THE APPLES | LIVE PREVIEW
The Garage, Swansea
Sat 4 May
Tickets: £10 from www.derricksmusic.co.uk
words: Sam Edwards
Israeli band The Apples started life in 2002, when students from Jerusalem’s Rubin Academy joined with jazz musicians from Haifa and Tel Aviv. They wanted to create a new kind of funk, tight brass textured with scratching and sampling. Now they are nine: a drummer, a bassist, four brass, two DJs and a sampler guy.
Their fifth album Fly On It was released last summer through Audio Montage, a boutique label set up by group members Ofer Tal and Uri Wertheim. Leaving ample room for improv across the eight tracks, they shift time signature, cut, twist and paste a host of eclectic samples and, on opening tune Preserve, impersonate elephants with trombones. And you can still pick out the Middle Eastern and Jewish influences of their previous LPs.
It’s a whole lotta funk, the sort of heist music you’d expect to accompany George Clooney and his sunglasses in Ocean’s Eleven. Hackney designer Lewis Heriz’s artwork completes the package with a charging black screen-printed rhino – a nod to track five, the spiky Rhinocerize.
Bristol-based Balkan blues/indie rock six-piece Yes Sir Boss will be first on stage, fresh from supporting Joss Stone on her 2012 Soul Sessions 2 tour. If you’re a fan of, as The Skinny describes it, “solid, good-times music”, you’d do well to head over to Uplands Crescent and get a front-row earful of horn and decks.
