Welcome to the latest Courtney Pine Global Podcast Bitesize Edition!  A coffee break’s worth of cool jazzy vibes to wet your appetite for the full show.  Commercial free, and hand-picked by Courtney for a vibrant, and soulful listen!  

This week neck-snapping beats from Brighton's Eli Soda, Norwegian chillout jazz and West Coast birdsong reimagined on strings... this superb Bitesize is a mind-expanding eclectic 15 minute Trip - All new and All for YOU!!

1.    Ebi Soda – Pseudocreme (5’05)

Honk If You’re Sad TRU THOUGHTS Tr 3

V Vilhelm tb Conor Knight gtr Hari-Lee Evans bs

Louis Jenkins keys Sam Schlich Davies dr
Vilhelm, Knight, Jenkins, Evans, Davies 

Look no further for the beating heart of the fantastic underground UK jazz scene!

Born from ten-hour jam sessions in peeling Brighton bedsits, the technical parameters of a bootstrap recording process and the osmotic, multi-genre influence of internet music archives, quintet Ebi Soda have been steady-cultivating a unique sound amidst the exploding UK jazz scene.

In typical Ebi style, while recalling jazz pioneers in playing style, ‘Honk If You’re Sad’ draws from a vast neural network of influences: the Ebi Brain has been marinating in a digital soup of trap, drill, dub, post-punk and no wave to name but a few. The result is a mercurial record that beams in psychedelia, dissonance, serene ambient passages, tough, neck-snapping beats and lush textures, all underscored by the intersection of jazz, hip hop and electronic music.


2.   Action & Tension & Space - Chromosomes  (6’16)

Tellus RUNE GRAMMOFON Tr 1

Per Steinar Lie gtr Øystein Braut gtr org mtron

Julis Lind bs Ørjan Haaland dr Sigbjørn Apeland keys, harm

Ståle Liavik Solberg perc

Lie, Braut, Lind,Haaland

Spaced out Norwegian jazz chill with a kind of Clint Eastwood Western soundtrack feel but your foot's still tappin'!

ATS is an instrumental loungerock outfit, with added elements of folk music, jazzy surf, psychedelia, free improvised chill-out, jangly post-rock, krautrock and travelling bass.

With “Tellus” ATS heads into the Hardangervidda (the big plains connecting the eastern and western parts of southern Norway) terrain of wide open spaces, spare vegetation and unruly weather conditions, especially during the winter. The album was recorded in a small studio in Haugesund during two days of heavy rain showers and stormy winds rumbling outside the windows.


3.   Smudges – The Gigue is Up (5’20)

Song and Call CRYPTOGRAMOPHONE  Tr 3

Jeff Gauthier vln Maggie Parkins cl

Gauthier

The highly original work of violinist Jeff Gauthier and cellist Maggie Parkins, stars of the West Coast new music scene, resists classification. From “Music Of Chants,” Guy Klucevsek’s memorial to John Cage, through “Release,” Tom Flaherty’s layered journey through echo and repetition, Song And Call is this intrepid couple’s tethering of nature and technology. 

The result is a kind of cyborg chamber music that, from the start, immerses the listener in a cathedral of the mind.  Largely composed by Gauthier and Parkins, the ambitious Song And Call is an unbounded, successful experiment in creativity. This couple traffics in intelligence.  Whether it’s technological or natural doesn’t much matter to them.