Gondwana Records
Album Review: Svaneborg Kardyb – ‘Over Tage’: Nordic magicians of the minimal and melodic.
As a fresh, crossover-jazz partnership Svaneborg Kardyb, Nikolaj Svaneborg (Wurlitzer, synth, piano) and Jonas Kardyb (drums, percussion) have taken time to bring their delicately crafted sophistication together. The two Danish musicians from Aalborg may have known each other for more than a decade but their music making together only began in 2019 with a debut …
New Track/Video: Nordic-jazz duo Svaneborg Kardyb preview new album ‘Over Tage’ with the gently soaring ‘Op’.
What makes a two piece band so enthralling? In the rock frame it’s often down to dynamics – how can something so huge come from a couple of people –but in jazz, where the form is less structured, less song bound making a duo work can get more complicated. A recent entry into the discussion …
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: Portico Quartet – ‘Terrain’: a truly reflective journey
PORTICO QUARTET have always been a vibe. Since their formation, in my opinion they’re one of the few instrumental jazz-psyechedelic-electronic bands to live up to that musical blend, and furthermore, they’ve always been able to tell a story. Their latest album, Terrain, actually exceeded all my expectations in that sense, delivering a much more emotionally …
Track: Portico Quartet’s gliding ‘Terrain II (edit)’ unveils a three-part suite of a new album in late May
PORTICO QUARTET, whose Jack Wyllie we last encountered in these pages at the end of last summer with his exhilarating Afro-ambient project, Paradise Cinema, reconvened at their East London base during lockdown, the events that swathe us necessarily informing the new music they began to fashion. The world we all suddenly precipitated into necessitated a …
Track: Mammal Hands reveal new Track ‘Ithaca’
Norwich is a place that always feels distant and that sense of space sweeps through the music of Mammal Hands. Formed in the UK’s most easterly city in 2012 the jazz based trio of brothers Nick and Jordan Smart (on piano and sax respectively) with Jesse Barrett (providing drums and percussion) make an expansive sound …
Track: Mammal Hands announce new album and release track, “Chaser”
WITH all the jazz noise coming out of South London these days it is easy to forget that the pulse continues to beat elsewhere. Mammal Hands have been steadily developing their individual pursuit of contemporary fusion music on Matthew Halsall’s esteemed Gondwana Records since their 2014 debut, Animalia. Now comes news of their fourth album …