Album Review: JOYFULTALK – Familiar Science: a dazzling alt-jazz beat connection.
Multi-disciplinary artist, composer and musician Jay Crocker (JOYFULTALK lead-protagonist) works with combinations and reactions, fusing elements with care and microscopic attention to create the surprising but coherent. The last impressive JOYFULTALK release for Constellation, ‘A Separation Of Being’, took the chiming gamelan complexity, ringing peals of electronica and turbulent strings, then scaled things up to …
Album Review: Almon Memela – Funky Africa : a South African soul-jazz classic revived.
Call off the search! The chroniclers at We Are Busy Bodies continue their significant excavation of the rich seams of seventies South African jazz with the release of Almon Memela’s ‘Funky Africa’ (remastered by Noah Mintz and available from May 6th). This classic slab of soul-jazz rare groove, hotly pursued by crate diggers, turntablists and …
Album Review: Lalalar – Bi Cinnete Bakar: Furious electro-techno-rock from the Istanbul trio.
Those fine sound selectors at Bongo Joe have really been ripping up the new post punk envelope recently. We’ve had Tout Bleu’s dark-folk electronica, Amami’s earnest Rai inventions and most recently Societe Etrange caused a stir with their free form, dub informed workouts. Now the label is delivering direct from Istanbul, Lalalar’s debut album ‘Bi …
Live Review: Jason Sharp – The Rose Hill, Brighton 3.05.22
Even before the live music began there was a sense that something extraordinary was about to happen in the snug confines of the artsy Rose Hill pub on Tuesday night. The stage was set, dismembered guitar, clamps and vintage vox amp to the left, a yawning cabinet to the right, sprawling with leads that buried …
Live Review: Anna Meredith and the LCO – Barbican, London 30.4.22
Anna Meredith’s electronic pop music has always been orchestral in scale, layered, interconnected, harmonically complex and structured like a tight stack of circuit boards, wired for glorious sound. So the notion of performing her Mercury Award nominated second album FIBS with the London Contemporary Orchestra seemed more than a natural step to take, a drift …
Album Review: Congotronics International – Where’s The One? : Indispensable document from the Congolese/leftfield indie supergroup, live and locomotive.
Collective, supergroup, ensemble…whatever way you look at it Congotronics International were a big big band. Nineteen musicians, five guitarists, three likembe players, five percussionists, two bass players, three drummers and an overflowing pool of vocal talent, they aimed for scale, scope and scintillation. Formed in 2011 from members of the pioneers of the ‘tradi-modern’ sound, …
Track/Video: Patrick Watson unveils an exquisite video to welcome his ‘Better In The Shade’ album
Patrick Watson is an extraordinary musician – seven albums in and the Canadian singer-songwriter’s delicate melodic tapestries never wear thin. Following 2019’s ‘Wave’, an album of shimmering majestic orchestral pop balladry, comes the announcement of the follow up on Secret City Records ‘Better In The Shade’, available to the digital universe now and in tangible …
New Track: From soon come album ‘Fleeting Future’, Akusmi releases ‘Yurikamome’– a pulsating journey through uplifting electronica.
London based composer/producer Pascal Bideau has been developing his Akusmi project for some time now both in his home studio and with Berlin based musicians Florian Juncker (trombone), Ruth Velten (saxophone) and Daniel Brandt of Brandt Brauer Frick (drums / electronic percussions). Inspired by an immersive gamelan experience during an Indonesian sabbatical then imagined through …
New Track: Noori & His Dorpa Band release debut single ‘Al Amal’, scorching ethio-soul vibes from Port Sudan.
So TikTok does have a function! Excavated from the app by those seekers of the undiscovered at Ostinato Records, Noori & His Dorpa Band bring the power and passion of Beja culture direct from their home base on the Sudanese coast. Out front, leader Noori plays a self- built, hybrid tambo-guitar, a welded wonder that …
Meet: Inspirational electro-acoustic saxophonist Jason Sharp ahead of his upcoming UK/Eu solo tour.
You might have missed saxophonist Jason Sharp’s elemental and elevating album ‘The Turning Centre Of The Still World’ released as it was at the backend of the pandemic in August last year. His third release for Montreal’s mighty Constellation label marked an emboldened exploration of his craft, melding his sax playing with electronics using his …