The album is due 30 September via GroundUP Music

UK live dates include Glastonbury Festival and October headline tour (Glasgow, Bristol, Manchester & Wembley).

Maybe you didn’t notice, but this is Snarky Puppy’s world, and the rest of us only live in it.

The New York Times

Snarky Puppy have been religiously unclassifiable; on their nearly dozen live or studio records, they’ve incorporated jazz, funk, and elements of world music and fusion. The Grammys they’ve collected—Best R&B Performance in 2013, Best Contemporary Instrumental Album in 2015 and 2016, the latter for Culcha Vulcha—are themselves an indication of how wide-ranging their sound is.

Rolling Stone

audacious, irrepressible creative energy.

The Guardian

Four-time Grammy-winning, genre-defying musical collective Snarky Puppy is set to release their new album Empire CentralonSeptember 30 via the band’s own GroundUP Music imprint. In celebration of the forthcoming record, the band debuts the single ‘Trinity’ alongside a performance video (see at end of this post) recorded at the Deep Ellum Art Company.

Snarky Puppy will also arrive on UK shores this month to play a set at the prestigious Glastonbury Festival, after which they will embark on an extensive European tour, before returning in October to play four concerts including their biggest UK date ever at OVO Wembley Arena (Full tour dates below).

Recorded over the course of eight nights in front of a live-in-studio audience at Dallas’ Deep Ellum Art Company, Empire Central consists of 16 all-new tracks heavily influenced by and paying homage to the city that gave birth to the group after they formed while studying in the fabled jazz program at the University of North Texas. The record also features the last recorded performance of ’80s funk pioneer and Snarky Puppy’s musical Godfather Bernard Wright, who passed away tragically at age 58 shortly after the Empire Central recording sessions.

With a lineup consisting of three guitarists, four keyboardists, two brass, two reeds, a violinist, multiple percussionists and drummers and bandleader Michael League on bass, Empire Central expands upon the collective’s wide array of influences including blues, hard rock, classic soul, modern gospel, funk, new tech, fusion and jazz. In reviewing the first of the band’s eight Deep Ellum performances from which the record was culled, the Dallas Morning News raves that “in classic Snarky Puppy fashion, the new tunes zigzagged with laser precision between jazz, funk and wigged-out prog-rock.”

“Snarky Puppy has always been a band that prioritizes the sound of the music,” notes League. “On this record there was some collaboration in the writing process but when a song goes to the band and the players start making suggestions or changing things our collective feeling really comes through. The songs ended up being a lot more direct and funkier than those on our previous records. I think it reflects the many moods of the city’s scene.”

Additionally, Snarky Puppy has partnered with Osiris Media to create a new podcast documenting the writing, recording and creative process of Empire Central, which will be premiered this summer.

A musical collective featuring as many as 25 members in regular rotation, Snarky Puppy was formed by bassist and primary composer Michael League in 2004, starting inconspicuously enough as a group of college friends at the University of North Texas’ Jazz Studies program. The group has won four Grammy Awards (Best R&B Performance in 2014 and Best Contemporary Instrumental Album in 2016, 2017 and 2021) and its members each maintain busy schedules as sidemen (with such artists as Erykah Badu, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar and D’Angelo), producers (for Kirk Franklin, David Crosby and Salif Keïta) and solo artists (many of whom are on the band’s independent label, GroundUP Music).

At its core, the band represents the convergence of both black and white American music culture with various accents from around the world. Japan, Argentina, Canada and the United Kingdom all have representation in the group’s membership. But more than the cultural diversity of the individual players, the defining characteristic of Snarky Puppy’s music is the joy of performing together in the perpetual push to grow creatively.

Snarky Puppy 2022 UK live dates

Jun 26, 2022 – Glastonbury Festival, UK

Oct 4, 2022 – O2 Academy, Glasgow, UK

Oct 5, 2022 – O2 Academy, Bristol, UK

Oct 6, 2022 – O2 Apollo, Manchester, UK

Oct 7, 2022 – OVO Arena Wembley, London, UK