talent and testosterone

When they perform it’s like musical voodoo – a veritable bitch’s brew of jazz set to a hip-hop vibe and an Afrobeat baseline that puts you under their spell from the first trill of the horn to the last.

From the moment the band takes to the stage you’re theirs – their sound, their energy and their movement entrance you, willingly or otherwise. This is downright dirty jazz. The aggressive sway of the hips, the masculinity of the instruments, the cheeky gesticulation. It’s tribal, it’s urban, it’s gritty, it’s hypnotic.

Hypnotic Brass Ensemble are a charismatic blend of talent and testosterone, a convergence criteria rarely met or demanded of artists in today’s music industry. Signed to Damon Albarn’s Honest Jon’s label, HBE are a credible combination of skills and swagger that transports jazz from the smoke-filled members bars of the underground to the well-trodden sidewalks of the urban street. This is New Jack Jazz. For the uninitiated it’s a revelation. For those in the know, it’s what you paid your hard earned money for.

Sylvia Arthur caught up with the band – all brothers and the sons of jazz royalty - before their London show at Dingwalls in Camden Town.

Fundamentally, your music is jazz but it incorporates lots of different styles. Why did you decide to do that?

We’re not jazz artists, we’re Hypnotic. Hypnotic is a gumbo pot where you have a mixture of meats stirred in to one and when you eat it, it’s good. You love every single one the same way. Being the party type of show guys that we are, we just started our own form of music mixing Afro, Latin, pop, funk and hip-hop. These different styles weren’t planned. They just came out of our music and out of our soul. Traditional jazz couldn’t last with the type of crowd that we deal with. They want to have a real fun, up-tempo time. Our audience are ravers, rock and rollers. They respond to us in certain ways because we create our own music and there’s no style of music we can’t play. By being original, we put our hearts and souls in to it and people can feel that through our music.

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