As the sun broke through the clouds over Sayer Towers and the butler butled, with a fresh gin and tonic, across to the patio where I was listening to Galapagos by Zoöphyte I thought to myself, ‘This is music for an Indian Summer.’ Back in the olden days when the lovely Mrs Sayer and I were courting acts such as Everything But the Girl, Sade, Working Week and Black were ploughing a mellow jazz groove, inspired by Steely Dan and Gil Scott-Heron amongst others and Stan and Astrid had a hit again with a re-release of their top tune about the lassie at the seaside.
Forty years on Zoöphyte are ploughing those same fertile fields. If you want music that doesn’t assault you, doesn’t drag you kicking and screaming onto the dance floor or require a depth of analysis that could be better spent curing cancer, this is for you. It’s elegant, sophisticated, lushly arranged and, frankly, quite joyous. It would find a happy home on daytime Jazz FM, which is no bad thing.
The band advertise themselves as jazz-pop and that’s
probably pretty accurate. For all the references I’ve cited above it doesn’t
feel dated. Peter Jones and Trevor Lever - the co-writers/producers - have
assembled and arranged a fine band and some who listen may follow up on the
other work by some of the cast, notably Graeme Flowers, Rob Luft and Vasilis
Xenopoulos and find something further away from the mainstream. There is space
for the soloists to shine across the album (and I’m especially giving points
for Luft on opener Edwin’s Mood, Stanley’s
electric piano on Working Hours, Flowers
on Wait Until Dark, How You Stayed Alive and Not What and Xenopoulos on tenor on Amphibious and flute on Let’s Get Out of the City (a lovely song
about escaping modern life for the day, which will strike a chord with many
listeners) but the standard of
ensemble playing and arranging across the album is consistently high.
So there you have it, unashamedly jazz-pop but a lovely way
to pass 45 minutes. Now where’s the butler and the Indian Summer?
There’s more about the band and its influences on the website HERE, along with a bigger scarier image of the album cover, (Robbie Williams with too many tattoos, but on a bad day). Zoöphyte is released on Sept. 1 and is available from Bandcamp and the band’s website. Dave Sayer
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