Tag: jazz

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Avantdale Bowling Club – Without You

Blending jazz, hip-hop and some enjoyably throwback production styles (vinyl rewinds ftw!), the second album from Tom Scott’s Avantdale Bowling Club project TREES comes in like a breath of cool breeze blown all the way from New Zealand. Without You is typically laid back, with warm keys and plucked basslines rolling up lyrics like “Feeding you dreams of big, honeybees / Licking fuzz from your buds, but you never heard the buzz”.

https://avantdalebowlingclub.bandcamp.com/album/avantdale-bowling-club

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Kokoroko – Ewà Inú

London based 8-piece band Kokoroko released their debut album Could We Be More via Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings last week; an LP that deftly moves through afrobeat, highlife, soul, and funk across tracks, taking inspiration from a plethora of influences from within the West-African and Caribbean communities that the band grew up listening to. As with many of the tracks, Ewà Inú’s infectious energy is due to both its semi-improvised genesis and the passion of the players involved.

https://kokoroko.bandcamp.com

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Mejiwahn, Juuwah, Daniel Bitrán – Spring

Beanna is the latest album from soul and jazz beat pioneer mejiwahn: genres I know next to nothing about, so I won’t try and delve too deep into the backstory. If you’re interested in the history, The Quietus’s review is comprehensive. What I can say though is that’s it completely beguiling, effortlessly chill and just about as perfect a soundtrack to a lazy summer evening as one could hope for.

https://mejiwahn.bandcamp.com/album/beanna

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Ben Marc – Sometimes Slow

The latest single to be released from London-based jazz musician Ben Marc’s – the alias of Neil Charles – forthcoming album, Sometimes Slow is in a similarly impressive vein to last year’s collab with Midnightroba Breathe Suite A, swelling from relatively hushed beginnings to a final third that pulses with untamed vigour.

https://smarturl.it/BenMarcGlassEffect

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cktrl – safe

London-based artist cktrl broke through with his debut Robyn EP last year, and safe is the final track from his new four-tracker zero which landed last week and starts life with a gently billowing cloud of echoing brass and soothing strings before ending with safe, a bassy, sensual, trappy cut with gorgeous vocals and a satisfying depth to its production.

https://cktrl.bandcamp.com

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Ishmael Ensemble – Feather

Helmed by producer and saxophonist Pete Cunningham, the Bristol-based Ishmael Ensemble’s announced themselves as a new force in UK jazz with their 2019 debut A State Of Flow, a record I completely missed as I am vehemently opposed to anything jazzy, or jazz-related. Until now it seems, as I absolutely love their new album Visions Of Light, and Feather in particular which is amongst the more beautifully chill things I’ve heard for ages. It would actually be easier if this record didn’t exist as I was quite happy in my jazz-ignoring bubble, but here we are.

http://ishmaelensemble.com

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Flying Lotus – Mind Flight

Flying Lotus occupies one of my many blind spots for artists I should really know about and be listening to a lot, but never seem to get around to. My thought process goes something like: Flying Lotus is really good / everyone seems to love him / I expect I’d really enjoy it if I dedicated a bit of time to exploring his catalogue / that seems like hard work / I’ll just listen to Nation of Language again. So it’s odd that what’s essentially a soundtrack album is the one that’s caught my attention, but here we are. Mind Flight is taken from Yasuke – which is a six-part Anime series for Netflix – and the entire thing is brilliant. But I guess you already knew that, didn’t you?

https://flying-lotus.com

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Infinity Knives – In The Mouth Of Sadness

The big news today is: commas are back. Specifically; commas in album titles, which I am bang into. Earlier I posted a track from Pale Honey’s Some Time, Alone, and now I’m getting all excited about Infinity Knives new album Dear, Sudan, which is so weirdly exquisite I’m not even sure how to describe it. In The Mouth Of Sadness is heavy on both reverb and emotion, and transitions from a gushing electro pop banger into a gently tinkling jazz ballad. And it’s probably one of the more ‘conservative’ records on there.

https://phantomlimblabel.bandcamp.com/album/dear-sudan

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Moses Sumney – Two Dogs

I have tried hard to love græ, the new album by Moses Sumney. It’s clearly brilliant, and the scale of it is pretty staggering, but I’ve found it almost overwhelmingly impenetrable on the many occasions I’ve sat down to listen. This is a failing on my part. However, there is a three-track run at the start of the second side of the double LP that is utterly sublime, kicking off with Two Dogs. I just wish I liked the rest of the album as much as these 10 minutes or so. I’m sorry, Moses: I have tried, and been found wanting.

https://www.mosessumney.com