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t was back in the mid independent labels. This is the 1980s that the UK had its focus of this compilation, Ilast jazz renaissance. Born which shines a light on the during the harshest years of eclectic range of UK jazz artists prime minister Margaret doing it themselves. Thatcher’s reign, the DIY movement spanned The Jazz While London has been the Warriors black arts collective focus of media attention as this in London, the jazz dance of selection shows the new Kalima and Jazz Defektors in sounds are coming from across Manchester and the post punk the UK. uproar of Rip, Rig + Panic in An ancient supercontinent that Bristol. Thirty years on, during connected Africa, South similarly divisive times, a new America, Australia, Antarctica generation are again finding and India, Gondwana is a inspiration through the fitting name for the collective spirit of jazz. exploratory orchestra of Integral to the scene is a fierce Manchester trumpeter and DIY spirit, with artists coming bandleader Matthew Halsall. together to create their own “Universal Consciousness has nights, form collectives and always been important to me release records on small

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YAZMIN LACEY SJR CD455 Kaleidoscope booklet_Layout 1 04/06/2020 15:33 Page 4

and although we’ve done our music of one of his greatest best as humans to put borders influences. “It was a very up and divide people we are early Keep It Unreal and better as a united force,” he Scruff played Phaorah explains. Gondwana is also Sanders’ ‘You’ve Got to Have the name of the label Halsall Freedom’ and after that I set up in 2008 to release his started digging for all his debut LP Sending My Love. It records,” Halsall recalls. “And was born both from his love of from there I discovered Alice modal jazz and his immersion Coltrane and I knew very in club culture. “I was first specifically that it was a world influenced by the elevating I connected very strongly jazz of people like McCoy with because I was also Tyner and John Coltrane but studying transcendental also sessions at Gilles meditation.” Peterson’s Dingwalls in London and Mr Scruff’s Keep While Halsall’s own spiritual it Unreal in Manchester,” he jazz is certainly indebted to says. sages like Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane there is It was through one of Mr also a pastoral tone to his Scruff’s famously eclectic sets music that evokes some of the that Halsall first heard the great British players from the

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sixties. “It’s funny as I didn’t Orchestra. “I came up with actually discover records like that name because I really Shades of Blue by Don Rendell wanted to make the band a & Ian Carr until I’d put out a collective project and for this couple of records,” he says. amazing group of musicians to “And when I heard that I was have an identity,” says Halsall. just blown away and it’s still The title track from his LP one of my favourite records. When the World Was One But I think where what I do is (including Cinematic Orchestra much different is that I am drummer Luke Flowers, very much into the production harpist Rachael Gladwin, of electronic music where it’s pianist Taz Modi, as well as the all about finding the perfect addition of Koto player Keiko loop, which again goes back to Kitamura who also plays with the meditation and that Jah Wobble & The Nippon Dub constant pulse or breath.” Ensemble) is a soaring piece of modal jazz. It revolves around Halsall (who also produces Halsall’s soaring trumpet and most of the LPs on his label at the saxophone of long-time Manchester’s 80 Hertz Studio) collaborator Nat Birchall, who has now recorded six LPs of Halsall performed with at jam spiritual modal jazz, the latter sessions at Matt and Phred’s two with the Gondwana Jazz Club. An important hub

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THE CROMAGNON BAND SJR CD455 Kaleidoscope booklet_Layout 1 04/06/2020 15:33 Page 7

for the experimental Manchester scene it was where Halsall first played alongside other future Gondwana musicians like Luke Flowers, bassist Jon Thorne, and pianist John Ellis.

Halsall’s Gondwana label became a platform for these other Manchester jazz artists including Birchall whose saxophone has provided much of the spiritual uplift in many of Mathew Halsall’s own releases. Birchall’s sonic and spiritual quest began with the LP The Sixth Sense released in SJR CD455 Kaleidoscope booklet_Layout 1 04/06/2020 15:33 Page 8

1999. There followed a decade 2011. “What really surprised of being what he has called me about that was that it was ‘alone in the music’ searching getting airplay on the radio for the sound he heard in his by people like Gilles Peterson head. “It took me a long time next to soul and electronic to realise that what I was music,” says Birchall. “So that doing with my music was was great for me seeing how tapping into a spiritual my music can connect with all source,” says Birchall. He had this different type of music.” a cultural awakening when he was asked to play alongside The last of the three LPs Halsall on the trumpeter’s following Guided Spirit , first LPs for Gondwana. “I’d Sacred Dimension (also never been part of a scene as released on vinyl on Birchall’s such and had always really own Sound Soul and Spirit been playing in isolation so I’d Records), from where ‘Ancient almost given up,” says World’ comes, continued Birchall. “But then I met Matt Birchall’s personal journey of and started playing with him musical enlightenment and he asked me to make an following the spiritual path of LP.” That LP was Akhenaten the masters like Coltrane and the first of three released on Pharoah. Intrinsically tied to Gondwana between 2009- the political and social

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radicalism of the time their composes music collectively most important LPs of the very much in the same 1960s were recorded during communal vein as Nat similar turbulent times to Birchall. With a ritualistic today. “The power of music is approach to composition the at its most profound level members practice the material when it’s played in the through four rehearsals, then community and when it play four unique concerts, becomes part of everyday life,” before heading to the studio says Birchall. “Then it really is to record the material. Their a spiritual thing with people LP Inexpressible Infinity was playing music for a higher the second of such cycles. purpose.” When asked for inspirations, the group name Sun Ra, Alice London spiritual jazz outfit Coltrane and the catalogue of Levitation Orchestra have Strata-East. But there is also quietly built their reputation something in ‘Odyssey’ of the outside the media scramble very English modal jazz of for the next big jazz name. Michael Garrick and Norma Founded by trumpeter Axel Winston thanks in a large Kaner-Lidstrom (also of part to the vocalise of Sophie Cykada and Where Pathways Plummer and Zakia Sewell. Meet) the 13-piece band

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Saxophonist and flautist Chip Wickham received his jazz education in Manchester’s creative scene of the early 1990s. There he played with such luminaries as hip-hop collective Grand Central Records and Rae & Christian. In the 1990s following tours with Roy Ayers and Badly Drawn Boy he met Matthew Halsall appearing on his debut LP Sending My Love . As well as touring with Halsall he has also regularly appeared with Nat Birchall. Spanish for the ‘The Shade’, his debut LP La Sombra was released in 2017. It came out on Madrid’s Lovemonk label who had released a couple of 7”s of Wickham’s after he relocated to the city in 2017.

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TENDERLONIOUS SJR CD455 Kaleidoscope booklet_Layout 1 04/06/2020 15:33 Page 12

There he also worked with touching on everything from Eddie Roberts from The New ambient electronics to Mastersounds under the name contemporary jazz and The Fire Eaters. Drawing psychedelia. The LP was the heavily on the flute led jazz of second to be released on Yusef Lateef from the late Bristol’s small independent sixties ‘La Sombra’ opened his label Banoffee Pies. With their debut LP. maxim of ‘ creativity without order. A platform for music Formed around the DIY home with no signature sound’, this studio experimentation of small micro label has released saxophonist and producer everything from minimal Pete Cunningham, Bristol techno to samba soul and four-piece Ishmael Ensemble mutant disco. Supported by debuted with their Songs for people like Gilles Peterson the Knotty LP in 2017. While album continued Bristol’s rich previous Bristol jazz and eclectic independent heavyweights Rip, Rig + musical heritage while Panic drew on the punk, dub displaying the club conscious and free jazz heard in post- electronic sensibilities at the punk clubs like the Dug Out, heart of much of the new UK Ishmael Ensemble’s sound is jazz scene. even more of a Kaleidoscope,

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The UK has a long tradition of Her track ‘Marie’ opened the female singers rooted in both first Future Bubblers jazz and street soul while compilation on Peterson’s drawing on their Caribbean Brownswood Recordings label roots for inspiration. Very in 2017 with support from much in the tradition of Caron Arts Council England. The Wheeler and Rose Windross, programme featured who rose to fame through mentorship as well as a Soul II Soul in the 1980s, collaborative and DIY ethos Yazmin Lacey debuted with that saw Lacey found The her Black Moon LP in 2017. Running Circle label with While she was raised in East fellow Future Bubbler artists London, Lacey began writing Three Body Trio. Thanks to in her bedroom after moving the mentorship through the to Nottingham to work for a programme and a busy live children’s charity. Putting a music programme, Lacey band together and playing returned with the more local gigs she got her break polished sound of When The after being picked up as one Sun Dips 90 Degrees on Aly of the Future Bubblers of Gillani’s contemporary Gilles Peterson, the jazz/soul label First World figurehead that has helped so Records. Produced by Three many within the UK scene. Body Trio’s keyboardist Peter

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Beardsworth, who also appeared on the LP alongside the band’s drummer Tom Towie, it opened with ‘90 Degrees’ a breezy piece of UK soul jazz.

The amount of female players and bandleaders in what was traditionally a male dominated scene has been one of the most exciting things about the new London movement. “There has been a real shift and the younger women are seeing the older women up there at the front of the band blowing their horns so there is nothing there to stop them now,” says London saxophonist and flautist Tamar Osborn. “That perception that it is not their

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THEON CROSS SJR CD455 Kaleidoscope booklet_Layout 1 04/06/2020 15:33 Page 16

role as a musician to be a interested in the textures and leader with a horn instrument layering from the minimal has definitely changed.” music of Michael Nyman and Terry Riley,” she says. “Then A graduate of the Guildhall from the Afrobeat side I tried School of Music, Osborn to draw on the interlocking of developed her sound playing different instruments.” baritone sax for Dele Sosimi’s Afrobeat Vibration. She has Blending these disparate also appeared with other influences, Collocutor’s 2014 African rooted bands debut for On the Corner including ethio-jazz band The (‘Label of the Year’ at the Krar Collective. As bandleader Gilles Peterson Worldwide and composer with her own Awards of 2018) Instead was group, the seven-piece modal firmly located in 21st Century jazz collective Collocutor, London. “The cultural Osborn has fused different diversity here has been very elements from her rich important to us,” says musical education to create a Osborn. ‘Gozo’ from that sound all her own. “I had debut LP, produced by Nick originally drawn inspiration ‘Emanative’ Woodmansey, is a from medieval choral music scorching percussion heavy but I was also really Afro modal jazz bomb

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featuring a heavyweight band led by Osborn’s soaring baritone and soprano sax.

Another saxophonist and bandleader making serious waves on the UK scene is Cassie Kinoshi. A student of Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Dance and Music in south-east London, where so much UK jazz talent has been nurtured, Kinoshi NAT BIRCHALL SJR CD455 Kaleidoscope booklet_Layout 1 04/06/2020 15:33 Page 18

MAKAYA MCCRAVEN SJR CD455 Kaleidoscope booklet_Layout 1 04/06/2020 15:33 Page 19

earned her spurs as a drummer Moses Boyd. Their member of Tomorrow’s focus on collaboration and Warriors. This grass roots musical boundary pushing community music was the foundation for organisation founded by Kinoshi’s SEED Ensemble. original Jazz Warriors’ bassist This 11-piece jazz collective Gary Crosby and partner features other rising stars Janine Irons in 1991, sits in a from Tomorrow’s Warriors long line of jazz educators – like trumpeter Sheila Maurice- from the mentoring of Horace Grey (also a student at Tapscott to the young LA jazz Laban), tuba player Theon scene through to Muhal Cross and keyboardist Ashley Richard Abrams’ Association Henry. for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in Like many on the London Chicago. The collective ethos scene SEED Collective forged and supportive structure of their sound at a number of Tomorrow’s Warriors has been DIY venues across the capital central to the growth of the including Total Refreshment UK scene with former Centre (TRC). Opened by members including such high- Parisian Londoner Lexus profile players as saxophonist Blondin in 2012 in an old Shabaka Hutchings and Edwardian factory in Stoke

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Newington, North London, city. The signal was pulsing, TRC became an incubator for loud and clear.” the city’s eclectic club- conscious jazz scene. The TRC was also an important legacy of this venue that sadly venue for the development of closed in 2018 is examined in the many projects of a book by writer Emma Tomorrow’s Warriors’ most Warren - Make Some Space: famous alumni Shabaka Tuning into Total Hutchings. “Having Refreshment Centre . In the somewhere that people from introduction she explains the different sectors of music and importance of the venue to the art are coming together is subsequent scene. “As soon as really important,” he told I walked in I recognised it as a Warren in Make Some Space . place that was generating “TRC brought a space to culture. Something was playing, to meet people and happening, present and hang out. Part of making continuous. I found myself music is the hanging out, watching the flowering and being around musicians expansion of London’s young without necessarily jazz musicians into a rehearsing or playing but movement that has brought understanding where they’re worldwide attention to the coming from.”

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The Birmingham-born, a search for an accurate London-based, saxophonist is portrayal of what they were a restless creative force going through at the time and embracing both London’s club what was happening around sounds and the carnival spirit them.” of Barbados where he lived from the age of six to 16. One As well as being a member of of Shabaka’s primary both SEED Collective and the influences has been the newer incarnation of Sons of exploratory work recorded in Kemet, trombonist Theon the late 1960s and early 1970s Cross is a regular collaborator for Impulse!, the label he is with drummer Moses Boyd now helping to re-ignite. whom he first played with as “These LPs from Impulse! part of Tomorrow’s Warriors. were the first records I heard The instrument he chose to that sounded like the play has a long tradition in musicians were creating UK jazz - from Jazz Warriors’ something bigger than what Andy Grappy (who became a they all knew,” explains mentor to Cross) to Loose Hutchings. “These were Tubes’ Dave Powell. But it has players who had a very never been played with the specific aesthetic and they fiery intensity of Cross, whose were going into the studio in heavyweight licks have also

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helped power the ensembles of Sons of Kemet as well as the mardi gras music of Tom Challenger’s Brass Mask.

Along with sessions for Tomorrow’s Warriors an important stage for Cross as well as many other young London players was Jazz- Refreshed, the long running Thursday night session in Notting Hill, West London, set up by Justin McKenzie and Adam Moses in 2003. Another collective experience for Cross was his time with the carnival collective Kinetika Bloco founded by the late Mat Fox. “Kinetika Bloco was all about having fun with music in a carnival type feel and Tomorrow’s Warriors was

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RUBY RUSHTON SJR CD455 Kaleidoscope booklet_Layout 1 04/06/2020 15:33 Page 24

like the next step,” says Cross. the clubs. “I have been blessed “They really push you into to take the tuba into different doing the work you need to scenarios it wouldn’t usually do and also teaching you how be,” he says. “I also have to play in a section and in Caribbean roots and tune with each other. It was understand reggae and great to be able to have that calypso so I also bring in space to call on friends and to those rhythmic sensibilities to practice on tunes together my playing.” One of the and to figure out our ideas. I standouts from his album, really don’t think the London ‘Candace of Meroe’ destroyed jazz scene would look like it dancefloors wherever it went. does without Tomorrow’s Warriors.” The tuba also plays an important role in Emma-Jean On his debut LP under his Thackray’s WALRUS project. own name Fyah , in a band Also closely associated with featuring Moses Boyd and TRC this trumpeter, saxophonist Nubya Garcia, flugelhorn player, DJ, beat Cross furthered his maker and producer was innovation with the tuba, raised in Yorkshire, in the mixing New Orleans style North of England, but is very bass lines with rhythms from much a part of South

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London’s DIY scene. She The album was released on her debuted in 2016 with the self- own Deptford Beach label, titled LP from her band Walrus sharing a name with the (Elliot Galvin on Hammond London neighbourhood where Organ/ Wurlitzer, Ben Kelly on influential club night Steam Tuba, Liz Exell on drums and Down is located. Founded in electronics of Pie Eye 2017 by Wayne Francis in a Collective). One of the most converted railway arch, Steam highly individual and Down became a hot bed for experimental releases of the collective improvisation with burgeoning London scene it an energy amongst its young really stood alone. While multi-ethnic crowd more like a Thackray is known for club night rather than a jazz working with key figures from gig. the London scene such as saxophonist Nubya Garcia and Another important night for Ezra Collective, her roots were Thackray and her in the local brass dance culture contemporaries on the of Yorkshire. And it’s this mix burgeoning scene was Steez of club conscious jazz and that took place in a number of booming tuba-led brass music venues across South London in that makes the title track of the 2010’s. One of those her Walrus LP so unique. figures was London keyboard

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virtuoso Joe Armon-Jones Jones developed his skills at who owes much to the night’s Trinity Laban while also collaborative environment. attending sessions with “Steez was a great place with Tomorrow’s Warriors. “That a very special energy created was hugely important to me by the people who were as it was where I met most of playing there and the guy the musicians I play with who ran it Luke Newman,” today,” he says. His debut LP says Armon-Jones. “He gave a of May 2017 Idiom with long- platform to anyone who time collaborator bassist and wanted to play music and lots producer Maxwell Owin, was of people passed through released on the small YAM there. It was a proper good Recordings label out of night and it’s a shame it Peckham, south London. doesn’t happen now. But there are now other nights like The album featured some of Steam Down that share that those players he met through energy. So it’s still Tomorrow’s Warriors. On continuing.” ‘Tanner’s Tango’, saxophonist Nubya Garcia provides the Schooled on the keys by his warm tones to the typically father who played in various languid but complex keyboard jazz-fusion bands Joe Armon- lines of Armon-Jones whose

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love of Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea are as deep as his passion for London club sounds and the dub of King Tubby. And you can hear all these influences on the track featured here, a broken beat space jazz odyssey that introduced one of the most talented and progressive players on the London scene. “I just take the MATTHEW HALSALL SJR CD455 Kaleidoscope booklet_Layout 1 04/06/2020 15:33 Page 28

direction that the music I’m jazz of Yusef Lateef. “I got listening to today takes me,” some books and started from he says. “You can’t really plan there, mainly one by Yusef ahead as I never know what Lateef called the ‘Repository I’m going to be listening to at of Scales and Melodic that time – it could be dub or Patterns’,” he recalls. it could be Bach.” Cawthorne began making beats in his bedroom in Like Armon-Jones, suburban Woking, sampling saxophonist-turned-flautist the records he discovered at and synth player Ed shops like Mole Jazz in King’s ‘Tenderlonious’ Cawthorne Cross, north London. “By treads a path all his own. then I had been listening to a “Growing up I always felt lot of jazz records because the strongly about being true to music I was making at that myself, sometimes that meant time was primarily sample- it was difficult to fit in as I based,” he says. was unwilling to change regardless of what others Although he was self-taught wanted or expected from me,” on the saxophone, he he explains. The Prodigy fan mastered the instrument with purchased a soprano sax after the guidance of British jazz hearing the eastern-infused player Pat Crumly who helped

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Cawthorne search for his own teaching, which had a positive sound. “Pat was very effect on me,” adds important for me, he was my Cawthorne. mentor and he taught me the values of being a true After Crumly sadly passed musician,” says Cawthorne. away it was through the “The most valuable thing he creative hub of Peckham in taught me was the importance south London that Cawthorne of sound - it’s all very well found his community, setting being able to play hundreds of up the 22a record label notes in a minute, but if you (named after the street don’t sound good then it’s all number of his childhood home in vain ... I still practice long in Woking) in 2013. With his tones to this day.” Crumly was own early 12”s and those of also a member of the Soka Henry Wu, Mo Kolours and Gakkai International (SGI) his brother Jeen Bassa, 22a Buddhist movement and came to jazz via the sounds of provided spiritual as well as London’s clubs and pirate musical guidance to radio stations, be it broken Cawthorne. “He was also beat or house. practicing Buddhism at the But it was through his time so that was helping to heavyweight band the inform his approach to

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22archestra he fronts as Tenderlonious that the musician and producer has shown the depth of his technical and compositional skills. His third LP on 22a The Shakedown was recorded with his full 22archestra (featuring Yussef Kamaal’s drummer Yussef Dayes, JOE ARMON-JONES AND MAXWELL OWIN Hamish SJR CD455 Kaleidoscope booklet_Layout 1 04/06/2020 15:33 Page 31

Balfour on keys, Fergus unavailable so I took the Ireland, bass, and three opportunity to invite a group percussionists) at London’s of musicians who I had famous Abbey Road Studios in worked with over the years a single 10-hour session in and admired.” The title track March 2017. “There’s an is a masterwork of freeform energy in the walls at Abbey cosmic future jazz for the Road that’s hard to put into heads, channelling ‘70s fusion words. The history of that through a 21 st century filter. studio is immense,” says Also included here is Cawthorne. “For The ‘Moonlight Woman’ the Shakedown I hadn’t rehearsed opening track from Trudi’s or written any of the music, Songbook: Volume One , the all the compositions were third LP from Ruby Rushton based around simple melodies released on 22a in 2017. and chord progressions that I was working on at the time Saxophonist Idris Rahman, for Ruby Rushton (Ed’s other brother of Zoe Rahman and band),” he recalls. “When the previously leader of Abbey Road session was reggae/afrobeat band offered to me I only had 24 Soothsayers, founded hours to assemble a band. The London’s Ill Considered in Ruby Rushton guys were 2017. Continuing a long

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tradition in the capital for jazz improvisation, Rahman and his group (Emre Ramazanoglu on drums, Leon Brichard on bass, and Satin Singh on percussion) recorded their self-released debut LP Live at The Crypt of St. Giles Church in Camberwell, South London in 2017. Reacting to the “mood of the audience and the sonics of the room to create music that is unique to the moment” the four-piece were at their deepest and most intuitive that night. The swirling but angular calligraphy of Vincent de Boer which graces the album’s sleeve gives a clue to the music within, a fluid and fiery jazz sound that is both improv and funk spirited.

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ILL CONSIDERED SJR CD455 Kaleidoscope booklet_Layout 1 04/06/2020 15:33 Page 34

Powered by Rahman’s soaring slice of broken fusion, saxophone and driven by revolving around the killer Brichard and Satin Singh, synth lines of Dave Koor and ‘Long Way Home’ showed the the heavyweight drumming of full range of individual Jonny Drop. Emerging as one musicianship and collective of Gilles Peterson’s interaction that makes Ill Brownswood Bubblers, south Considered such a powerful London producer, composer force. and DJ Hector Plimmer caught the attention of Adam Another small independent Scrimshire and Dave Koor at London label represented on a performance at Sounds of this compilation is Albert’s the Universe in Soho, London Favourites. Taking its name (and the home of Soul Jazz from the studio of Adam Records). The title track of his Scrimshire, Jonny Drop and second LP, ‘Next to Nothing’ Dave Koor of The Expansions, is a jazz-rooted slice of the label was set up to release electronic soul featuring music from the founders and Emma-Jean Thackray. their various collaborations. ‘Mosaic’ represents the If there is one group here that funkier end of the London best captures the DIY spirit at jazz spectrum. It’s a heavy the heart of the UK scene it’s

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Brighton’s Ebi Soda. As the band state their “only debt to typical jazz being to attempt to innovate and experiment at every opportunity.” The result of their staunch anti- traditionalism is the LP Bedroom Tapes recorded in a small Brighton flat, and on ‘Dimmsdale’ this sprawling collective create a loose and languid lo-fi sound. Andy Thomas

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