“If Matisse made home music” feels like an over-earnest tagline for Jasper Attlee’s jazz-house mission, Berlioz. But it’s not fully critical. Berlioz is known as after a personality in 70s Disney animation The Aristocats, not the French composer, and the road captures essential issues concerning the English producer presently having a second, with a streaming viewers so large he’s by some metrics the UK’s most-listened to jazz act.
A kind of issues is the significance of visible artwork to Berlioz. Born in Cape City, bred by the English seaside in Cornwall, Attlee began off making jazz-tinged digital productions beneath the title Ted Jasper. Previously 12 months, nevertheless, Berlioz has turn into his foremost hustle, because of Instagram and different social media feeds utilizing Berlioz instrumentals to soundtrack animations, movie and TV clips (Wes Anderson and Twin Peaks are favourites). Add Attlee’s love of impressionism, bringing its philosophy of spontaneity to his work, and the Matisse line makes extra sense.
New Berlioz album Open This Wall is barely harking back to cult Parisian genius Ludovic Navarre’s St Germain work, with out Navarre’s predilection for wild explorations of jazz and blues. Berlioz tracks comparable to Joycelyn’s Dance are beautifully constructed and comforting with out being difficult – the title of debut EP Jazz Is for Odd Individuals was effectively chosen – and it’s often by way of gateways comparable to this that listeners will wend their method to jazz’s outer shores. In case you can nonetheless get tickets, Attlee’s dwell touring band flesh out this fledgling sound superbly.
Open This Wall is out on 12 July. Berlioz performs the O2 Academy Brixton, London, on 17 October
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