love supreme 2017

Well it was that time of year again and so off we trekked to Glynde and a weekend of chillin and groovin to this fine menu of musical delights....

we also inducted a new member into the funbus hall of fame - meet Hepcat Dave - Brother of the ever cool  Tony 'the man' Weise.

honorary funbus Hepcat

As quoted;

Frank Zappa once suggested that jazz wasn’t dead, it just smelt funny. Judging by the ongoing success of the UK’s first outdoor jazz festival, that funny smell is now one of freshly mown grass, chemical toilets and hand sanitiser. After five years, Love Supreme – this gentrified camping weekend in the grounds of Glynde Place, near Brighton – is attracting its biggest and youngest crowd ever.

The festival has welcomed plenty of big R&B names over the years, from Chic to Grace Jones to De La Soul, but this year it hosted its first true jazz legend: Herbie Hancock. He eschewed the outdoor main stage for the more intimate Big Top, his quintet mixing up exploratory electric jazz with some expansive versions of bangers such as Come Running to Me, Cantaloupe Island and Actual Proof, with Hancock and his guitarist using Jacob Collier-style software to harmonise their voices. When he comes out for an encore carrying a keytar, to perform Chameleon, a crowd who were barely born when the record was released go nuts.

Jazz is often an introverted art form, and it’s sometimes difficult for its musicians to project their music in a festival environment. One extrovert who can is tenor saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings, who fronts three lineups on the Saturday. His Ancestors band engagingly mix danceable South African township jive with atmospheric sax drones and mantra-like vocals. Later on he gets an Arena stage moving with Sons of Kemet, his tuba-driven outfit (with two drummers, Showaddywaddy-style) who sound like a New Orleans-style marching band who’ve wandered through Lagos, Accra and Trenchtown. Later on, Hutchings re-emerges, fronting The Comet Is Coming, his Mercury-shortlisted collaboration with rave duo Soccer96. Mixing wailing improvisations with squelchy acid house basslines, thumping rave beats and juddering electronica, it’s a thrilling example of what “acid jazz” might have sounded like.

Throughout this festival, it was the thumpier, more exuberant acts who managed to connect, grabbing passing punters almost as hostages. The Hot 8 Brass Band – who play jerky, New Orleans-style arrangements of everything from Snoop Dogg to Joy Division – could probably get the crowd throbbing at any festival, anywhere. The Black Focus project – a south-east London quartet led by drummer Yussef Dayes and synth player Kamaal Williams – mix thumping junglist beats with fast and furious musicianship; while Nubiyan Twist add a dubby, Ethiopian jazz spin to funk and reggae. Even the more subtle acoustic outfits are pushed into wilder territory: the semi-classical drums/sax/piano trio Mammal Hands mutate into a high-volume rave act; German pianist Michael Wollny and his remarkable trio mix rumbling free improv with pyrotechnic moments.

The alumni of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly album are well represented on the Sunday bill. Kamasi Washington and Robert Glasper both play to huge crowds, the former anthemic and orchestral, the latter riff-based and intense. Shortly before appearing with Kamasi’s band, bassist Miles Mosley leads his own flashy four piece, the West Coast Get Down, in a smaller tent. Mosley sings and plays double bass – often through octave and distortion pedals – and takes the jazz funk of his recent album Uprising into thrash metal territory.

Some struggled in this environment. Corinne Bailey Rae’s excellent space-age soul ballads are a little too low-key for a big outdoor crowd, while lauded Canadian five-piece BadBadNotGood, shorn of the deliciously restrained studio production and all those guest singers and rappers, just sound like a rather classy smooth jazz band. Others worked surprisingly well. Mica Paris gets a huge crowd for her Ella Fitzgerald tribute, her chesty contralto and R&B band adding a heavy take on such standards as Summertime, A Night in Tunisia and Can’t Buy Me Love. Young American singer and educationist Charenée Wade impresses with a cracking trio and a supple voice that recalls Dianne Reeves. Laura Mvula, carrying an enormous white keytar throughout, succeeds with a widescreen mix of tribal beats and orchestral arrangements, pitched somewhere between Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush.

The veteran soul stars on the main stage fulfil their function. The Jacksons play a largely identical set to the one they brought to Glastonbury the previous week, with a fine backing band recreating some of the finest moments in disco history, even if the four sixtysomething brothers now have voices that don’t quite sparkle in the upper register. Amazingly George Benson, at 74, is in remarkably good voice (hear him negotiate three successive upward key changes towards the end of Lady Love Me) and his guitar chops are still in fine shape (check out his florid take on At the Mambo Inn). Benson is the second bona fide jazz legend on this weekend’s bill, and it’s his mix of populist R&B and heavyweight hard bop that seems to embody the spirit of this flourishing festival