now playing

Whilst exploring some other jazz blogs I thought it might be nice for me to try to blog about things other than shamelessly plugging Beats & Pieces related stuff all the time – on that note I thought I’d mention some of the things that I’ve been listening to recently, and this list features three big bands that you should definitely check out…

Some of you may know that my Efpi Records co-founder Sam Andreae is studying across Scandinavia at the moment, currently in Aarhus. He sent me back a CD of an amazing Danish band called the Blood, Sweat, Drum n Bass Big Band and I’ve been listening to it quite a lot… Check them out on myspace (Redrum/Asa Nisi Masa is particularly cool) or there’s a taster video of their live show below.

One of my biggest musical heroes is Django Bates, and I was really excited when I heard that he was releasing a live recording of Loose Tubes, the band that bred a whole generation of British jazz musicians including Julian Arguelles, Steve Berry, Mark Lockheart and Iain Ballamy, whose music up til now has only been available on second hand vinyl (I got mine on eBay…). That CD, called ‘Dancing on Frith Street‘ is now out (as of today in fact) and I’ve been playing it constantly since it arrived with me on Saturday due to the eagerness of HMV to deliver – cheers!

Also while browsing the London Jazz Festival programme it was a nice surprise to see that Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society are coming over from New York. I first heard about Darcy and his band about 18 months ago and their debut CD ‘Infernal Machines’ is great – you can also download full recordings of their live gigs from their website. Secret Society are playing at Cafe Oto on Thursday 18th November, see you there…

P.S. I couldn’t mention the London Jazz Festival without pointing out that we’ll also be playing… Sunday 21st November, 7pm, Spice of Life in Soho!

Posted by Ben on 27/09/2010 at 23:28 in misc and tagged blood sweat drum n bass, darcy james argue, django bates, london jazz festival, loose tubes, secret society, youtube.