fusion

Premiere: The Rookies prove they are no beginners as they unveil a blast of über cool jazz in the steaming track ‘Dry Bones’ ahead of new album.
There’s nothing cooler than a hot blast of melodic jazz and Melbourne band The Rookies are doing us the honour of premiering their new single ‘Dry Bones’: a sizzling piece of jazzy goodness with a serious subtext. This is their first release since 2019 – a far distant land and another world away. There is …

Album Review: The Paradox – Live at Montreux Jazz Festival
With the release of The Paradox: Live at Montreux Jazz Festival, techno legend Jeff Mills and keyboard wizard Jean-Phi Dary embark on an exciting, ground-breaking musical trip that takes Techno and electronic dance music to a new level. In the past Jeff has spoken of the need to, “take a few steps back and try …

Album Review: Sam Wilkes & Jacob Mann – Perform the compositions of Sam Wilkes & Jacob Mann: weird and wonderful nu-jazz connections.
You know the crusty old adage ‘it’s a small world’, well tired as it might be it still has resonance for musicians. Take L.A. underground experimenters Sam Wilkes and Jacob Mann, they go back a long way. Meeting as students at USC music school, bass playing, multi-instrumentalist Wilkes and keyboard-centric Mann have been crossing musical …

New track/Video: Electric-jazz energisers Stellar Legions preview debut album with the cosmic grooves of ‘An Arp in Tunisia’
You might know Ghent based Sdban Records for their exquisite re-issues (think Raphael/’Stop Look and Listen’ or their ‘Utopic Cities’ jazz prog comp). Or maybe you grabbed ethio-dub fusionists Black Flower’s ‘Magma’ album in January, a record that’s destined to scorch into those best of ’22 lists. Well the Belgian label look set to make …

New Track/Video: Old friends/nu-jazz- Sam Wilkes and Jacob Mann announce collab album ‘Compositions’ with synth funk bubbler ‘Dr T’
What is genre? Is it a help or a hindrance to the maker and listener? LA’s pioneering label Leaving Records have an answer, flying with the strapline pun ‘Genre All’ and nuturing a catalogue that swerves definition, wide ranging in tone but unified by the drive to experiment whatever the starting points. Now comes news …

Album Review: Akusmi – Fleeting Future : pulsating electro-acoustic conversations with Fourth World sensibilities.
‘I want the future now’ pronounced Peter Hammill on one of his late seventies solo outpourings. Scroll forward almost half a century and producer/electronic musician Pacsal Bideau has been exploring his own avenue of future thinking. If you put him in a room with the old prog-curmudgeon, he might quiz Pete about which version of …

Album Review: L’Eclair- ‘Confusions’
It’s not surprising to hear that eclectic jazz funk instrumentalists L’Eclair and their record label go back a long way. Drifting home to Geneva from a London expedition in 2015 the band’s founders Sebastian Bui (keys) and Stefan Lilov (guitars) discovered a like- minded creative community revolving around the Bongo Joe record shop. Beyond the …

Album Review: Portico Quartet – ‘Monument’
I can still remember the kerfuffle Portico Quartet sparked off at Womad 2012…Where’s the hang drum? What’s this, loops? Is this dance music? For a crowd expecting the pastoral acoustic soundscapes of their first two records, the Mercury nominated ‘Knee Deep in the North Sea’ and follow up ‘Isla’, the sweeping electronica fused with upfront …

Album review: Final Step – ‘Disconnections’: passionate, rhythmic and unashamedly funky
I LOVE fusion bands. I really do. You never know what to expect, and that’s because they’re a fusion of flavours. Italian musicians in particular have always delivered when it comes to jazz music, a truly energetic burst of blues, funk and rock and roll. From the multi-lingual border region of Ticino, in Switzerland, guitarist …

Album Review: Caravela deliver the sparkling fusion of ‘Orla’
Now here’s a new thing beaming out from the London jazz firmament. Caravela, a five-piece multinational band from everywhere (well Portugal, South America and Australia), now based in the capital and delivering their debut LP Orla via None More Records. The record is just a bit different from the burgeoning body of work regularly rolling …