The Greg Foat Group Landscapes (RSD 16)

10" - £15.99

Record Store Day 2016 release. Greg Foat's music evokes a spirit of time and place. The 1960s (and early 70s) was a time when British modern jazz was breaking free from its trad jazz and mainstream fetters and discovering a whole new world of home-grown original music. London was positively buzzing with the leading protagonists of the day; Mike Westbrook, Ian Carr, Michael Garrick, Gordon Beck to name but a few. Foat rightly reveresthis music and it's echoed in his own compositions. Not a copyist by any means, his works are vibrant and alive with the zeitgeist of the 21st Century. But there's undoubtedly recognition of a musical heritage that cannot and should not be forgotten. It changed the face of jazz forever and has since heralded the way for even more radical departures.Greg Foat's music is redolent of a special era when jazz was approachable and possessed a rhythmic imperative. There was also another kind of irresistible jazz, that bordered on the pop and rock music of the time propagated by thelikes of Roy (Get Carter) Budd, Harry (The Sweeney) South, Brian Auger's Trinity and Soft Machine. But the origins of this soulful, funky and electrifying jazz also hark back to those 1960s innovators in soul jazz; Herbie Hancock, Horace Silver, Lou Donaldson and others.