New Music Releases: Tansy, The Heliocentrics, Anthony Jefferson

Tansy - Dreaming (single)

Tansy is the brainchild of Will Feinberg and McKenna Alicia. Feinberg, a native of Detroit, and Alicia, a native of Oakland, met in New Orleans in 2017 where they began playing together in the city's music scene. After a period of contributing to each other's own original projects, they felt themselves being pulled together by their collaboration. McKenna and Will spent the next eighteen months together writing and honing their sound. Backed by a powerhouse band of some of the city's rising stars, Tansy recorded their debut album, Full Bloom  this past summer. Influenced by the music of Esperanza Spalding, Robert Glasper Experiment, Moonchild, and Norah Jones; Tansy synthesizes the warmth of a classic RnB sound with the bold  harmonic and melodic statements of today's jazz. The end result is a fresh sound that will appeal to a wide variety of listeners while leading the way forward in contemporary vocal jazz.

The Heliocentrics - Burning Wooden Ship (single)

London-based The Heliocentrics have long stirred a bewitching brew of funk, jazz, psych and library influences. Labelled by Pitchfork as “a live-band culmination of every obsessive hip-hop-era producer's drive to fall deeper into a rabbit hole of the previously unheard”, the band’s far-reaching influence meant a natural knock-on in being cited by hip-hop royalty: namely, featuring on DJ Shadow’s ‘Skullfuckery’, from 2006’s ‘The Outsider’ LP, and being sampled by Nas and Kanye West on the track ‘Everything’, featured on 2018’s ‘Nasir’ album.The Heliocentrics drop the refreshingly off kilter ‘Burning Wooden Ship,’ in anticipation of their 10th studio album, ‘Infinity of Now.’ Jump into this kaleidoscopic soundscape of rolling percussions and bewildering breakdowns, grounded by the tantalising vocals of Barbora Patkova. The Heliocentrics will release their new long player on Madlib's label, Madlib Invazion.

Anthony Jefferson – All I Am

Anthony Jefferson’s newest release is an eclectic project of songs from the Great American Songbook, pop music, R&B, and the movies, all beautifully rendered as romantic jazz tunes by Jefferson’s silky, warm baritone voice and lush orchestral arrangements by multi-instrumentalist Corey Allen. The luxuriant string and horn arrangements amplify Jefferson’s innate warmth and soulfulness. The album features some of the finest  musicians in Dominican Republic, where Jefferson has been living for the past 10 years. Jefferson is already a bona fide star in Dominican Republic. All I Am is a superb showcase for an expatriate American singer who deserves to be much better known in the United States. Although he has been performing for many years, with his pure voice, inventive and personal phrasing, and sensitive approach to lyrics, Anthony Jefferson’s star has just begun to shine.