Finalists for Te Manu Taki Tautit o te Tau Best Jazz Artist at last year’s Aotearoa Music Awards, Clear Path Ensemble‚s third album Black Sand arrives to enrich NZ Music Month with a nine track excursion in open-eared jazz, club-informed funk and beyond. Helmed by multi-instrumentalist / composer / producer Cory Champion — recently spotted unleashing machine grooves under his Borrowed CS moniker at Music First’s RESONATE party — Black Sand feels even more ambitious than earlier (already notably accomplished) Clear Path Ensemble offerings.
Lead single ‚Cascade d’Ars‘ and the almost techno-like ‚Best Life‘ present dizzying interlocking rhythms akin to minimalist compositions, warmed up with boisterous horns and poetic melodic refrains, moving like perpetual motion machines. Black Sand actually doesn’t feel worlds away at certain points from the new instrumental UMO record (like a "great minds" / parallel evolution moment), for example the mutated exotica of ‚Brain Tickle‘ and the rhythmically limber, evocative jazz-funk of the title track itself — while closer ‚Standing In Front of The Lawn‘ gradually melts minds within new age-adjacent soundscape zones.
Playing all manner of instruments himself and recorded / produced primarily at home, Champion is joined on Black Sand by Johnny Lawrence, Daniel Hayles, James Illingworth, Louisa Williamson, and Mike Isaacs. A world-class, deep-listening voyage, be sure to grip the physical vinyl LP edition of Black Sand HERE and / or Clear Path Ensemble’s launch events — next month at Tāmaki Makaurau’s Double Whammy and Pōneke’s lush Begonia House…
UnderTheRadar proudly presents…
Clear Path Ensemble
Friday 6th June – Double Whammy, Auckland
Thursday 12th June – Begonia House, Wellington
Auckland tickets on sale HERE via UTR
Wellington tickets via clearpathensemble.com
‚Black Sand‘ is out now on major streaming platforms.