My new album has been well recieved across press, radio, playlists and beyond…
“Patterns Various” is a set of live works for solo sax and electronics which crosses the boundaries between jazz, minimalist classical, electronica and experimental music. The album is out now on Bandcamp and all good stores. I thought it would be nice to summarise a few things that have happened around the project so far…
Following on from featuring “Dawn Rises” on BBC 6 Music’s “Best New Music of 2021” radio show, Stuart Maconie invited me to curate my own hour’s worth of music for BBC 6 for his Freak Zone Playlist show. This was a career milestone for me and resulted in a phone full of messages of support from friends and family from across the world. My music has been called “Electronical gorgeousness” by Tom Ravenscroft (BBC 6 Music), “Beautiful and bonkers” by Dom Servini (Soho Radio) and Elizabeth Alker (BBC Radio 3) spoke about “Sparks and colours from exploding fireworks cascade through this next piece of music… they’re painted so skillfully here”. Another Radio 3 highlight saw my track “Pushing Swings” feature on Night Tracks, presented by one of my favourite composers Hannah Peel. Jordan Scudder (Amazing Radio) interviewed me on his show, and there was more chat with me on the radio via the likes of Anna Phoebe (Soho Radio), Dubmission (Radio WYEP), Mor Air (Threads Radio), Sad Man (Camp Radio) and John Kennedy (Radio X) who enjoyed “Catching Leaves” so much he bombarded me with kind words such as “incredible, great, splendid, superb and excellent”. John then invited me in to do a live session and interview on his X-Posure show – a live phone call on national radio I will never forget!
Outside of radio some other cool things include “Longdown Hill” being licensed to promote a Romare Bearden exhibition at Hemphill Arts Gallery in Washington DC, and both the single “Fireworks From The Tower” and the full album both featured on the front page of Bandcamp (New & Notable). Louder Than War called me “one of the great sax innovators of our time”, Ransom Note premiered “Pushing Swings” as an “ambient jazz inspired excursion”, and A Closer Listen‘s beautiful review described the sound as “dialogue between the musician and his shadow”. Prog Magazine described “Minimalist, hypnotically beautiful music that’s part Steve Reich, part Theo Travis”, and JamBase said my music is “a labyrinth to get lost in for a while”.
According to Pan M 360 I have “the eloquence of a jazz player, the architectural inclinations of the minimalist composer, a club DJ’s intuition for a good groove, and a storyteller’s crowd-pleasing élan” and hip music blog Backseat Mafia chipped in with the kind words “Of a time, but in a wider sense, timeless”, following up with “An album which will be looked back on as a chronicle of our times” The good people at DMC World Magazine interviewed me about the album’s origins, the inspiration behind the compositions, and the technology I put my sax through to create the unique soundscapes of the project. Other exciting developments include a track being picked up for the compilation “Outside The Lines Vol. 4” on one of my favourite labels, Nonclassical and “Dawn Rises” being added to the lovely Minimalism playlist on Apple Music.
Live-wise I managed to squeeze in a couple of actual gigs before the pandemic kicked in, and since then I’ve been streaming away a plenty, with performances on Plugged In Live and for Nick Luscombe’s Musicity At Home project as part of Make Music Day. I streamed a couple of gigs live on bandcamp from my studio in London, one of which was attended by the CEO of Bandcamp Ethan Diamond, highlights of which can be seen above, the other was a no holds barred celebration on the album release day. There is a full playlist of all my live performance videos for this project on YouTube here. Talking of video, there’s this rather lovely animation for “Dawn Rises” made by Simon Hill aka Manalishi, who also provided some delightful little animations for each single release to date.
Last but not least I really should mention how someone filmed their dog “singing” along to my first single and then shared the footage on twitter. If you still want even more info on album coverage, my instagram account is always a good starting point for such things. Thanks to everyone for all their support so far, here’s to more exciting times throughout 2021!
If you’d like to book me for a gig / collab / commission / sax session / workshop or anything else, please get in touch.
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