Comrade vinyl

Six-piece outfit Soil and Pimp Sessions are one of Japan's better-known contemporary jazz crews, thanks in no small part to regular European releases on Gilles Peterson's Brownswood Recordings imprint. This tasty two-tracker is one of three simultaneously released seven-inch singles that mark the band's first new material of 2018. A-side "Comrade" is a sun-bright, jazz-funk fuelled soul-jazz number, with a local guest vocalist providing the top-end polish atop the band's attractive mixture of head-nodding, hip-hop style beats, summery trumpet solos, spacey synthesizer motifs and twinkling piano lines. The band's Herbie Hancock style jazz-funk influences are further explored on brilliant B-side "Explorer", an up-tempo, floor-friendly affair where band members trade solos over bustling drums and spacey synthesizer chords.