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Joe Webb: Hamstrings & Hurricanes

by Neil Duggan
Open to all musical genres from the UK and Ireland, encompassing pop, rock, folk, urban, dance, jazz, blues, electronica and classical, the Mercury Prize stands as music's equivalent to literature's Booker Prize or art's Turner Prize. Past winners span from Arctic Monkeys and PJ Harvey to Arlo Parks, representing the award's diverse scope. Jazz has rarely featured among Mercury Prize winners, with Ezra Collective's Where I'm Meant To Be (Partisan, 2022) marking a historic breakthrough as the first ...
Continue ReadingZara McFarlane: Sweet Whispers: Celebrating Sarah Vaughan

by Chris May
Zara McFarlane's fifth album--a recording that actually fits the vogueish description project"--represents a marked change of focus for the singer, from London to New York City and points west. Closely associated with London's radical underground jazz scene, McFarlane has previously peopled her touring and recording bands with fellow adventurers such Shabaka Hutchings, Shirley Tetteh, Idris Rahman, Robin Hopcraft, Nathaniel Cross, Binker Golding and Moses Boyd. Significantly, too, McFarlane has also written the vast majority of the material she has recorded, ...
Continue ReadingJoe Webb, Moppa Elliott, Olivia Pérez-Collellmir, Zach Brock & More

by Ludovico Granvassu
The restless spirit of Moppa Elliott kicks off a set that illustrates the breadth and depth of today's scene.Happy listening!Playlist Ben Allison Mondo Jazz Theme (feat. Ted Nash & Pyeng Threadgill)" 0:00 Moppa Elliott Delaware Water Gap" Jonesville (Hot Cup) 0:16 Host talks 3:07 Moppa Elliott Dimock" Disasters Vol. 2 (Hot Cup) 5:00 Host talks 9:55 Adam Baldych, Leszek Możdżer Saltare" Passacaglia (ACT Music) 11:57 Zach Brock, Bob Lanzetti, Keita Ogawa Moro Morocco" Drawing Songs (GroundUP ...
Continue ReadingCorrie Dick: Sun Swells

by Geannine Reid
Corrie Dick is a multi-instrumentalist who has recorded on drums, piano, vocals, synth, guitar, and trumpet. As a composer, Dick is known for his dynamism, his melodic slant, and his playfully subversive melding of genres. Presenting his sonically inventive drumming, which has a rhythmic epicenter of a new era of innovative British jazz, is Dick's release Sun Swells . The album's theme is to create a folk-rock-jazz with rock instrumentation and color by Rob Luft on guitar and Tom McCredie ...
Continue ReadingRob Luft: Dahab Days

by Geno Thackara
The beauty of holiday snapshots is that they can capture the good times (interesting places, pleasant sights) without necessarily reminding you of the possible downsides (weather issues, travel hassles, deadly pandemic, etc). Rob Luft's stay in Egypt might not have been a true vacation, considering that it came during a rampant period of Covid-19. Still, if his memories of the time included any lingering worry or uncertainty because of the circumstances, Dahab Days shows few discernible hints of it. He ...
Continue ReadingRob Luft: Dahab Days

by Chris May
In an interview with AAJ in 2020, Rob Luft was asked to name six all-time favourite albums. Number one on his list was Norwegian guitarist Eivind Aarset's Dream Logic (ECM, 2012), a duo project with electronicist Jan Bang. Said Luft: It's an album that really sounds like dreams, it's wonderful how it floats for forty-five, fifty minutes and teleports you to another place. The production is impeccable and the sound is so glistening." Luft could have been ...
Continue ReadingKansas Smitty's: Things Happened Here

by Chris May
Kansas Smitty's is the house band at a London jazz bar of the same name. Band and bar are fronted by the American-Italian alto saxophonist, clarinetist and bass clarinetist Giacomo Smith, who with guitarist David Archer wrote most of the material on this album. The band's style embraces swing era Kansas City through to more recent styles and is chamber-jazz of elegance and substance. The group cites Django Reinhardt, Ahmad Jamal, Claude Debussy and Brian Eno as ...
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