If you can listen to music while sweating, then that applies to the tracks that Nubiyan Twist has been producing for 15 years with different focuses in a larger African-American sound space. Of course, the sweat isn’t dripping here in the sense of traditional rock’n’roll work; what the collective from Leeds is sweating out is a passion for groove, brass and a great passion for mixing genres.
The nine-piece band around guitarist Tom Excell plays a ragga-funk with a similar emphasis to a prog-jazz ballad, in which pianist Patrice Rushen can make her contribution to the ensemble flow (“Threads”).
Nubiyan Twist has always been good at guest musicians, including the British keyboardist Joe Armon-Jones, the Malian singer Fatoumata Diawara and the Zawose Queens from Tanzania. In the collaboration with Nubiyan Twist, the sound contributions from outside fall on musical warming cushions that are filled with soul, jazz and Afrobeat, but of course this does not happen without digital helpers. They sweat right away.
