Juno Recommends Brokenbeat / Nu Jazz June 2020

Review: To get away from the 'one track after the other' compilation concept K&D checked in at Havlis Super Sound where their man Alex (don of the echo chambers) has a secret dub-laboratory. There K&D did a dub session on the selected tracks to inject some dynamics and life into it. They took two bottles of Highland Park whisky and their old dub-echoes from the cellar and did a smoked-out dub echo-orgy.

Review: The music of Melbourne quartet Hiatus Kaiyote has always been fiendishly tricky to pin down, with 2015 album "Choose Your Weapon" - here reissued on shocking pink vinyl - being the most shapeshifting of the lot. While rooted in lo-fi soul, the album's inventive, colourful and eccentric tracks often also touch on everything from future R&B, jazz, ambient and samba, to alternative rock, eight-bit computer game soundtracks, broken beat, slipped reggae and the similarly mixed-up fuzziness of Hot Chip. The fact that it all makes perfect sonic sense - or at least bristles with genuine musical thrills - is testament to the band's production, performances and genuinely off-the-wall ideas.

Review: When this album was initially released way back in 2008, it was Kaidi Tatham's first under his given name (previously, he'd released solo records as Afronaught and appeared on all manner of collaborative releases). Since then, he has of course gone on to greater critical and commercial success, but as this timely reissue proves, "In Search of Home" still hits home hard. Like much of his work, it deftly showcases his Herbie Hancock-like jazz and jazz-funk keyboard skills within tracks that variously join the dots between broken beat, hip-hop, deep house, Latin fusion and sumptuous slow jams. Colourful, rich, jazzy and impeccably performed throughout, the album remains one of the high points of Tatham's career and is well worth adding to your collection.

Review: We've now come accustomed to sometimes unlikely cross-cultural musical fusions, though this album is the first we've come across that takes North African Gnawa music - one of the oldest Moroccan cultural traditions, fact fans - and fuses it with 21st century electronics and dancefloor-centric rhythms. It features vocals and traditional instrumentation from a renowned master of Gnawa, Rabii Harnoune, blended with the infectious grooves, contemporary synthesiser sounds and bass-weight of VB Kuhl, a Frankfurt-based producer whose roots are in off-kilter hip-hop. It's perhaps an unlikely pairing, but the results are simply superb. Don't take our word for it though - check it out for yourself. We'd be surprised if you weren't impressed.

Review: We've now come accustomed to sometimes unlikely cross-cultural musical fusions, though this album is the first we've come across that takes North African Gnawa music - one of the oldest Moroccan cultural traditions, fact fans - and fuses it with 21st century electronics and dancefloor-centric rhythms. It features vocals and traditional instrumentation from a renowned master of Gnawa, Rabii Harnoune, blended with the infectious grooves, contemporary synthesiser sounds and bass-weight of VB Kuhl, a Frankfurt-based producer whose roots are in off-kilter hip-hop. It's perhaps an unlikely pairing, but the results are simply superb. Don't take our word for it though - check it out for yourself. We'd be surprised if you weren't impressed.

Review: Those who've heard Astral Travel's previous releases - and there sadly haven't been all that many - will attest that their take on spiritual jazz is far from "standard". While it has freewheeling, improvised jazz at its core, it is so much more than that, as this fabulous new album proves. Alongside standard jazz instrumentation (think drums, double bass, piano, flute, saxophone and so on), the former Jazz:refreshed outfit also makes extensive use of glitchy electronics and skewed samples. The results are undeniably cosmic and otherworldly, with frequent glimpses of the kind of aural chaos more associated with free-jazz and experimental electronica.

Review: For reasons not fully explained in the accompanying press release, 22a regular Tenderlonious is now the proud owner of the half-size "piccolo" flute once owned by legendary British jazz man Tubby Hayes. That piccolo is naturally the dominant feature of "The Piccolo: Tender Plays Tubby", a fine EP of Hayes covers from the Ruby Rushton founder. "Down In the Village" is a high-octane big-band jazz style affair that includes some superb drumming and piano solos aplenty, while "Trenton Place" is a wonderfully emotive slab of downtempo jazz bliss. Tenderlonious's piccolo playing takes pride of place on the tango-tinged flipside opener "Raga", but is even more prominent on the superb EP closer "In The Night", a classic-sounding affair that's probably the pick of a very strong bunch.