Made up of nine permanent members, this collective was formed in 2011 while they were students at Leeds College Of Music. The group is led by guitarist Tom Excell, who leaves plenty of room for individual expression. They released their first album in 2015, but their reputation grew with the release of their third album, Freedom Fables, in 2021. Tracks from this opus made it into the BBC 6 Music radio playlist. Since then, the quality of their live performances has convinced audiences at numerous festivals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The singer Nubiya Brandon, who inspired the group’s name, has been replaced by Aziza Jaye for this fourth album, but that hasn’t stopped this big-band from continuing in the same melting-pot of influences. On a jazz base with a fine brass section, they look to Nu-Soul and Hip-Hop, sometimes reminiscent of Roy Hargrove and his RH Factor, but there’s also an infusion of African music with rhythms that are hard to resist. The featurings are just as luxurious, with the likes of Nile Rodgers and Seun Kuti joining in with the band’s infectious groove and funk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although some of the arrangements are electronic, what stands out listening to this record is the abundance of analogue sounds. Of course, with nine musicians, that’s a lot of people, but the production makes it easy to understand the different sections and perfectly accompanies the different colours of the tracks. Whether on the faster tracks or the quieter ones, the vocals remain clear. The percussion, when there is a lot of it, fills the stage and, on the best systems, the brass and keyboards add depth. All in all, it’s a good time that’ll make you want to dance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Made up of nine permanent members, this collective was formed in 2011 while they were students at Leeds College Of Music. The group is led by guitarist Tom Excell, who leaves plenty of room for individual expression. They released their first album in 2015, but their reputation grew with the release of their third album, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":35,"featured_media":2719,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vumetre.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vumetre.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vumetre.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vumetre.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/35"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vumetre.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vumetre.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vumetre.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vumetre.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vumetre.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vumetre.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}