Jazzmonk

***WEBSITE NOW ACTIVE *WEBSITE NOW ACTIVE*WEBSITE NOW ACTIVE*WEBSITE NOW ACTIVE*WEBSITE NOW ACTIVE*WEBSITE NOW ACTIVE*WEBSITE NOW ACTIVE*WEBSITE NOW ACTIVE ..CHECK OUT THE TOTAL JAZZMONK EXPERIENCE of which this is a mere taste ************************************************************ ************************************************************ ********I have some track record in the business and although now 50 - like many jazz musicians find it natural and nourishing to feed on all contemporary musical currents (as indeed did our mentor the great John Coltrane who was and still is a massive inspiration). ************************************************************ ************************************************************ ********I started in the seventies with A&M,my own band The Movies (visit www.rekindle.co.uk to see pre-history !)and the many sessions connection with that company and classic producers like Glynn Johns and James Guthrie (The Wall) brought me . I played with the inimitable Pete Townshend on Rough Mix , toured the world with Joan Armatrading in 1980/1/2/3 , played on Tina Turners Private Dancer in 84 , retired to Cornwall shortly afterwards to teach and add ( to a modest extent) tenor and jazz piano to the Cuban and African percussion which was my primary skill .*********************************************************** ************************************************************ ********* During my twenty years of country living our local studio The Sawmills played a timely part in the Britpop revival of 1995 on ; and so I found myself playing for Supergrass on I Should Coco . Their subsequent albums finally rewarded John Cornfield (my Co-producer on Afro Cortex ) with the gold and platinum albums he richly deserved Razorlight being his latest chart success also recorded there in Cornwall .Even Oasis graced us with their presence for the tenth anniversary of their first album made there . Just one lone Sun paparazzo made it past Bodmin moor and thats the secret of the studios popularity . However as I hope you will agree from this production John has a great ear in all contexts regardless of fame and fashion . ************************************************************ ************************************************************ ********The project started in a fairly modest way as a sort of birthday present to myself after a lifetime in music. I must have played thousands of gigs and all those sessions but felt there was no tangible form that was all my own work and so in 1999 the first composition was formed (Music of the Brain) and at my leisure if you like and at my expense ( the price of a small house in fact ..!) it grew from there ; there were many wonderful re-unions with musicians from all periods of my career just as the compositions span many different forms. ************************************************************ ************************************************************ ******** Having always had an extremely broad input I was nonetheless to some extent saved in the nineties from musical senility or jadedness by the increasing influence and interest in all world styles and the DrumnBass of LTJ Bukem , Blame, James Hardway etc ; percussionists were using turntables , other players and instrumentalists using cutting edge technology to express percussive and musical ideas impossible on traditional instruments or great in combination with them ; the Brazilian surdo had become Blames bass lines . ************************************************************ ************************************************************ ******** And so Afro Cortex was born : the combination of the simple hand drum and the advanced computers brain ; a story starting (of course) in Africa and continuing from there through the heroic decades of jazz which have formed a major part of my work and study.