As Is Returns with Crazy World — An Album That Insists on Presence in a Fragmented Age
STACEY SCHULMAN – VOCALS • AL SCHULMAN – GUITAR
JEFF “TAIN” WATTS – DRUMS • CORCORAN HOLT – BASS
GIL GOLDSTEIN – ACCORDION
KOKAYI – SPOKEN WORD
DANTE POPE – BACKGROUND VOCALS
CHRISTYLEZ BACON – BEATBOX
“The song that has blown me away this week.” — Katchie Cartwright, All About Jazz
“Expansive, unafraid, and responsive to the moment. This album isn’t simply a reflection of the times, but a deliberate response to them.” — Keanna Faircloth, Broadcaster (WBGO / WPFW / NPR)
“Quietly magnetic… an album that speaks to its moment — our moment.” — Paris-Move
“Sparkling vocals… honey sweet guitar solos…” — DeeDee McNeil, Making a Scene
“There are fresh new voices emerging who throw change-ups into their songbooks and adventurously and creatively pursue giving a tune its full worth. Welcome to As Is.” — Dan Ouellette, DownBeat Contributor
On May 1st, As Is — the project led by guitarist Al Schulman and vocalist Stacey Schulman — releases its third studio album, Crazy World, on Nite Nite the Elephant Productions / Bespoke Jazz. Conceived during a period of cultural and technological fragmentation, Crazy World reflects a moment when the ground beneath daily life feels perpetually unstable. Rather than offering answers, the album inhabits the uncertainty of the present — questioning what is real, what is manufactured, and what still holds when familiar systems fall apart.
The sessions convene an extraordinary ensemble: drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts, bassist Corcoran Holt, pianist and arranger Gil Goldstein, spoken-word artist Kokayi, background vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Dante Pope, and beatbox artist Christylez Bacon, with James McKinney producing and Scott Jacoby mixing at Eusonia Studios in New York. The music moves fluidly between jazz standards, pop, Brazilian repertoire, soul, and original material — building on a trajectory that has widened from intimate duo settings into increasingly flexible ensemble forms. What distinguishes Crazy World is not a stylistic pivot but an expansion of scale and intention: denser textures, deeper rhythmic interplay, and a more open fusion of genres, rooted even more deeply in the fundamentals of song and human connection.
The album opens with a statement of purpose. “From This (Very) Moment On,” Cole Porter’s 1951 standard, is transformed into a nine-minute genre-crossing meditation on truth, justice, and human connection. Stacey’s rewritten lyric (“From this moment on, we can see clear: only truth can fight fear…”) reframes a familiar love song as protest, with Kokayi’s spoken-word verses, Christylez Bacon’s beatbox, and Dante Pope’s vocalese propelling the track into a call-and-response worth carrying into the streets. Writing for All About Jazz, Katchie Cartwright describes it as a “powerful nine-minute protest piece,” noting the band’s “hydrodynamic pressure” and “exhilarating exhortations” before landing on the song’s pithy thesis: from this moment on, we need more truth, we need more love.
There is plenty along the way to welcome jazz listeners, with familiar tunes carefully curated to trace the uniquely human experiences that anchor the album — intense love in “Better Than Anything,” the ache of loss in “A House Is Not a Home,” and the tender connectedness of “Tiny Dancer,” reimagined as a jazz waltz. These touchstones of the Great American Songbook and beyond provide the emotional architecture for the album’s more experimental passages.
At the album’s center sits a triptych. “Children’s Games” and “PrAilude” — articulated by artificial intelligence and placed in deliberate dialogue with the album’s human performances — which function as commentary on imitation and authorship in an era of machine learning. The third chapter resolves the sequence: “Double Rainbow,” Antonio Carlos Jobim’s composition given English lyrics by Gene Lees, arrives as a celebration of Earth’s natural wonders and a quiet statement on climate — a reminder of what is real, irreplaceable, and worth defending. Together, the three tracks sharpen the album’s central question: what, in this moment, is still unmistakably ours?
The answer arrives most starkly in “The Moon’s a Harsh Mistress,” the Jimmy Webb standard stripped to a voice, a guitar, and a bass — the duo with Corcoran Holt, leaving space around every phrase and chord. The album closes with its title track, “Crazy World,” a lesser-known Henry Mancini song from Victor/Victoria which won the 1983 Academy Award for Best Original Song — featuring Gil Goldstein‘s accordion and McKinney’s string writing. It’s a cinematic sweep that balances unease with gratitude — a benediction, and the emotional counterweight to the album’s opening call to action.
The name As Is reflects the project’s guiding principle: meeting the music — and the moment — exactly where it stands, without nostalgia, novelty, or artifice. For Al and Stacey Schulman, Crazy World represents a continuation rather than a conclusion — a project rooted in human interaction, collective improvisation, and songs treated as living forms. In a time defined by simulation, division, and fragmentation, the album insists on presence: staying human, staying present, and continuing to make something real together, from this very moment on.
About As Is — As Is first took shape on the 2015 debut A Love Like Ours, recorded in Rome and Florence, and widened on 2018’s Here’s to Life, which introduced collaborators including David Binney, Grégoire Maret, Marcus Baylor, and Christie Dashiell, and reached the Top 10 on Billboard’s Traditional Jazz chart. Stacey Schulman draws from the lineage of Nancy Wilson and Dinah Washington, possessing what Jazz Artistry Now calls an agile voice with “strength and expressiveness” whose art shines, particularly on ballads. Known for his “soft, round tone” (All About Jazz) Al Schulman’s playing, shaped by the jazz-blues guitar lineage of Kenny Burrell, Grant Green, and George Benson — as well as the soul and R&B traditions of Ernie Isley and Wilbert Longmire — brings both harmonic weight and forward motion. The duo has toured extensively in the US, Europe, and Asia.
2026 TOUR DATES
May 1 · Chelsea Table + Stage
NYC May 16 · Montclair Porchfest, NJ
May 27 · The Black Squirrel, Philadelphia
June 4 · Con Alma, Pittsburgh
June 10 · Blues Alley, Washington DC
June 13 · Hotel Eve, Asheville
June 26 · Caffè Vivace, Cincinnati
More dates to be announced
FOR MORE INFORMATION: www.asisjazz.com
FOLLOW: @asisjazz (Instagram, TikTok) · @ASISMUSIC (YouTube)
PRESS: Roberta Lawrence, DL Media · roberta@dlmediamusic.com
