Tag: jazz

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Raw Poetic, Damu The Fudgemunk – Ease Side

I’m not sure why it’s taken this long for me to get stuck in to Raw Poetic and Damu The Fudgemunk’s Away Back In LP, but I have now, and it’s great. 2022’s Laminated Skies is a masterpiece and didn’t get anywhere near the attention it deserved. Away Back In is described as “a transcendent musical fusion of hip-hop, jazz, and garage rock”, and lead single and opening track Ease Side is indicative of its loose, upbeat vibe.

https://damuthefudgemunk.bandcamp.com/album/away-back-in-2

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Pale Jay – Vladimir

A Pale Jay track randomly came up on a Spotify radio playlist I was listening to the other day and now his new album Bewilderment is one of my favourite things I’ve heard this year. A jazz vocalist and pianist, he wrote, recorded, and produced all songs on the album, except for ‘By The Lake’, which is a collaboration with labelmates Okonski. It’s so good. See? Spotify is great and in no way evil.

https://palejay.bandcamp.com/album/bewilderment

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Not Waving – Fool

I’m back! Sorry for the extended silence, but Glastonbury etc. Slowly getting back into the new music swing though and just came across this glorious new album from Not Waving, The Place I’ve Been Missing, on which the Italian artist explores “grief, gratitude, and new beginnings” across a mix of ambient, electronica and jazz. Lead single Fool includes elements of all the above, and is really very lovely indeed.

https://notwavingmusic.bandcamp.com/album/the-place-ive-been-missing

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Greg Float & Gigi Masin – Lee

I’m off to Glastonbury tomorrow (wallop!) and time is tight, but here’s a lovely, meandering slice of cosmic ambience for you, and the opening track from UK jazz keyboardist Greg Foat and Venetian downtempo electronic maestro Gigi Masin’s collaborative new album Dolphin. See you on the flipside!

https://gregfoat.bandcamp.com/album/dolphin

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Salami Rose Joe Louis – Always on my Mind

Salami Rose Joe Louis is the alias of Lindsay Olsen, who released her fifth album Akousmatikous – which losely transclates to “sound where there is no identifiable source” – earlier this month. As with much of her previous work, Akousmatikousi explores various shades of soul and jazz, but through a highly stylised and at times experimental lens, and includes features from some of her favourites artists, Soccer96, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson and Juuwah among them. Always on my Mind is one of the album’s more chill moments, with a lazy, tripping rhythm a suitably supple bed for her understated vocal delivery.

https://salamirosejoelouismusic.bandcamp.com/album/akousmatikous

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Alfa Mist – Cycles

“Free-flowing jazz improvisation” is not generally a musical description that will get me reaching for the headphones, but there’s a melancholy quality about Alfa Mist’s new album Variations that appeals to me. Cycles itself meanders around pleasantly for less than two minutes with a bassline strongly reminiscent of Echo Beach, so maybe its the 80s nostalgia – rather than any overt jazziness – that’s got me hooked.

https://alfamist.bandcamp.com/album/variables

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Eddie Chacon – Far Away

You know Eddie Chacon as one half of Charles & Eddie, the duo behind Would I Lie To You – one of the biggest hits of the early 90s and a song so overwhelmingly ubiquitous that Chacon eventually abandoned the music industry in an attempt to escape it. He returned in 2020 with a debut solo album, and has just released its follow-up, Sundown, from which Far Away is taken. Sitting somewhere between soft-focus soul and meandering jazz, its reminiscent of acts like Rhye, and is about as distant from the bombast of Would I Lie To You as its possible to get, which is probably the point.

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Duval Timothy – Drift feat. Lamin Fofana

While producing his new album Meeting with a Judas Tree, Duval Timothy made a point of being in nature as much as possible, immersing himself in various habitats from South London and the hills surrounding Bath to scrubland in Ghana and the woods of Sierra Leone, taking recordings of birds, insects, monkeys, bats, plants, trees, stones on his phone, many of which made it into the final version. The result is a deeply immersive, meditative album which flits between electronic experimentation, jazz and modern classical, culminating with the sparse beauty of Drift.

https://duvaltimothy.bandcamp.com/album/meeting-with-a-judas-tree

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Dawn Richard and Spencer Zahn – Crimson

Earlier this month Dawn Richards teamed up with multi-instrumentalist, producer, and composer Spencer Zahn on Pigments: an extraordinarily good album that explores themes including “the power of self-expression through living art, through motion”. A hypnotic mix of classical, jazz, soul and electronica, it flits between being deeply meditative and intensely rousing, often within a single song, before segueing seamlessly into the next . A truly impressive body of work.

https://lnk.to/Pigments

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Shabason & Krgovich – In The Middle Of The Day

This is a lovely, subdued little track that’s so low key it almost denies its own existence. Coming across like Lambchop remixed by Jim-E-Stack, it’s taken from the second collaborative album between Joseph Shabason and Nicholas Krgovich, and is exactly the kind of relaxing, dreamy vibe I need today.

https://7eptokyo.bandcamp.com/album/at-scaramouche-philadelphia-2cd-digital