Greg Foat, who he? Well he's been around a while, DJs tend to warm to him more than hardcore jazzers and already the signs are that once again the pianist is a DJ preferred act.
Symphonie Pacifique opens with a kind of classical mood and then moves very much into a deft easy listening nu jazz space where it stays for most of the album. Personnel details are scarce but harp, tubular bells, choirs, bass played by Phil Achille, congas played by Eric Young, and breakbeats courtesy of Moses Boyd are among the accompanying sounds.
It's an undemanding listen, you'd imagine a lot of people talking over this record if it came on and liking it for that very reason! It's a social sound but beyond that there is very little substance to it, the sort of thing Gilles Peterson plays on his 6 Music show on a Saturday. So it will probably do very well given the flakey world we live in. Out now on Strut.
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