MIDDLEWOOD SESSIONS

Middlewood Sessions are quite possibly the best band from Sheffield that you’ve never heard of. Despite strong early successes with well-supported singles on Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings and Wah Wah 45s, they haven’t released anything since early 2008. Their last performance in Sheffield was at the tail end of that year and they haven’t played anywhere since early 2009. Since then, the band has been sequestered away in the studio, any requests for information met with a polite “we’re working on it”. For those that have stayed the course, this is one of the longest awaited debuts in recent memory. It may have taken them five years, but this record - epic, intense, deep, groovy and soulful - is very good indeed. The project began in 2006 with the collaboration of jazz pianist Mark Slater and bassist Alex Beauchamp. They envisaged a cinematic approach to jazz with heavyweight horns and an read more...