Quinton Barnes details seventh album, THE KIDS KILLED FREE JAZZ

THE KIDS KILLED FREE JAZZ will be released in February 2027 via Barnes' own imprint, Black Rave Records. Barnes describes the album — his first with his new band, Quinton Barnes & The Kids — as a "negotiation" with free jazz that is respectful and antagonistic at the same time, maintaining the radical charge the music carried in the late 1960s while questioning whether it can still carry this charge with the same force.

This follows Barnes' 2025 album Black Noise, with "THE KIDS KILLED FREE JAZZ" landing as the first preview. The song is identified as the album's thesis statement, beginning with a drum loop and droning horn sample Barnes made in 2023. He went on to built the ensemble around it, with James Goddard on alto saxophone, Matt LeGroulx and Robyn Gray on electric guitar, Ari Swan on violin, Naomi McCarroll-Butler on bass clarinet and Sam Shalabi on oud.

The Kids pull from several generations of Canadian experimental music. Shalabi co-founded the Shalabi Effect and leads the large ensemble Land of Kush. Calgary saxophonist Jairus Sharif and guitarist Emmanuel Jacob Lacopo appear elsewhere on the record. Goddard, Swan and electronic musician Markus Lake, who joins the live line-up, are founding members of the Montréal improvising ensemble Egyptian Cotton Arkestra.

THE KIDS KILLED FREE JAZZ unfolds in three acts: The Heist, The Escape and The Aftermath. Across eleven tracks, it moves from dense ensemble writing toward hip-hop, ghettotech and club music, and ends on a single voice and acoustic guitar.

"THE KIDS KILLED FREE JAZZ is about inheriting the radical desire of free jazz with the understanding that its forms and gestures may have become hollow, institutionalised, and compromised by complacency," Barnes explains. "It's a record that seeks to locate the spirit of free jazz while disavowing belief in its form."

Quinton Barnes & The Kids will mark the release with shows in February and March, with dates to be announced.

THE KIDS KILLED FREE JAZZ artwork

THE KIDS KILLED FREE JAZZ tracklist

ACT I: THE HEIST
"THE KIDS KILLED FREE JAZZ"
"BIZARRE ZON"
"INDUSTHONK"
"QUIET STORM"
"COCAINE HAZE (feat. Emmanuel Jacob Lacopo & Jairus Sharif)"
"don't be out after sundown (feat. Jairus Sharif)"

ACT II: THE ESCAPE
"RUN THIS SHIT"
"STATIC"
"CHASM"

ACT III: THE AFTERMATH
"idk (feat. Emmanuel Jacob Lacopo)"
"i don't understand (feat. Emmanuel Jacob Lacopo)"