Los Angeles-based experimental jazz collective High Pulp release their new album Days In The Desert. The titular desert is both literal and metaphorical: it's the Mojave Desert that the band powers through on their many DIY tours around the country, and the band's founder / drummer Bobby Granfelt perceives the desert as "a spiritual quest" as well. Amid the trials of our present moment, you must look within, relying solely on your own instincts to keep moving forward. "You're in the desert and it's a long, lonesome process and a lot of times you have to check yourself to ask 'Is this right? Is this good? Is it too out?'" he says.
In 1969, Sea Shanties established High Tide as one of Britain's heaviest bands and the choice of George Chkiantz (who had previously worked with Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin) as co-producer for their second album seemed to signal the group's intention to continue in the same direction. In comparison with their hefty debut, however, the self-titled follow-up is a relatively subdued affair. The interplay of guitarist Tony Hill and violinist Simon House is still very much at the core of High Tide's distinctive hybrid of psychedelia, prog, and hard rock, but while Hill lays down his characteristically intricate, searing guitar lines, he forgoes the sort of weighty, molten riffage that made Sea Shanties such a behemoth.
The new release from Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, "Back The Way We Came: Vol 1 (2011-2021)," celebrates 10 years since the inception of NGHFB. This double album, curated and compiled entirely by Noel, includes tracks from the three albums (‘Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds’, ‘Chasing Yesterday’ and ‘Who Built The Moon?’) and the three acclaimed EPs (‘Black Star Dancing’, ‘This Is The Place’ and ‘Blue Moon Rising’) - plus 2 previously unreleased tracks including the brand new single ‘We’re On Our Way Now’.
"We're a bunch of outsiders who refused to be kept out," says High Pulp drummer Bobby Granfelt. "We've never had an academic approach to jazz-most of us grew up playing in DIY bands-so it was the rawness and the energy and the absolute freedom of the music that called to us in the first place." Indeed, there's something defiant, something utterly liberating about High Pulp's remarkable ANTI- Records debut, Pursuit of Ends. Drawing on punk rock, shoegaze, hip-hop, and electronic music, the band's brand of experimental jazz is both vintage and futuristic all at once, hinting at times to everything from Miles Davis and Duke Ellington to Aphex Twin and My Bloody Valentine.
Council Skies is the highly anticipated fourth studio album from Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds released on 2nd June 2023. The album includes the new singles ‘Pretty Boy’ and ‘Easy Now’ plus an album version of the previously released demo ‘We’re Gonna Get There In The End’ as a bonus track. This deluxe format includes a bonus disc featuring previously unreleased live sessions, instrumentals, and remixes from The Cure’s Robert Smith, Pet Shop Boys, and David Holmes.
This is the third album by Polish Jazz ensemble High Definition Quartet, which comprises of saxophonist Mateusz Śliwa, pianist/composer Piotr Orzechowski (a.k.a. Pianohooligan), bassist Alan Wykpisz and drummer Grzegorz Pałka (each of the three albums features a different drummer). On this album the ensemble collaborates with five electronic music composers: Polish veteran/pioneer of the idiom Krzysztof Knittel, Igor Boxx (a.k.a. Igor Pudło), Americans William Basinski and Robert Rich and Austrian Christian Fennesz. The album presents ten original compositions, five of which are performed by the ensemble and were composed by Orzechowski and five shorter pieces, each composed and performed by one of the above listed electronic music composers (except for the Knittel piece which was co-composed with Orzechowski and co-executed with the ensemble), which are sandwiched between the ensemble pieces.
High Pulp are an 8-piece band that emerged from the Royal Room, a legendary Seattle Jazz club where they held “Funk Church” jam sessions in 2017. Their signature sound is a Psychedelic fusion of Hip-Hop, Funk, Jazz, and Soul which come together with complex, well thought out arrangements and progressive style. After successful sessions and premieres with prestigious station KEXP, and being at the forefront of the Seattle music scene, they’re now ready to branch out and take their sound worldwide.
High Tide was a highly underrated British band that played psychedelic progressive rock when the genre was in its infancy. "Precious Cargo" is seven tracks of live in the studio slices of hauntingly beautiful yet terrifying soundscapes. Their sound is one that should have been playing in the background of an Alfred Hitchcock film or more recently, a Wes Craven production comes to mind. What made their sound so eerie was the violin of Simon House. Much in the same way Jean Luc Ponty used his instrument, House used his violin as more of a lead instrument and the rest of the band fell in line to fill in the layers to make one impressive wall of sound that would wake up the spirit and startle the thought process; their music was very potent.
Opened up by the delirious alchemy of contemporary pop music, Sean O’Hagan leaps back into life with High Llamas, with a set of killer tunes reflecting on dimensional levels how definitions change over time. Arranged by Sean and produced with mix collaborator Fryars to engage the eardrums in non-stop new possibilities, Hey Panda radiates optimism inspired by the joys and sorrows felt in former lifetimes and the diverse conundrums of today alike.