Perpetual Mutations is an instrumental album of the highest quality; it doesn’t waver. I became aware of Antoine Fafard’s music through his electric bass playing and work with drummer Gary Husband on the 2016 album Sphere. What I wasn’t expecting [...]
Iceland has been experiencing recently volcanic eruptions across the Reykjanes peninsula. This new album – an on-the-fly collaboration between Icelandic musicians and established jazz fusion titans – also seeks to disturb the jazz tectonic plates. Jack Magnet Science is described as [...]
I found myself first in the queue for this gig at seven o’clock sharp when the doors opened, meaning a near two-hour wait until the music started…. but it was entirely worth it. The word supergroup is often tossed around [...]
The jacket which sax player Nathaniel Facey wore at last week’s album launch for Empirical’s new album Wonder is the Beginning at a packed World Heart Beat Embassy Gardens was a metaphor for the music that followed: colourful, vivid, creative, and dry clean [...]
The World Heart Beat studio and performance space provided a welcome oasis of soul and creativity on Saturday evening (in one of the most soulless and nondescript parts of ‘new’ London…) by hosting the vinyl launch of an intriguing and satisfying suite of starkly [...]
Packed to the rafters they were last night at this great little East London venue to see Denmark’s four-string master Jasper Høiby’s latest project, the Planet B trio album. A good sign for the rest of the Festival. Festival goers [...]
When your surname is Eastwood…and your father just happens to be called Clint, it must be hard to escape the penumbra of his cinematic career. Some musicians might be tempted to run in the opposite direction, to change their name to [...]
Barcelona-based Serbian guitarist Dušan Jevtović was an unknown quantity to me. But sometimes, a shot in the dark can pay off. More familiar may be American bassist Tony Levin of Peter Gabriel and King Crimson fame. Given his status as [...]
With a track record in mixing jazz sensibilities with elements of trance, ambient music and cinematic soundtracks, Mammal Hands – saxophonist Jordan Smart; drummer and tabla player Jesse Barnett, and pianist Nick Smart – are part of a tranche of modern British bands, such as Go-Go Penguin, who [...]
For a duo album by two of the most prominent members of jazz juggernaut Snarky Puppy, this is about as far as you can get from the sound which has made them both famous – and laden down with Grammys [...]
