Good Days

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Cat No: FP042

Release Date: 27 January 2023

Label: EFPI Records

Packaging Type: Digipak

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 5060608700158

Genres: Jazz Contemporary

Description
Beats & Pieces Big Band give lie to the notion big band music is an obsolete format, a relic from decades of yore, founded in 2008 and directed by conductor, composer, arranger, and producer Ben Cottrell this ensemble swings, twenty-first century style.

With Good Days, their long-awaited third studio album, they show once again that big band music is a living, expressive thing, more than capable of continuing development in our own times. Put simply, there are things a big band say and do that cannot otherwise be said and done, and Beats & Pieces say and do plenty here, with exhilarating immaculacy and imagination.

Good Days ranges emotionally from the funereal to the exuberant, the ecclesiastical to the profane, the pacific to the chaotic. Fleetingly, you think of Charles Mingus, Keith Tippett, Gil Evans, Charlie Haden's Liberation Orchestra... But there's also a post-rock undertow to many of these tracks which shows a consciousness of such contemporaries as Björk, Radiohead, or Everything Everything.

Press:

"A triumph that harks back while forging forwards." **** MOJO

"Continues to prove that there is everything to like about Beats & Pieces. Cottrell's crackerjack, contemporary take on the British big band is, like [Neil] Ardley's, at different times thrilling, contemplative and deeply comforting." - **** UK Vibe

"A very enjoyable and fun listen." - London Jazz News

"A growing compositional maturity, but still exhibiting some of that old punk jazz fire. The spirit of B&PBB is very much alive and kicking in 2023. It's good to have them back." - **** The Jazz Mann

"Manchester's Beats and Pieces are probably the most adventurous large ensemble in the UK today given their refusal to adhere to the conventional big band format...Without any suggestion of plagiarism the shadows of Mingus, Gil Evans, Charlie Haden and Mike Westbrook hover over much of the music but with an element of post-rock dispelling any nostalgic overtones. It's quite wonderful." - Bebop Spoken Here

"Visceral, intense and yet also calculated, skilfully played, it takes some beating to package such a big sound so it can at one moment burst forth in a rush, and in another, sound somehow intimate and personal." - Monolith Cocktail

"The most striking thing about Good Days is its variety...The technicality of the playing is something else - and I really mean something else, on another plane." - Aural Aggravation

"Ben Cottrell's collective bring that sense of wonder and momentum smoothly into the twenty-first century and Good Days, their third studio long player, takes any preconceptions the listener may have and alchemically mixes them with modern influences: found sounds, improv and subtle textures, to produce an up-to-date salve for any jaded souls." - Freq
Tracklisting