Jazz Articles about Spike Orchestra

About Spike Orchestra

Interview

The Spike Orchestra and John Zorn's "The Book Beriah"

by Phil Barnes
August 23, 2018

Sam Eastmond is the composer, arranger, and trumpet player best known for his work as bandleader and co-founder of the Spike Orchestra. That UK based large ensemble has released two studio albums to date, Ghetto on their own label followed by Cerberus as part of a collaboration with the legendary John Zorn on his Masada Book Two project.Great though Ghetto was, Cerberus has proved to be the more significant both in terms of creative development to date and ...

Extended Analysis

The Spike Orchestra: Cerberus (Book of Angels - Volume 26)

by Phil Barnes
December 18, 2015

Taking inspiration from the divine is a tough sell. Get it wrong and it can appear sacrilegious or insulting to the faithful; too devout and our largely secular society turns away. In the past the poet William Blake was famously beaten by his own mother when he claimed to have had angelic visions at the age of eight, but nowadays an artist is more likely to receive concerned enquiries as to their sanity. Yet creativity is so hard to pin ...

Extended Analysis

Spike Orchestra: Ghetto

by Phil Barnes
July 31, 2015

What does it mean to make jazz records halfway through the second decade of the 21st Century? Can there still be a place at the cutting edge for an art form whose commercial peak was in the 1950s and which the majority of the population still associate with the middle of the road vocal records of that time? It doesn't help that our major labels are content to churn out ever more 'expanded,' 'ultimate' and 'complete' curatorial reissues of the ...