Line up

• Andrew John  (Bass )
• Anthony Joseph  (Vocals)
• Christian Arcucci  (Guitar)
• Colin Webster  (Saxophone)
• Marijus Aleksa  (Drums)
• Will Fry  (Percussions )

• country:
  United Kingdom
• style(s):
  • World
• label:
  Heavenly Sweetness
• type:
  Band
• instrumentation:
  instrumental, vocal
• artist submitted by:
  Planete Aurora

"The griot is the sound of universal culture." The opening words of his new album are key to understanding the universe of Anthony Joseph, a poet and musician born in Port of Spain on 12th November 1966 the day of the Hindu festival of Diwali, which celebrates the passage from darkness into light. This anecdote sheds some light on the life of this preacher-soothsayer inhabited by a vision of the world as a cosmic whole where music creates an organic communion. He grew up on an island full of troubadours, oral legends and carnival convulsions before setting out across the Atlantic and arriving in Great Britain in 1989. He soon became a city man, but never forgot his country roots. A record collector and lover of Great Black Music, from blues roots to deep house, the Londoner soon made his mark on the 'black rock' scene, then in the spoken word movement, all the while refining his writing, as can be seen from his first poetry collection, 'Desafinado', in 1994, followed four years later by 'Teragaton'. In 2004 he was selected as one of 50 black and asian authors who have made major contributions to contemporary British literature to pose for the photo 'A Great Day in London', which mirrored the famous jazz picture taken in Harlem in 1958. That was the moment things really started to take off for this wizard of sound and sense as he girded his passions into a single project.

This was the Spasm Band, a band of variable geography and geometry. "For me poetry is music. It has to be chanted, sung and declaimed." After publishing a novel entitled 'The African Origins of UFOs', Anthony Joseph recorded 'Leggo de Lion' in 2006, an album that made his international reputation. On it he played "the soundtrack of a place where all the black diasporas come together". Mixing congo punk and voodoo funk, esoteric jazz, calypso, soca and rock, his syncretic approach set stages ablaze. Three years and many a fiery gig later, he brought out a second album called 'Bird Head Son', an allusion to his nickname as a kid. Another couple of freethinkers were added to the mix, such as trombone player Joe Bowie and the guitarist Keziah Jones, without losing any of the nuclear energy that fuelled the originality of the Spasm Band, a name derived from the spasms triggered by Spiritual Baptist chants . The same could be said of the group's irradiating performances.

After one such long European tour, Anthony Joseph and the Spasm Band 'locked' themselves away for a few weeks during the bleak London winter of 2011 to cook up some of the blazing grooves that light up 'Rubber Orchestras', his new album. Not autobiographical like the previous one, but a far more experimental text in three parts. It tackles the Caribbean's colonial past, its Amerindian legacy and the African past and how it all ties together. The language is more surrealistic and the text is more political." But fans of the groove need not fear, for there'll be plenty of talk of music, jazz, calypso and much more but this is no backward-looking revival or sterile fusion; this grand mix gives a new and modern perspective to all these musical styles.

Links

• myspace