Soundscape UK

This Is Smooth Jazz: The Box Set features a whopping three discs of music, all of it firmly anchored in the smooth jazz idiom. With such a wide scope of performances – a grand total of 36 songs and few repeat performers – This Is Smooth Jazz functions as an excellent introduction to the style. And if you're already acquainted with the laid-back sounds of smooth jazz, this album will at the least enlighten you to some of the many different approaches to the genre. There's no shortage of variety here. Some of the many performers featured on This Is Smooth Jazz include Duncan Millar, Fredrik Karlsson, Yada Yada, Chris Standring, Modern Tribe, Act of Faith, and many more. As mentioned, this collection serves as a wonderful starting point for the neophyte while simultaneously offering a checklist of sorts for seasoned smooth jazz listeners.

Best known for his worldwide instrumental hit "Children," Italian dance producer Robert Miles was responsible for kick-starting the subgenre of dream-trance, a blissfully chilled-out fusion of Vangelis-style neo-classical music and progressive house beats, which helped him to bag a Brit Award and several Top Ten singles in the mid-'90s. Since his last commercial success, the Kathy Sledge-featuring "Freedom," 14 years ago, he's abandoned his celestial piano-based roots in favor of experimental trip-hop on 2001's Organik and ethnic jazz on 2004's Miles_Gurtu, a collaboration with Indian percussionist Trilok Gurtu. Seven years on, he returns from the musical wilderness with his fifth studio album, Th1Rt3En, and another new sound that further distances himself from his Euro-dance beginnings.

Eye Of Solitude are proud to reveal the fifth album called Slaves To Solitude.

In a period in which the boundaries between musical genres are rapidly dissolving, there still exist major differences between what we still call a “jazz” band and those of other musical classifications.Perhaps the most significant of these is that longevity in a jazz ensemble will nearly always have an entirely positive effect on the music. That’s clearly a huge factor when listening to the high-caliber international quartet put together over a decade ago by the New York-based guitarist-composer Scott DuBois.

Last summer we enjoyed the first fruits of a UK soul "supergoup" – The British Collective; a team that consisted of star vocalists Don E, Junior Giscombe, Leee John, Noel McKoy and Omar. Now as we enter a new year, another UK "supergroup" arrives to treat us to some fine music. The Brit Funk Association is made up of former members of Beggar and Co, Hi Tension, Central Line and Light of the World and though the various members have known each other for a long, long time it was in the autumn of 2016 that they decided to get together…

Belfast-born, London-based duo Bicep (Matt McBriar and Andy Ferguson) release their hotly anticipated second album, “Isles”, on 22 January 2021 via Ninja Tune.

Espen Berg Trio is an award-winning piano trio from Norway. Outselling concert halls in Tokyo, Guangzhou, Kyoto and Hong Kong, the trio is already making a mark way outside their home country and was declared an important new voice in the crowded field of post-E.S.T. trios by Jazz Journal (UK) in 2019. Their music might bring associations to Brad Mehldau, Keith Jarrett, Shai Maestro or Tigran Hamasyan, but is primarily a personal addition to the legacy of the piano trio and the evolution of the Nordic jazzscene, lead by a combination of strong melodies, rhythmic complexity, immense technical abilities and a playful interaction.