In this new show Kokoroko, Lettuce and the Matti Klein Soul Trio offer an opening sample of contemporary music. Tributes follow to Brazilian multi-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal, pianist Eddie Palmieri and DJ Chris Hill – with a final acknowledgement of the unexpected death of D’Angelo. Latin sounds are to the fore but there is much musical genre-crossing.
1. Kokoroko – Closer To Me from Tuff Times Never Last
Derek is pleased to open the show with London-based band Kokoroko and their second album Tuff Times Never Last. It’s a positive title for a positive album (the band’s second) released back in July of this year. Kokoroko is a large band often with eight members contributing. The mix of brass, guitar, drums and percussion, as well as keyboards and bass, delivers some complex and enveloping sounds. Listen carefully and you will find there’s a lot going on. Kokoroko is led by Sheila Maurice-Grey who provides trumpet and vocals and percussionist Onome Edgeworth. They are jazz musicians but this album strays into other territories too – from afro-beat to British R&B from the 1980s, soul to neo-soul, West African soul to bossa nova, lovers rock and funk. I feel the album, which has a great cover to capture the joy of London city life in the summer, is one of those that all fits together so perfectly and is best listened to straight through rather than selecting individual tracks. The same goes for Allysha Joy’s album The Making Of Silk which we have also featured – incidentally, Joy has played alongside Kokoroko. So there’s two albums definitely on my Best Of… list for 2025.
2. Lettuce – Breathe single from Cook
Breathe is an early preview single from the forthcoming album Cook by the US sextet Lettuce, due for release on their own label on 3 December 2025. This is more boundary-crossing music – there’s jazz, funk and soul in this mix although Adam Deitch, the band’s drummer/percussionist, describes it as a chill hip-hop flavoured joint and the accompanying publicity calls it as a blissed-out track tinged with a retro hip hop vibe – an accurate description of it’s effect and very much representational of the sort of sounds Derek been listening to lately (and Neil adds that there’s more than a touch of George Benson-style guitar too). Lettuce recently produced a version of the Keni Burke classic Risin’ To the Top and I think I detected a little of that in the opening to Breathe. A recent European tour saw Lettuce play two nights of two sets at Ronnie Scott’s London – you’ve missed that but the album ‘soon come’.
3. Matti Klein Soul Trio – Odd Times To Party from Bouncin’ in Bubbleverse
There are more complex and some surprising sounds coming from the Berlin-based Matti Klein Soul Trio, with a tune from the album Bouncin’ in Bubbleverse. The album deliberately has nothing in 4/4 rhythm: I wanted to challenge myself in producing an album with unorthodox fresh grooves Klein said in a 20 Questions interview in the September 2025 edition of Echoes Magazine. Instruments are a little unorthodox too with Klein playing a Wurlitzer electric piano, which he told Echoes Magazine has a wonderful warm vibe. He also plays a rare 1973 Rhodes bass. He’s joined by saxophonist/bass clarinetist Lars Dieterich and drummer Andre Siedel. As for the unusual album title, we have Klein’s explanation to hand: as a musician you’re constantly travelling in all kinds of bubbles. Sometimes you’re at a big festival, then in a small jazz club. And we’re constantly bouncing around and immersing ourselves in new musical universes again and again. Makes sense does it not? In what is typical of this particular Cosmic Jazz show we are again encountering musical boundary-crossing. The band’s publicity suggests they cross jazz, funk, hip-hop and space rock; quite a unique musical mixture.
4. Hermeto Pascoal & Grupo Vice Versa – Danca do Paje from Viajando Como Som
Derek wanted to add his tribute and remembrance of Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal (22 June 1936-13 September 2025). He was innovative, independent and unpredictable: there is a story of him bringing live pigs into the studio for his first recording for Warner Bros and using household objects alongside the many other instruments he learnt as a self-taught musician – for example, piano, flute, melodica, saxophone, guitars and drums. Miles Davis called him the most important musician on the planet and he featured prominently on the Davis album Live Evil (1971). Hermeto’s music merged jazz with traditional Brazilian music, and you can hear this in the tune Danca do Paje and the whole album Vioajando Como Som, which was released by British record label Far Out Recordings in 2017 having previously been unreleased. Check out this excellent Bandcamp feature on Pascoal and the discovery of this lost album. It was recorded at a session lasting over two days in 1976 at the Vice Versa Studio in Sao Paulo. This was after Pascoal had returned to Brazil from the USA where he had recorded several records, some with Brazilian master percussionist Airto Moreira. On returning to Brazil his aim – says drummer Ze Nazario in the album sleeve notes – was to create a musical revolution in Brazil with ramifications all over the world. Pascoal brought electric piano, flute and voice to this session and a lengthy flute solo opens this tune. An appropriate summary of what Pascoal and his music was all about came in the family’s Instagram post reporting of his death: it urged everyone to let a single note ring – from an instrument, your voice, or a kettle – and offer it to the universe. This is our CJ offering.
5. Sean Khan featuring Hermeto Pascoal – The Conversation from Palmares Fantasy
Derekwas fortunate to see Hermeto Pascoal a few years back at The Norwich and Norfolk Festival where his tunes were played both by his band and the UK National Youth Jazz Orchestra. It was a special evening. This album, Palmares Fantasy, is another example of Pascoal in collaboration with others. On The Conversation he plays piano alongside the soprano sax of British musician Sean Khan who, like Pascoal, is a self-taught musician. The tune is a joint composition between the two of them. Pascoal features on five of the nine tunes on this album released in 2018. It’s another on the excellent UK label Far Out Recordings. The album takes its name from the Quilombo dos Palmares escaped slave settlement in the northeast of Brazil in the 1600s. Sean Khan travelled to Rio de Janeiro to record the session which includes Azymuth drummer Ivan ‘Mamao’ Conti, bassist Paolo Rossi, Scottish guitarist Jim Mullen and guest appearances from Brazilian vocalist Sabrina Malheiros (daughter of the Azymuth bass player Alex Malheiros) and Heidi Vogel from the Cinematic Orchestra.
6. Eddie Palmieri – Solito from Salsa Brava
The next tribute is to Eddie Palmieri (15 December 1936-06 August 2025) the influential Latin jazz and salsa pianist, composer and bandleader. Palmieri fused the rhythm of his Puerto Rican heritage with jazz. His parents came to New York in 1926from Puerto Rico, Eddie Palmieri was born in Spanish Harlem and raised in the Bronx. His elder brother Charlie Palmieri was also an outstanding and internationally-known Latin and jazz musician. Eddie Palmieri released more than 40 studio albums – many of them on the New York Latin label Fania Records. The tune Solito was the title track of a 1985 album but is taken here from a UK Charly Records 1993 compilation Salsa Brava. This record does not provide any details of the musicians on the record, nor does further research. It is a record with played with fire ; jazz fire and Latin fire. There is Latin percussion providing the basis throughout but early on comes a blazing trumpet solo followed by a free, improvised and unpredictable piano solo from Palmieri then timbales and percussion in tandem ending with a blast from the brass and vocalist- masterful!
7. Nuyorican Soul – Taita Caneme from Nuyorican Soul
The tune Taita Caneme is an Eddie Palmieri composition and is played here on solo piano and synthesisers by him. It is not to be found on a Eddie Palmieri record but on the legendary and essential 1997 compilation Nuyorican Soul assembled by the Nuyorican Masters At Work production team of ‘Little’ Louis Vega and Kenny ‘Dope’ Gonzales who approached various guest artists for the album from soul, jazz and Latin backgrounds. One was Eddie Palmieri. He plays on two tracks of the album – both his own compositions. Taita Caneme illustrates his invention, his mastery and the delicacy of his playing. It is a beautiful tune, almost classical sounding in its grandiose moments and gentler flourishes with offbeat left-field piano touches. The sleeve notes describe the tune as being like an Afro-Latin Sonata in three parts and it illustrates perfectly why Eddie Palmieri was so unique among Latin jazz composers, venturing into fields beyond those of his Nuyorican contemporaries.
8. Candido – Jingo from Salsoul 30th
In the late 1970s/early 1980s there were frequent posters around London for soul club nights – in effect soul/funk/jazz nights of essentially Black music. There were three DJs (‘the soul Mafia’) whose names were predominant on those large posters – Robbie Vincent, Greg Edwards and Chris Hill (8 January 1945-11 September 2015). Unlike the other two, Chris Hill was not a radio DJ but he was quite a performer and entertainer as you can see here in a set from the Royalty Club, Southgate, London. Hill also featured at The Goldmine on Canvey Island (the club most associated with him) and the Caister Soul Weekenders in Norfolk. He was pioneering in the way he played and championed Black music, not only as a DJ but also working in A&R for Ensign Records. Gilles Peterson – a DJ who was influenced by and played with Chris – has commented here in a Facebook post and also in a tribute for The Guardian newspaper that Hill was a huge jazz fan and a collector of all things Blue Note and Lansdowne – he loved his Michael Garricks. A tribute is appropriate for Cosmic Jazz and a good way to pay tribute and celebrate his work is to play two tunes that were acknowledged in the tributes that Derek and Neil read as ones that Hill played in his DJ sets. Just listen to Jingo and Toda Menina Baiana and imagine you are in a club on Canvey Island or at a Caister Soul Weekender when you hear these tunes for the first time… Now imagine the crowd reaction.
9. Gilberto Gil – Toda Menina Baiana from Realce
Derek read another DJ acknowledgement to Chris Hill coming – perhaps surprisingly from Gary Crowley, a radio DJ, now on BBC Radio London but many years ago on Capital Radio. Derek notes that we would typically associate him with New Wave and then indie music rather than soul DJ, Crowley described being at a club where Hill played a record he had never heard before – one he found amazing and which he has loved, played and treasured ever since. That record came from Brazil and was Gilberto Gil’s Toda Menina Baiana. It’s a tune we at Cosmic Jazz just love. Derek recalls playing it one night in a bar in Ipswich around 01:00 on a Friday night/Saturday morning where there were some Portuguese speakers. The place went wild and the effect was electrifying. It was identification with the music, the environment and a sense of total joy. For Derek, this remains one of my all-time dance favourites. Matti Klein in his Echoes Magazine interview (see above) said he saw music as being about bringing joy – and if you want a shot of real joy just listen to Toda Menina Baiana.
D’Angelo – Spanish Joint from Voodoo
Just as Derek was ready to record this programme the news came through of the death of D’Angelo aged 51 on 15 October 2015. Derek had been lucky to share musical tastes with his two sons and it was his eldest son who introduced him to D’Angelo through the Voodoo album, produced by Questlove and J. Dilla. In particular, it was the track played here – Spanish Joint – that was so memorable. Derek notes that his son felt he was the Marvin Gaye of his time and, indeed, this comment has been made in several tributes released in the short time since D’Angelo’s death. He is credited with being the founder of neo-soul, although he once claimed he simply made Black music. Neo-soul moved away from the pop influenced R’n’B of the time to a more chilled sound and one that merged elements of soul, R’n’B, jazz, funk and hip-hop. This is all there in this amazing track with its stripped-down, ultra-cool sound that swings like crazy with the bass and percussion – and, to cap it all, has the constant intervention of jazzy brass. What more could we ask for on Cosmic Jazz? More music soon.
Neil (in Bali) is listening to….
- Deodato – Night Cruiser
- Kraftwerk – Autobahn (2024 single edit)
- Nusantara – Kota Bandung
- Maliq & D’Essentials – Kangen
- Yura Yunita – Bandung