WorldService Project and Roller Trio

WorldService Project and Roller Trio are excited to announce their joint 6-date UK tour, which begins at the London Jazz Festival on November 16th. These two heavyweight stalwarts of the UK jazz/improv/experimental scene will be performing new material, which will include the launch of WorldService Project's fifth album Hiding in Plain Sight.

UK Punk-jazz outfit WorldService Project, led by keyboardist-vocalist Dave Morecroft, will be performing music off their fifth album Hiding in Plain Sight for the first time since its release last year on Rare Noise Records. The album combusts with the band’s trademark blend of free-jazz pandemonium, pulse-quickening grooves, daggers-drawn sardonicism and audacious punk
abandon. The album perfectly channels the meltdown of modern civilization into a cathartic dance party on the far edges of the lunatic fringe, with an open-armed embrace of all comers save the power-hungry few that led us into this mess in the first place.

For this latest incarnation of the band, Morecroft assembled a streamlined group that adeptly navigates the composer’s perilous straits between taut avant-funk discipline and feral improvisatory blowouts. This includes bassist and vocalist Arthur O’Hara, saxophonist Ben Powling and drummer/percussionist Luke Reddin-Williams. Together they summon a sound that walks the tightrope between precision avant-funk and free-form exploration, bridging eras between UK punkjazz breakouts of the 00s (Acoustic Ladyland, the F-IRE Collective) and the modern psych-jazz grooves of The Comet Is Coming and Sons of Kemet.

Leeds based, Mercury Prize-nominated, Roller Trio return to showcase their exploration of electronic sounds and long-form soundscapes intertwined with heavy and raw groove. The group stunned audiences and won great critical praise for their mix of high-octane technique and deceptively catchy tunes.

Chosen for a BBC Introducing showcase at Band on the Wall in 2011 by tastemakers Gilles Peterson, Mike Chadwick and Kevin LeGendre, they subsequently won the Peter Whittingham Jazz Award and their eponymous debut album was nominated for the 2012 Mercury Prize. That same year they were also nominated for the MOBO Best Jazz Act and Jazz FM Best Newcomer awards. Their 2018 album on Edition Records saw the group move up a gear and confirmed them as one of the hippest and most forward-thinking small ensembles in European jazz. The line-up includes Chris Sharkey, guitar, James Mainwaring, saxophone & electronics and Luke Reddin-Williams, drums.