Ubuntu Music is delighted to announce the signing of the exceedingly versatile drummer, Corrie Dick, for the release of his next project, Sun Swells, on 21st October 2022. Corrie is a UK-based musician specialising in euphoric, sonically conscious groove drumming. He is lauded for his touch, uniquely fresh approach to style and melodicism. He is an essential component of any project lead by Laura Jurd including Mercury Prize Shortlisted Dinosaur. Corrie provides the intricate and fluent stick work in the Elliot Galvin Trio, and brings intense, free colours to Danish powerhouse bassist Jasper Høiby’s exciting Fellow Creatures. Corrie writes deep and spiritual music for Blue-Eyed Hawk and provides the full spectrum of rhythmic elements for guitar wunderkind Rob Luft’s ensemble.

Corrie also leads his own joy-inducing supergroup, releasing his debut album with the ensemble in November 2015, and selling out concerts across the UK ever since. The album displays Corrie’s striking abilities as composer/lyricist by skilfully fusing Celtic folk and contemporary jazz with new takes on African rhythms. Since his graduation as a gold medal student from Trinity Laban’s prestigious jazz course, Corrie has honed his playing and composing from his base in Southeast London’s hub of creativity. The young master of contemporary grooves has studied traditional music in Ghana and Morocco where the rhythm is rich and layered, and also in his homeland, Scotland, where rhythm and melody have melded for centuries.

The idea(s) behind Sun Swells is best explained by Corrie Dick himself:

I wanted to write a jazz album that had rock instrumentation at its core: guitar-bass-drums. Rob Luft (guitar), Tom McCredie (bass) and I have been improvising and writing together for years and years and we’ve forged a sound that is uniquely crunchy yet summery, so I wanted that sound at the centre but decorated with all sorts of elements. I basically wanted to make folk-rock-jazz but treat it how electronic music producer Mura Masa treats his tracks: chucking the whole damn fruit bowl at the thing but somehow keeping space and air in the arrangement and the mix. This is outsider jazz; it’s extremely listenable music that has lots of very current, familiar ingredients but put together in a way you may not be familiar with. Some key elements include surging folkish melodies, Scandinavian free jazz, 90s-kid grooves, a playful shunning of conventional jazz roles and form, stillness, turbulence, beautiful and ugly-pretty sounds, warmth, stunning lyrical imagery, climate change, feminism, and eclectic guests. It’s an album that embraces contrasts and spectra and that can be listened to in so many ways. It finds cohesion in the disparate.

When you listen to the album, everything Corrie Dick explains above becomes apparent. This is an album that would sit more comfortably on BBC Six Music than Radio Three’s Jazz Record Requests – and I do not mean that disparagingly. The compositions are incredibly well constructed and the jazz lines, when they come in to play, are terrific. The vocals are strong both lyrically and in delivery. This is a multi-layered piece of work that will only get better the more time you give to it. This is not a jazz album, it is not a rock or folk album, it an album for those who enjoy intelligently written music and are prepared to listen with open ears and an open mind.

Musicians: Corrie Dick – drums & percussion; Marianna Sanguita – vocals; Dave Malkin – vocals; Alice Zawadzki – vocal; Laura Jurd – trumpet; Joe Wright – sax; Tom Moore – viola; Rob Luft – guitar; Matt Robinson – piano & synth; Joe Web – organ; Tom McCredie – bass.

Tracklist: 1. Warehouse. 2. Fingers Full of Meaning. 3. Sinking. 4. She Speaks. 5. Says Who? 6. Everything Light Touches. 7. Golden Flowers. 8. We Were Green. 9. Light Blue Igloo. 10. The River.

All compositions by Corrie Dick

Lyrics by Marianna Sanguita and Dave Malkin