Bleep

Hailed as a unique voice in the burgeoning UK underground jazz scene, South London bandleader, trumpeter and flugelhorn-player Emma-Jean Thackray invigorates the genre with the bounding magnitude of Walrus, a record as soaked in vintage big band class as it is carnivalesque experimentalism. Interspersed with interludes of glorious, hot skronk and servings of synthesised chaos, the brassy leads and clattering percussion of tunes like ‘Baro Bop’ and ‘Walrus’ are made doubly weighty by the elephantine sway of a tuba, and the wiry terseness of wurlitzers and hammond organs. Shades of Flying Lotus-like off-kilter fusions trail away into ‘Birthday Cake’.