Weekend sandwich

Just had a fun weekend of gigs…Troyka played at the Kings Place festival on saturday 15th Sept 2012, which was great. Very cool crowd and some lovely feedback. Massive thanks to everyone who came down and of course, Kings place. There’s some more videos from that gig on my video page. Then I did a last minute gig with Josh Arcoleo on the sunday…amazing musician, beautiful tunes and good friend (Joshs Website)  followed by another Troyka gig up at Herts jazz festival to top it off. Got home and my folks ordered the best take away curry I’ve ever had…yes!

Louis Cole and Genevieve Artadi @LOUISGENEVIEVE

These are two musicians whom I’ve been finding very inspiring since I came across them last summer. They are super generous with their music in that they put so much of it up on youtube…you can buy lots more HERE!

Floating points @ Maida Vale and Montreux with Fatima

Back in 2009 I was lucky to spend the day at Maida Vale recording for radio 1. We won best session of 2009 at Giles Peterson’s world wide awards for this recording. Since then we have made a release with Ninja tune on their compilation ‘XX’.

You can find more music from Floating points and the ensemble here along with many other exciting artists including Fatima who I also work with on and off. Last summer we went and played at Montreux Jazz festival, this was such a fun day…we got to see Chaka Khan play and Katy B was playing after us, she was nice…then we partied.

The summer before we did this at Fabric night club;

 

Deerhoof ‘free’ live album

Ok, I love this band sooo much. Had an amazing night back in May last year when I went to see them live.

You should buy all the albums!!  Click this picture to download their live album which they have posted for free!

Enjoy!

Troyka mixing and new John Escreet record…

We (Troyka) have just spent the last two days mixing the new album. It’s not quite finished yet but we’re happy with how it’s sounding so far. Robert Harder is mixing it, this guy is a genius with incredible ears. Unfortunately there’s not much I can say about the expected release of this album yet as it’s all still up in the air. Something I can say is that our latest idea is to call it ‘Rarebit’. I think this record will have a really nice shape to it, we have a couple of ballads which are my favourite tracks. Maybe the 3rd album should be a ballad album!

Anyway, some cool news is the release of John Escreets new album ‘The age we live in”. An all star line up of Wayne Krantz – Guitar, David Binney- Sax, Marcus Gilmore  - Drums with brass and string section and Tim Lefebvre guesting on a couple of tracks. John plays Rhodes and synths…this makes me very happy and it’s all I’m listening to at the moment. Check it out here http://www.johnescreet.com/live/

Django Bates Cheltenham project on the radio!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b010xxz4/Jazz_on_3_Django_Bates_at_the_Cheltenham_Festival/

Last weekend was Cheltenham Jazz festival where I was lucky enough to be doing two gigs. Friday night was Curios (Tom Cawley) and Saturday night was with Django Bates’ commissioned Octet project.

The week before we spent three days rehearsing Djangos music at ‘Something else studios’ in Old street. We worked hard and ate lots of good pies on the roof terrace in lunch breaks. I feel very honoured to be involved in this project, working with and being around Django was very inspiring and opened me up to lots of new ideas. Also very happy to get to play and hang out with the other guys in the band who I rarely or have never played with before. I think this was intentional on Djangos part, getting a group of soloists who you wouldn’t normally see together to create a unique sound. This was challenging music and it was really fun to get the teeth into…I think (and hope) this won’t be the last you see of this group!

You can hear the recording of the gig on BBC iplayer http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b010xxz4/Jazz_on_3_Django_Bates_at_the_Cheltenham_Festival/  The gigs 58 minutes in and before then you can hear an interview with Django, Kit Downes and Denys Baptiste.

Aloosh Video shoot !

Tomorrow night we record the Aloosh Video for our new single ‘Time’. Unfortunately I doubt I will make it to the shoot with recording going on in north london, so the plan is to put a ‘Josh mask’ on drummer Dave de Rose face.  This makes me feel hugely embarrassed as Dave’s the man!  ( http://www.myspace.com/davederose ) here he is in action