‘Säd Afrika’ is the sequel to Loose Tubes’ acclaimed ‘Dancing on Frith Street’, Jazzwise’s reissue / archive album of the year 2010, and delivers more tonal delights from the bands’ valedictory residency in September 1990 at Soho’s feted jazz institution, Ronnie Scott’s. The album features seven tracks, including Eddie Parker’s previously unrecorded ‘Exeter, King of Cities’. One of the most intriguing ensembles to arrive on the British jazz scene in the 80s, Loose Tubes created music whose cultural centre freewheeled with the imagination of its cohorts. The unremitting carnival ambiance that pervades this recording could thus have as much European gypsy as Afro-Brazilian samba resonances. They were a formidable live group whose affiliates included a London-based Canadian (bass trombonist and M.C Ashley Slater), a son of Lesotho (percussionist Thebi Lipere), a Welsh Buddhist (clarinettist Dai Pritchard), plus a gaggle of Englishmen with ideas as colourful as their mix and un-match outfits, who all went on to become the Who’s Who of the British Jazz scene, including Django Bates, Iain Ballamy and John Parricelli.
Personnel: Eddie Parker (flutes), Dai Pritchard (clarinets), Steve Buckley, Iain Ballamy, Mark Lockheart, Julian Nicholas, Ken Stubbs (saxophones), Lance Kelly, Chris Batchelor, Ted Emmett, Paul Edmonds, Noel Langley (trumpets), John Harborne, Steve Day, Paul Taylor, Richard Pywell, Ashley Slater (trombones), Dave Powell (tuba), Django Bates (keyboards), John Parricelli (guitar), Steve Watts (bass), Martin France (drums), Thebi Lipere (percussion)
