Album Release Simon Deeley's Blue Haze

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The 24 July see's the release, on Spotify, of the latest album by Wales (UK) based group Simon Deeley's Blue Haze.

Afan's Dance (rec. autumn 2019)

The album - nine tracks of original compositions - shows the full stylistic range of leader Simon Deeley's writing at this time: from powerful, driving Jazz-Fusion numbers to groove-driven, blues-infused tracks and on through atmospheric film music style compositions to reflective, evocative ballads.

Blue Haze came into being in January 2017. For the first two years on the road as a quartet (with sax front line) the group subsequently changed to its present trio line up at the beginning of 2019. In the ensuing months the band's main focus was on working on new compositions by Simon, which, then led them to recording the album - Afan's Dance - in the autumn of last year. Since then the band have been on the road playing and promoting the music from the album, that is, up until March, when the present situation halted live performance.

Hailing from the Midlands region, Simon was a regular player on the Birmingham & area jazz scene right from the late 1980's up until his move to the Welsh Borders in 2014. Since his move to Wales his main focus has been on composition, which, has led to the production of three albums of his music - Crossing Borders (2016), From the Blue Hills (2017) and Afan's Dance (2019). Influenced not only by the greats, such as - Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, Bill Evans, McCoy Tyner, Stevie Wonder and classical masters Ravel and Copland, but also by the beauty and atmosphere of his surroundings, Simon's compositions are very much varied and wide ranging in style, elements that can clearly be heard in Afan's Dance. The two artists adding their great skills to this close knit trio, bassist Ian Cooper and drummer Charlie Russell (both Welsh Borders men) create, with the leader, a powerful mix made up of Simon's strong, incisive and harmonically vivid piano lines, Ian's intricate, melodic, but always grooving bass foundations and Charlie's driving, always musically sensitive pattern work.

'By turns groove-driven, evocative, atmospheric'

'An album of clear, strong, distinctive art'

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