Kokoroko’s Abusey Junction is likely to be the softest and beautiful thing you’re going to hear in 2018. It is at the end of the day only an instrumental, only an Afrobeat instrumental – but it is a monumental instrumental – a monstrumental! It is at the same time soothing and emotional, it is like that feeling you get towards the end of a good cry. Sadness and warmth combined. It is the gentle beats of the percussion that soothe. It is the plucking of the guitar strings that pull on your heart ones. In this way it is reminiscent of ‘Mediterranean Sundance’. Its long, but it deserves to be long in the same way that Fat Freddy’s Drop ‘Hope for a Generation’, Sebastien Letellier’s ‘La Ritournelle’ and The Hot 8 Brass Band’s ‘Sexual Healing’ deserve to be long. After all if you’re going to have a cry, get it all out eh?

I’ve just read elsewhere that the track was written by Oscar Jerome, which was a real coincidence because I included at the bottom of this article a review of Oscar Jerome’s ‘Subdued’ which I recently likened to Fat Freddy’s Drop ‘Hope for a Generation’ as a ‘whilst you’re here  you might be interested in…’ addition. In ‘Greedy for Music’ it says

The song is a ballad, written by guitarist Oscar Jerome, on the roof of a compound in Gambia, where the band spent time last year immersing themselves in the soundscapes of the region. http://www.greedyforbestmusic.com/journal/friends/abusey-junction/

The track is included on an album called ‘We Out Here’ recently released by ‘Brownswood Recordings’ designed to promote new jazz talent. https://weouthere.bandcamp.com/album/we-out-here

Kokoroko is said to mean ‘strong’ in Urhobo.

Kokoro means ‘heart’ or ‘soul’ in Japanese.

More music from Kokoroko

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oscar Jerome steps up to the plate of Jamiroquai and Fat Freddy’s Drop

 

Subdued is the first track on Oscar Jerome’s soon to be released  EP Where are your Branches. Its an epic in the style, although not quite of the magnitude, of Fat Freddy’s Drop’s Hope For a Generation. It starts off like with a rich mix of soul and acid jazz twangs, just like Jamiroquai. Jerome, however, true to the title of the track, adds a mournful tinge to his punched out impassioned soul vocals, like a dog licking his wounds, similar to Dallas Tamaira. It ends with a slow building and yet melancholy instrumental, I get the tiniest hint of Bebel Gilberto’s Autumn Day Song.

He’s playing Ghost Notes in London 18th April.

 

 

 

South London artist, Oscar Jerome, is sharing the Glenn Astro re-working of ‘Do You Really’.This new mix of the track arrives courtesy of the Berlin-based, Ninja Tune alumni, Glenn Astro – speaking about the mix, Oscar says: “We linked up when I was in Berlin in spring, he’s a lovely guy. When I was thinking of someone to remix the song, he made perfect sense! This is definitely a different style to what I would usually expect from him which took me by surprise in the best way possible. It still has his quirky soundscape and jazz sensibility which I can always get down to.” Alongside the new mix, he’s announced details of a headline date at London’s EartH (Hackney Arts Centre) on Feb 20, 2019.

 

Live dates

There’s something about Oscar Jerome, he aint your usual singer, and he aint your usual bloke. First of all lets be clear, he is hugely talented, self-assured, sensual and soulful with that last word spelt in capital letters. And despite this he appears also to be incredibly humble (again all of that word in capital letters). In between songs he communicates to the audience with a sincerity of soul (there’s that word again) but also finds it difficult to put a full stop to his sentences, which reminds you of the fact that he has only, in relative terms, recently evolved out of adolescence (I’m guessing, incredibly there’s no Wikipedia entry for Oscar to tell me otherwise). Who knows, demonstrating such vulnerability he might have been happier to have been elevated and slightly protected from the audience on the night of his gig at the cavernous brickworky arches of the Village Underground. Some months ago in the cute micro-venue, Ghost Notes in Peckham, the crowd, a pretty sophisticated set of beard-stroking nu-jazz connoisseurs, was nothing but adoring. The crowd at Village Underground was younger and there was a hint of laddism about the place. Two young men flouted health legislation and shared a cigarette. I was expecting to soon hear shouts of ‘Brexit! Brexit!’ Another two quietly mocked Oscar for his sincerity whilst simultaneously being enthused by his talent, its difficult to be fully sincere when you’re young. However, having said all this, the crowd were generally greatly appreciative. Oscar absolutely rocked it three or four months ago when he played Peckham, and he did the same at the Village Underground.

Oscar’s live work is based mainly on the relationship with one of the several guitars that he plays, an acoustic guitar made electric, which goes by the name of Eccleshall. A comparison of Eccleshall guitar images on the internet with the one Oscar plays was inconclusive, and yet I feel 90% sure its the Eccleshall MC (the enquiry goes on, I did ask Oscar, but it seems he has more important things to do than help me fine tune this review). The point is though that the jazzy, tropical, beautifully organic, hollow sound made by the guitar is the trademark of the Oscar Jerome experience. It is always a bit of a surprise on the live stage, partly because I always think I’m going to get a more electric sound from Jerome, and partly because I’m not sure that same guitar sound always stands our so strongly on the recorded tracks. I expect funk but it veers closer towards Bossanova at times. And yet, perhaps the most astonishing thing about watching Oscar, is the way, from time to time, he’ll reach a climax by pounding that delicate looking guitar. Its a bit like watching a guy beat up on a butterfly, though a very sturdy butterfly, because that guitar can take it, but all of a sudden when Oscar is beating it to a pulp, and you see it bowing and bending, you think ‘what the fuck is happening here?’ Its gobsmacking, eye-opening. When he does this the decibels climb. In Ghost Notes with Oscar being so close to the audience it really felt like we were being sprayed with bullets. At the Village Underground, with there being a distance, there was not so much of this feeling, but it was still impressive to watch Oscar’s flexibility, dexterity and intensity on the strings. His facial expressions were the kind of thing you expect on Clapton rather than a guy who in many ways is slap bang in the middle of a nouveau vague of acid jazz. The acid jazz thing is something that I’m pretty sure Oscar has no desire to be typecast by, because he does draw on diverse influences, and I don’t really think he has any intention of going in any direction other than that which life and serendipity will take him. And yet I still can’t help feeling that there’s a kind of gaiety to his music, a playfulness, a fun, and a sincere desire for political consciousness, which is reminiscent of the buzz that was created by the early 90s acid jazz scene.

There’s something else about what Oscar does too, which adds to his game. He is clearly a guy with a lot of musical friends, which I might dare to call associates knowing that Oscar himself refers to them as ‘family’. In his gigs, where possible, he tends to bring the family along, and get them in on the act. He is a man for collaboration. At the Village Underground besides his regular band, Oscar invited a rapper, a guest drummer and a trombonist from another band that Oscar plays in, Kokoroko. With Oscar then, its rarely just Oscar, its more Oscar and guests, a kind of variety performance drawn from what one assumes is the mythical south London jazz school, said to have spawned so many artists and bands in recent years. This helps Oscar in many ways. He is undoubtedly the guy with the talent, and those around him must surely feel grateful that they’ve been allowed to come along for the ride on the back of his coat tails. But for Oscar it allows perhaps to introduce some well needed spice and variety into his shows, which might otherwise feel a little flat and samey at times. Oscar has already written some great pieces, the best of which is, according to scientific experiments conducted in my head, Subdued. Furthermore his tunes almost always require a level of emotional, tonal and digital dexterity and flexibility, which make for a captivating performance. However it has to be said, that with the exception of one or two, the actual tunes themselves don’t always leave an indelible mark in your musical psyche, in the way you wish they sometimes would. The hits Oscar, the hits! Well the thing is about Oscar, that is so endearing and interesting, is that this is clearly a man who is not writing for the hits, but rather is a on a creative journey, and he’s making it with so many others. The impression I get of Oscar is that he is a genuine ‘artist’ he’s on his own journey come what may, and that what is important is not that he pleases other people, but that he continues to enjoy it and grow on it. And what a pleasure to have joined him, albeit briefly, on it.

Oscar Jerome played the Village Underground, Shoreditch, London, 25th September 2018

 

More recent reviews from the 2018 tour

https://brightonsfinest.com/html/8-reviews/4137-oscar-jerome-the-hope-ruin-brighton-20th-september-2018

https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/reviews/live-reviews/all-music-is-political-oscar-jerome-live-in-london

As a self-confessed follower of Oscar Jeromism I was intrigued to listen to the new single that he featured on, ahead of his gig in London next week, and following his concert at Ghost Notes some months back. At the concert in Ghost Notes Jerome had played a guitar, which had a calypso feel to it, which looking back one can clearly hear in his collaboration with Kokoroko in Abusey Junction, but which during the gig seemed a bit of a departure from the sound in the tracks he’d released up to the point. This sound is clearly present in his collaboration with New Gods and Jay Prince. I really do like the way that Jerome sees what he is doing as more than about himself, but about a musical collective. You could see from his gig in Ghost Notes, with the guests that he introduced into his show, that he was keen to keep the musical family together, to involve them in the work that he did. We can see that in his collaboration with Kokoroko and with New Gods here. One of the strengths of this collective approach is that Jerome adapts himself and is challenged to widen his repertoire to the influences around him – it keeps him fresh as a musician. New Gods have produced a different type of track to the stuff that Jerome has produced up to now, it is lounge music, almost formulaic, naturally with some jazzy tones. However, as if often the case Jerome has added something special to it, given it a bit of spice. He’s done this, firstly by adding laid back lyrics, but also with some of that really nice calypso guitar, sparkles gently like a Caribbean sea peacefully undulating under a setting son. Almost Chris Rea. Really got me looking forward to the gig at Village Underground.

 

South London’s Oscar Jerome has today announced details of his debut headline UK tour. Commencing on September 20 at Brighton’s Hope & Ruin, the seven-date run will include a headline a stop at London’s 700-capacity Village Underground on September 25, 2018. All ticket links below. Alongside the announcement, Jerome is sharing the new Eda Feola-directed video for recent 6 Music and 1 Xtra-supported single, ‘Smile On A Screen’ – watch here.

The 6-minute breakbeat hip-hop of ‘Smile On A Screen’ finds Oscar working alongside the Dazed-tipped poet and Massive Attack collaborator, James Massiah. Speaking about the track’s new video, Jerome says: “In this song I’m discussing the unrealistic expectations we have of life, success, love and lust because of the airbrushed reality we are fed through media. I wanted this to be reflected in the video that shows me, the band and James Massiah as cut-out photos placed in crazy, unreal settings. Everything from the way we move to how the scenes are set out like pieces of art, are to help show the way we have completely lost contact with the world around us.”

September’s debut headline tour follows the release of Oscar’s acclaimed ‘Where Are Your Branches?’ EP and recent sell-out shows at Corsica Studios and Ghost Notes in London, plus a slot at Love Supreme Festival alongside Mr Jukes and Soccer96. 2018 has also seen Jerome collaborate – alongside James Messiah – with the likes of Maxwell Owin and Joe Armon-Jones. Oscar will return later this year with more new music.

Tour dates
September 20 | Hope & Ruin, Brighton | https://bit.ly/2J9BCaF
September 21 | Hug & Pint, Glasgow | https://bit.ly/2xxKLsb
September 22 | Headrow House, Leeds | https://bit.ly/2xu9tto
September 25 | Village Underground, London | https://bit.ly/2LdZcUk
September 27 | Bodega, Nottingham | https://bit.ly/2J1daMt
September 28 | Soup Kitchen, Manchester | https://bit.ly/2J1daMt
September 29 | The Louisiana, Bristol | https://bit.ly/2J1daMt

 

 

Oscar Jerome played Ghost Notes in Peckham, London in April 2018

He’s a little bit like a young Jamiroquai to me he is, is Oscar Jerome. He’s handsome though scruffy, clever, a little bit street and a little bit political. He’s also into the jazz thing and the funk thing, in a big way. Jamiroquai Mark II he is not though. Whereas Jamiroquai has more of a pop sentimentality, I find Jerome likes to get lost in funk jams, he also likes to change tone mid-song, he completely changes the script and the sound. More than this, unlike JK, he uses his voice more as a percussion instrument, he mourns, hums his way through songs, eating his lyrics rather than singing them.

Last night at the new micro-club Ghost Notes, in Peckham, Jerome and his four band members crammed on to a tiny platform, enough to put them neck and shoulders above everyone else. They plied some beautiful sounds, gravitating around what I can only describe as a resonant calypso guitar. It felt beautiful, like a tropical breeze, you could see the very trendy jazz set at the front swaying in it.

But Jerome doesn’t just write music for Hawaiian funk focused ice cream vans. At times he broke the whole thing down, the music suddenly and deliberately became discordant, instruments competed against each other for pace and volume. At the same time Jerome’s vocals changed mid-song, from sexy and sultry to punchy and passionate, he sung high and then completely changed his range, dipping down a few scales on the opera singer slider, as if he had a multiple-personality disorder.

But all of this, all of this nuance and change of direction, was done whilst maintaining a jazz funk vibe. That vibe was the backcloth, the running track and the object of devotion. And there was something very rich about it, in some ways it was a classic funk sound, in some ways it wasn’t, but it was the richness of it, the quality, so hard to articulate, which kept the audience, albeit a very chatty audience, luxuriating in the set from start to finish.

Jerome loves his jamming, he loves his instrumental solos. He did a few guitar ones, and they were extremely impressive. When he let rip on his guitar on his best track to date, Subdued, at the end, I thought he was going to break the thing. He hit the strings so hard it felt like you were being dowsed with machine gun fire. Similarly, there was a saxophone solo too, with such fury did the sax player play, that at times I thought his head was going to pop off.

He’s got a bit of stage presence too, has Jerome. He wasn’t particularly cocky, although he had a glint in his eye and smile, which made you think he could be. But no, on stage he presented himself like a college kid, stumbling his words, saying ‘yeh’ and ‘but’ alot and making this ‘tse’ sound, almost a tutting sound, possibly to ground himself, which he did by flicking his tongue off the back of his upper teeth. The whole humble demeanour was incredibly endearing and a refreshing compliment to his precocious talent. At the end of the gig, as the band left the stage before the encore, someone gave him a pat on the back and said ‘Brilliant’. Jerome turned around, almost as if he was  surprised to hear it, and said ‘Oh, thanks’.

Last word to the venue itself, because Ghost Notes is one hell of a clubbing proposition. With wafer biscuit dimensions, its located on the fifth floor of an old unused multi-storey car park, and accessed via a side alley, which you walk down against all your better judgment. The club itself faces a railway line, which means that at night as well as watching the band, you could, through the large window behind the band, also watch the night trains travelling away from and towards Peckham Rye station. At one point we were all treated to the rather surreal sight of a Balfour Beatty railway maintenance train pounding past. It was white, quite short and had several cranes on it. It was an extraordinary thing to see and weakly illuminated by the surrounding street lights,  moved across our field of vision in a ghostly manner. It turned a lot of heads and only added to the glorious wonder of the Oscar Jerome experience.

 

 

More on Oscar Jerome, from earlier this year

 

I’m kicking myself for not taking the opportunity to go and see Oscar Jerome early this year at Corsica Studios. Too late for the gig, I was really taken by the EP he released at the beginning of this year. Subdued is the first track on Oscar Jerome’s soon to be released EP Where are your Branches. Its an epic in the style—although not quite of the magnitude—of Fat Freddy’s Drop’s Hope For a Generation. It starts off with a rich mix of soul and acid jazz twangs, just like Jamiroquai. Jerome however, true to the title of the track, adds a mournful tinge to his punched out impassioned soul vocals, like a dog licking his wounds, similar to Dallas Tamaira. It ends with a slow building and yet melancholy instrumental, I get the tiniest hint of Bebel Gilberto’s Autumn Day Song.

 

 

Then just the other night I came across a track called Abusey Street by a London based Afrobeat collective, by the name of Kokoroko. The track Abusey Junction is likely to be the softest and beautiful thing you’re going to hear in 2018. It is at the end of the day only an instrumental, only an Afrobeat instrumental–but it is a monumental instrumental–a monstrumental! It is at the same time soothing and emotional, it is like that feeling you get towards the end of a good cry. Sadness and warmth combined. It is the gentle beats of the percussion that soothe. It is the plucking of the guitar strings that pull on your heart. In this way it is reminiscent of ‘Mediterranean Sundance’. Its long, but it deserves to be long in the same way that Fat Freddy’s Drop ‘Hope for a Generation’, Sebastien Letellier’s ‘La Ritournelle’ and The Hot 8 Brass Band’s ‘Sexual Healing’ deserve to be long. After all if you’re going to have a cry, get it all out eh?

I fell in love with Abusey Junction immediately and after doing a little of internet digging I was both disappointed and delighted to hear that the track was written by Oscar Jerome. Disappointed because it rather takes away the shine from my perception of Kokoroko’s achievement, don’t get me wrong they’re a good band but that track is something special and it makes me wonder what else they’re capable of producing. Oscar Jerome meanwhile is already out there, his name written in the stars of my musical sky. And yet he’s so young and he has many years to come. But then, more research, and it really is worth doing your research, revealed that Oscar Jerome was a member of Kokoroko, and in fact the track was written whilst Jerome, as a member of the collective was out in Gambia, exploring the Gambian music scene. So all is well with the world.

Jerome trained first in classical guitar and then jazz at London’s Trinity Laban. He is said to have been part of a jazz collective in London with Moses Boyd, Nubya Garcia and Ezra Collective. In Clash magazine Amar Kalia writes that Jerome, ‘would attend formative jam sessions such as Peckham’s Steez and Good Evening Arts’. In 2015 Jerome was in several collectives. Kalia explains that music from the collective has been bought together on Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood’s ‘We Out Here’ compilation. It would be interesting to know a bit more about Gilles Peterson’s role in all this. Peterson, frankly, has for the last three decades been the lynchpin of the contemporary jazz scene in the UK. He is a DJ and a record label owner. There seems to be a conflict of interest here but he gets away with it—there aren’t the same rules in the music industry like you get in politics and football.

As far as his musical relationship with Kokoroko goes, Jerome explains to Kalia, “It’s a very equal writing process with Kokoroko, normally each person will bring an idea to the table and then we’ll build it from there. With the music I release under my own name, though, I write every part for every instrument, it’s very much my vision of how I want the music to be and I love being able to express that.”

In any case, not all is lost, Jerome will be playing Ghost Notes in Peckham in April.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7N6ilMvjTU

 

See:

https://i-d.vice.com/en_uk/article/qvwj3m/jazz-but-not-as-you-knew-it

http://www.clashmusic.com/next-wave/next-wave-820-oscar-jerome

http://www.greedyforbestmusic.com/journal/friends/abusey-junction/

https://oscarjerome.bandcamp.com/releases

https://weouthere.bandcamp.com/album/we-out-here

https://ezhmag.com/interview-three-minutes-oscar-jerome-ignoring-recipe-success-soup/

https://www.musicinafrica.net/magazine/10-questions-afrobeat-band-kokoroko

http://totalrefreshment.net/

 

Other related music:

 

 

If you like acid jazz, funk and soul…

Could be the early 80s, could be the mid 90s.

 

Jazz news

Cheltenham Jazz Festival runs from May 2nd – 7th 2018.

See the brochure here.

 

 

 

https://soundcloud.com/david-ward/sets/violet-gold-rose-1/s-ZGnk8

 

If you like jazz, funk and soul give these a listen…

Korokoko’s Abusey Junction is likely to be the softest and beautiful thing you’re going to hear in 2018. It is at the end of the day only an instrumental, only an Afrobeat instrumental – but it is a monumental instrumental – a monstrumental! It is at the same time soothing and emotional, it is like that feeling you get towards the end of a good cry. Sadness and warmth combined. It is the gentle beats of the percussion that soothe. It is the plucking of the guitar strings that pull on your heart ones. In this way it is reminiscent of ‘Mediterranean Sundance’. Its long, but it deserves to be long in the same way that Fat Freddy’s Drop ‘Hope for a Generation’, Sebastien Letellier’s ‘La Ritournelle’ and The Hot 8 Brass Band’s ‘Sexual Healing’ deserve to be long. After all if you’re going to have a cry, get it all out eh?

I’ve just read elsewhere that the track was written by Oscar Jerome, which was a real coincidence because I included at the bottom of this article a review of Oscar Jerome’s ‘Subdued’ which I recently likened to Fat Freddy’s Drop ‘Hope for a Generation’ as a ‘whilst you’re here  you might be interested in…’ addition. In ‘Greedy for Music’ it says

The song is a ballad, written by guitarist Oscar Jerome, on the roof of a compound in Gambia, where the band spent time last year immersing themselves in the soundscapes of the region. http://www.greedyforbestmusic.com/journal/friends/abusey-junction/

The track is included on an album called ‘We Out Here’ recently released by ‘Brownswood Recordings’ designed to promote new jazz talent. https://weouthere.bandcamp.com/album/we-out-here

More music from Kokoroko

 

 

 

 

 

Subdued is the first track on Oscar Jerome’s soon to be released  EP Where are your Branches. Its an epic in the style, although not quite of the magnitude, of Fat Freddy’s Drop’s Hope For a Generation. It starts off like with a rich mix of soul and acid jazz twangs, just like Jamiroquai. Jerome, however, true to the title of the track, adds a mournful tinge to his punched out impassioned soul vocals, like a dog licking his wounds, similar to Dallas Tamaira. It ends with a slow building and yet melancholy instrumental, I get the tiniest hint of Bebel Gilberto’s Autumn Day Song.

He’s playing Ghost Notes in London 18th April.

 

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