Les Hommes

The heady sound-farrago of mondo jazz, pseudo-cinematronics and ‘60s Rio batucada has made London’s Les Hommes favourites with promoters and listeners seeking a more out-there and varied live experience. Borne from the late ‘90s jazz and lounge scene, with compositions centred around a very dusty Lowrey electric organ, drums, conga and percussion, Les Hommes combine mid-century-cool small group moods with contemporary arrangements and sound-sources. Reaching cult status with their global super-smash single and paean to lounge ‘Intraspettro’ and the hugely popular LP Les Hommes on Schema Records, and ESL in the U.S., the outfit has established themselves within a unique niche in the jazz n’ groove panorama.

Their medium-cool profile has been apparent, with compositions featured on film and TV, and sold-out live performances, beginning in the early 2000s at venues like London’s Jazz Café and more recently for the EFG Jazz Festival. 2017’s aurally globetrotting, Arabia-vibing LP The Sinner, took them further out, with live appearances on BBC 6 Music and new fans drawn into their exoticised world.

Jump cut to right now, and Les Hommes’s 2024 release Sì, così on Sudden Hunger Records has landed. It’s a plasma-rippling suite of jazzified cuts that includes pulsar-driven groovetronics, folky modalisms in waltz time and dreamvitations to the cine-lounge. Throughout, organist and leader Rory More re-explores his mid-century Lowrey organ; its oscillators scorched as if on some planetary re-entry. Mellifluous bass clarinet and Arcadian flutes join plangent electric piano and woody, orotund-and-echoing percussion. Resonant vibraphone tranquilly pierces the aural nimbus. The variations-on-a-theme blueprint is there also, this time with a subtle mutation towards the moods of Roy Budd, post-‘60s expressions and beyond.

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