On Monday I received 2 complimentary tickets from The Jazz Cafe to see a guy called Mark de Clive Lowe on Wednesday May 25. It was totally unexpected, and I had no idea why the tickets had been sent to me, and I knew virtually nothing about this artist.
I've been to quite a few gigs at The Jazz cafe over the past couple of years so I presumed it had something to with that , anyway, the artists name did seem familiar so I had a butchers through my collection and found a couple of his tracks on 2 different compilation albums, so had a listen to them and they both sounded excellent, so called a mate and decided to go and check him out.

I've just come back from the gig and I was completely blown away, it was absolutely incredible Every one of the musicians and vocalists on stage were simply exceptional and the crowd were going berserk! I don't think ANYBODY was able to stand still, every person was dancing or at least swaying along.
Now comes the hard part; trying to describe what type of music it was A mixture of soul, jazz, funk, electro, hip-hop beats, a tinge of D&B, some reggae beats, some latin/salsa beats and some African beats all fused together to make music so infectious that I'm still shell shocked now!
I bought two of the guys CD's at the end of the gig and have been listening to them and they are pure quality; however this was the type of artist that you really needed to see live cos of the amazing things that the musicians were doing and the superb improvisation that was going on.

You can check out some of hus tunes at http://www.markdeclivelowe.net/ and if you ever get a chance to see him live, do not spurn the opportunity, he and his band are simply superb

Sounds like a great gig, Eskie - I'll check him out. I always love finding bril artists I've never heard of :)

Cheers,

Jack.

From what I have heard of this music, it sounds superb

For those of you who have checked out his website, at the bottom of the site you'll see the section where you can listen to mp3 previews of tracks from his albums. Check out the track "Slide" on the current album "Tides Arising" It is seriously funky

and still on the subject of new tunes; every time I've been to the Jazz Cafe they have always had excellent DJs spinnin tunes before and after the artist performance. The guy on Wednesday played a killer new tune called "Flyaway" by "The Phuturistics", it's apparently released in a few weeks; definitely one to look out for; although sayin that, it ain't the type of track thats gonna hit the national charts... it's far too good for that