Ebi Soda: Honk If You’re Sad

Rating: ★★★

Record and Artist Details

Musicians:

Yazz Ahmed (t)
Dan Gray (t)
Deji Ijishakin (ts)
Hari-Lee Evans (b)
Conor Knight (g)
Louis Jenkins (ky)
VVilhelm (tb)
Sam Schlich Davies (d)

Label:

Tru Thoughts TRU424

April/2022

Media Format:

CD, LP, DL, cassette

RecordDate:

Rec. date not stated

Youthful Brightonian quartet Ebi Soda bring some of the character of the bohos’ favourite coastal town into their take on the contemporary acid jazz sound. Titles like ‘Soft Peng’, ‘My Man From College’ and ‘Tang Of The Zest’ give a flavour of their cheeky slacker persona, and the music itself has an irreverent puckish quality mixed with a kind of easy-going ramshackle charm that makes a refreshing change from the kind of earnestly awesome fusion chops-fests that typify some of the YouTube generation’s output.

‘Giraffe Bread’ ambles along with heavily processed chopped-and-screwed horns drifting over an amiably funkified bass and drum groove and ‘Sadboys’ doesn’t sound sad at all, more like a late-night chilled dub session with some heavy herbal relaxation. Deji Ijishakin relinquishes his Xvngo persona to add some squallingly oblique tenor sax, most effectively over ‘Gated Community With A Public Pool’ where he drives the band to adopt a more urgent demeanour: elsewhere snares clatter, basslines loop around, horns and keys drift by in clouds of reverb, and all is well.

‘Pseudocreme’ indicates an ability to write an evocative melody that might profitably be developed, and Yazz Ahmed appears on lead single ‘Chandler’ to contribute a clear, crisply articulated voice amidst the general waviness.

The band react to her presence by pulling themselves together and delivering one of their most focussed beats, which makes a nice contrast, but they’re at their most characterful when they just let things go with the flow.

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