Blue Honey @ Gwdihw, Cardiff
Sat 5 Nov
Yussef Kamal have been touted by the press as part of the young, energized movement in jazz, led in the US by pianist Robert Glasper and saxophonist Kamasi Washington – not to mention rapper Kendrick Lamar, on whose latest album both players featured – and in the UK by Shabaka Hutchins with his bands Sons Of Kemet and the Mercury Prize-nominated The Comet Is Coming. If the US vanguard takes its cues from hip-hop, these new UK luminaries are more dance-focused; keyboardist Henry Wu is also a sterling new force in lively, jazz-heavy broken-beat house when doing his own thing. Together with his band, they soak up the frequencies of London along with the cosmic echoes of jazz-funk from Donald Byrd to Roy Ayers.
This is not a DJ set – this is a late-night live set from the three-piece band, with superb DJ support acts in Cardiff’s finest, Darkhouse Family, along with Modula FM’s Alfie Swan and big digger DJ Veto. And the hype is real – as we go to print, Yussef Kamal’s debut album Black Focus is about to drop on Brownswood, the label run by BBC Radio hero Gilles Peterson, and it’s already sold out on vinyl. This night deserves to go the same way, so move quickly – it might be your last chance to catch them jamming in a bar.
Admission: £8/£6 adv. Info: 029 2039 7933
words GWYN THOMAS DE CHROUSTCHOFF