Returning to the scene of the crime after three years is the explosive brass-hip hop ensemble that has mixed the New Orleans brass band tradition with hip-hop, punk-style. Their new album Pax Volumi was released in June this year on Tru Thoughts, home to artists like Alice Russel, Ty and others. Missed them the first
Returning to the scene of the crime after three years is the explosive brass-hip hop ensemble that has mixed the New Orleans brass band tradition with hip-hop, punk-style. Their new album Pax Volumi was released in June this year on Tru Thoughts, home to artists like Alice Russel, Ty and others. Missed them the first time? Don’t make the same mistake again!
Youngblood Brass Band flouts convention in an ecstatic, raucous, incendiary fashion, taking the form of a New Orleans brass band and morphing it into a punked-out hip-hop behemoth of groove and purpose. The ten-member
ensemble, born in Madison, Wisconsin, now hails from all over the US (Madison, Brooklyn, Nashville, Minneapolis, Chicago) and has been unleashing their crash course in genre-bending on stages worldwide since 2000. What other band can claim the honor of having their music spun by DJs like Questlove (of The Roots), working with hip-hop luminaries like Talib Kweli, having their original compositions performed by student marching bands and jazz ensembles around the globe, and still not be out of place at a punk festival? What other band brings together the ostensibly disparate worlds of the trombone geek and the backpack b-boy?
Youngblood’s new album (the first in 5 years), Pax Volumi, sees the band partnering with Tru Thoughts, the Brighton UK label that includes a roster ranging from deep soul (Alice Russell) to hip-hop (Ty) to straight-up New Orleans brass band (Hot 8), and the pairing couldn’t be more apt. This album sees the band finally achieving not just its musical but its production aims, capturing the live intensity of the stage as well as crafting beats and rhymes that bang right out of the speakers. It’s almost as if they spent the last 15 years getting ready to become THIS Youngblood Brass Band; as though everything in the past had led up to the creation of an album that defies classification, an album that couldn’t be made by any other group. On stages in the states and overseas, the verdict has been issued: the band has never sounded so good. Whichever it is…the roof-tearing shows, the educational aims, the small town roots, the no-smirks honesty, the fist-pumping anthems for cool kids and geeks alike, Youngblood Brass Band has become an institution, one that demands to be seen and heard. Rigorous dancing is also acceptable.
A La Fu is a recording artist, DJ, producer and record label owner born in Aberdeen, Scotland. He has recorded, remixed and deejayed for Roots Manuva, Coldcut, Mike Ladd, Saul Williams and for labels such as Ninja Tune, Def Jux and Big Dada among others. He had appeared several times on MTV and other television networks, notably alongside DJ Kool Herc illustrating the art of DJ’ing. He has also recorded mixes for BBC Radio 1, Solid Steel and more recently for Mary Anne Hobbs’ and XFM.
A La Fu has toured and performed at venues and festivals worldwide such as Glastonbury, Trans Musicales, Pukkelpop, Fabric, Brixton Academy, Sub Club, and New York’s Knitting Factory to name a few. He was also nominated for and won a new music award from the BBC, returned to London to recorded a number of meticulously crafted projects and is set to release these alongside some choice collaborations on his own VaVa Records imprint including the first of two solo EP’s entitled ‘I’ll Drive You Pray’ that follow on from the 7” box set ‘Themes’.
A La Fu could also be the reason that god invented the ghetto blaster.
