BUTCHER BROWN レコード& CD

Review: Virginia collective Butcher Brown flaunt their lapidary, multifaceted flair for transversal jazz on their new album for Concord Jazz, via a seamless blend of funk, r&b, soul, bossa nova and much, much else. Through the collective persona of Butcher Brown - an imagined philosopher jazzmaster king, whose grasp of music is said to owe much to legacies of garage punk and jazz funk - the smooth quintet say this "joint" was recorded with the intention of recreating the kind of music one might find oneself dancing to in a club in New York and the UK, attesting all of the band members' compounded skills as music producers. Chopping up samples whilst performing on the fly, the record takes its name from the fact that all members were "pulling samples from across the Atlantic", building their grooves around them.

Review: Hailing from Richmond, Virginia, Butcher Brown are a five-piece band with a solid run of heavy-grooving records behind them, but they're switching things up on this new record for Concord Jazz. The album finds band member Tennishu leading as he grips the mic for a big band approach to hip-hop which draws on the band's considerable skills to render a widescreen twist on rap with more than a little jazz informing the sound. Nodding to past hip-hop legends (shouting out Biggie Smalls on 'Unbelievable', for example) but bringing their own bold and brassy sound to the fore, this is an assured and hard-funking record with mass appeal.