Diesler Keepie Uppies
When it’s done right, club jazz can be super far-out, man-luckily Diesler knows the score. […]
When it’s done right, club jazz can be super far-out, man-luckily Diesler knows the score. On his second album for UK label Tru Thoughts, producer Jonathan Radford gets loose with everything from frenetic Brazilian beats and catchy horn hooks (“900 Degrees”) to moody, modal jazz spiced with deliciously lilting vocals from Suzanne Hughes (“Cannibal Lunch”). Perhaps most remarkably, Radford pulls off the trick of getting it all to hang together, with songs like the lovely mid-tempo soul of “Charmed” and fat-bottomed bruk beat numbers like “Stylus Rise” finding common ground in deft chord progressions and rock-solid rhythms. Throwing in a few particularly DJ-friendly tracks that would work well with Scandinavian hip-hop from Raw Fusion or dubby downtempo from Bastard Jazz, Diesler delivers a tight 50 minutes that could fill dancefloors or soundtrack an evening-no reason why both the clubbers and the couch potatoes can’t relish his fresh take on dance jazz.