News
Multi-instrumentalist & jazz trained pianist Maria Chiara Agirò (pronounced ma-REE-ah key-AH-rah r-gee-ROW) has weaved her way throughout UK and Italy’s jazz, classical & electronic worlds for over a decade. She emerges with her first full venture into electronic production with a new studio album due later this spring.
Maria has been quietly weaving her way around the UK jazz, classical and electronic worlds since she moved to London from Rome 11 years ago. A pianist from the age of nine and a key player in the capital’s multi-national jazz scene, she’s lent her skills to indie band These New Puritans, lush jazz troupe Kinkajous and, more recently, collaborations with Jamie Leeming – their 2020 album Flow was nominated for one of the albums of the year in the Jazz Revelations Awards and was the Guardian’s jazz album of the month – and beat-driven duo Moonfish.
Maria recorded and self-produced “Clouds” between her bedroom and studio with the precious help of her longtime collaborators and electronic producers, In a Sleeping Mood and mixing engineer Alex Killpartrick. And, crucially, she is singing for the first time, too – her airy, otherworldly vocals on “Clouds” resemble Emiliana Torrini or a singer in a smoky, late-night club, alone under the spotlight on the stage.
Maria explains that “Clouds” is “a pure observation of the world I pictured where the clouds, sky and dreamy movement of the synths and vocal samples meet with the earth/roots of the electronic beat/drums and where all the elements evolve and come back, like in a circular movement. In order to create this effect and this mood, I needed to mix the acoustic drums with the electronic beats, having the trumpet improvising over the odd time signature and creating a circled sound effect on the chords and harmony of the prophet.”
Producer and multi-instrumentalist Ben Marc, a key figure at the leading edge of the UK jazz scene, has just shared a follow up to his September’s Breathe Suite EP (roundly praised by NPR, The Wire, The Guardian, and more) and subsequent single “Way We Are” with another bespoke song that continues to hint at more work to come in 2022. Out today, “Give Me Time” features a stuttering drum beat, off-kilter clapping and lilting string arrangements that provide the perfect backdrop for its urgent and sometimes haunting vocals sung by Judi Jackson - - “Everyone needs more time. Time to heal!”
Marc, the alias of Neil Charles, has quite the musical pedigree. While studying classical double bass at the prestigious Trinity College of Music in London, Marc had a chance meeting with Gary Crosby, linchpin of Tomorrow’s Warriors (the crucial London jazz educators that connect the UK new wave luminaries, from Nubya Garcia to Moses Boyd) after which the possibility of jazz shone like a beacon. This began a game-changing journey that led him to play with the jazz group Empirical and then to form the free-jazz trio Zed-U, alongside Shabaka Hutchings (Sons of Kemet, The Comet is Coming) and drummer Tom Skinner, whose collaborations ignited a new passion in Marc for electronic music, soaking in the sounds of garage, broken beat, and drum’n’bass. Marc’s new solo music has unified these influences into a sublime whole.