Kingsize Soundlabs for a full month, recording around 190 songs across 30 straight days that would eventually surface on multiple members' solo albums – Miles Mosley's Uprising, Ronald Bruner Jr.'s Triumph, Cameron Graves's Planetary Prince, and others, alongside Washington's own contribution. Washington shelved his own material for several years while session work – most notably string and horn arrangements for Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly and touring with Flying Lotus – raised his profile, before Flying Lotus's Brainfeeder label finally released The Epic in 2015.
The album unfolds across three named volumes (The Plan, The Glorious Tale, The Historic Repetition) built around a recurring dream Washington described of a guardian awaiting a worthy successor – a loose creation-myth narrative underpinning 17 mostly original compositions, alongside interpretations of the standard "Cherokee," Claude Debussy's "Clair de Lune," and Terence Blanchard's "Malcolm's Theme" (set to a recording of Ossie Davis's eulogy for Malcolm X). The personnel is unusually large even by big-band standards: doubled bassists (Miles Mosley, Stephen "Thundercat" Bruner) and doubled drummers (Ronald Bruner Jr., Tony Austin), Ryan Porter on trombone, Igmar Thomas on trumpet, Cameron Graves and Brandon Coleman on keys, Leon Mobley on percussion, and vocalists Patrice Quinn and Dwight Trible, on top of the string orchestra and choir.
The Epic received near-universal critical acclaim (Metacritic 83), was named DownBeat's Jazz Album of the Year in 2016, and later appeared on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 Best Albums of the 2010s. AllMusic's Thom Jurek called it holistic in breadth and deep in vision, praising its accessibility without compromise. CD and digital formats were mastered by Stephen Marcussen at Marcussen Mastering; the vinyl edition used an entirely separate mastering chain (see below), which is the source of the format-specific limitations discussed throughout this guide.
The vinyl format note
Every known vinyl pressing of The Epic – the original 2015 run and later repress batches from 2020 and 2021 – shares the same fundamental mastering: a half-speed cut by Matt Colton at Alchemy Mastering, pressed at MPO. The 2021 repress shows some sides (E and F, and reportedly some A/B copies) recut by a different engineer, Lex van Coeverden, likely due to lacquer replacement rather than a new mastering approach – the sound doesn't meaningfully differ between pressing years.
The complaint that surfaces consistently across Discogs reviews, regardless of pressing year, is the same: with six sides carrying roughly 172 minutes of music, each side runs close to 30 minutes – a length that inherently narrows the groove and compresses dynamic range compared to the 15-22 minutes per side generally considered ideal for full-fidelity vinyl. Reviewers describe the result as "dull and muffled compared to the digital," "over-compressed," and mastered at "super low" levels; one Discogs commenter summarized the shared view bluntly: "This should be properly mastered on 5 LPs." Reception isn't uniformly negative – several owners report a decent, clean-sounding pressing, particularly after cleaning – but the pattern of complaints is broad enough, and consistent enough across different pressing years, that it should be treated as an inherent property of this release rather than bad luck with an individual copy.
Given this, the practical guidance for this title is straightforward: buy the vinyl for the outstanding packaging (rigid board outer slipcase, individually artworked 3mm-spined sleeves, two 12" poster inserts with art by KC Woolf Haxton and calligraphy by Kenturah Davis) and the tactile experience of a 17-track triple album, but don't expect it to outperform the CD or digital masters, which several listeners and at least one Discogs reviewer explicitly recommend instead for critical listening.
Pressing tier summary
| Tier ⇅ | Pressing | Cat# | Year ⇅ | Format | Source / Mastering | Notes | Market ⇅ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | CD / digital | BFCD050 | 2015 | Stereo | Mastered by Stephen Marcussen, Marcussen Mastering | Widely preferred over vinyl for critical listening on this title | – |
| B | Vinyl box set (all pressing years) | BF050 | 2015–2021 | Stereo, 33⅓, 3×180g | Half-speed cut by Matt Colton, Alchemy Mastering, MPO | Same master across all years; ~30 min/side compresses dynamics; excellent packaging | $54VG+ $71NM $80M |
References
- Discogs (master): https://www.discogs.com/master/837501-Kamasi-Washington-The-Epic
- AllMusic, Thom Jurek's review of "The Epic": https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-epic-mw0002838338
- TurntableLab, product page for the vinyl 3LP box set: https://www.turntablelab.com/products/kamasi-washington-the-epic-180g-vinyl-3lp
- Discogs release and community listings for all pressings of the vinyl box set (BF050, all pressing years 2015-2021)