专辑简介

Having composed many pieces of music for the Lonely Planet and Globetrekker series merging ethnic music from the likes of Greece, Iceland, Madagascar, Brazil, Ireland, Australia, Kenya and New Zealand to name but a few, with Western House, Lounge, Drum & Bass, Trance and Chillout styles I wanted to record an album featuring my saxophone playing. During the mid 90’s I had performed live with the groundbreaking Ambient group Shen. We played semi improvised Ambient Dance music at the likes of Bagley’s Warehouse, The Big Chill and many other clubs in and around London. My role was to provide organic, melodic musical material to offset the programmed and electronic nature of the compositions. This involved playing a variety of Classical and Ethnic flutes, Kubing and soprano saxophone. I never found a role for my tenor in that group. By the new millennium Ambient music had run it’s course and had been replaced by Chillout and Lounge styles from the likes of Royksopp, Air, Groove Armada etc. I found these styles more amenable to the addition of melodies and improvised material from both tenor and soprano saxophones., so the Paradiso project was born. I programmed a variety of relaxed grooves that I enjoyed playing over. Invited a few friends to add some extra colour on piano, guitar, drums and alto sax and penned some melodies that would act as a springboard for sensual, breathy and melodious improvisation. The key for me was to imagine the tunes being played at Café del Mar or Café Mambo as the sun went down over the beach in Ibiza. I wanted music I could put on when friends were round at the house that would create a relaxed and chilled vibe without being too obtrusive. On the other hand I wanted to use the harmonic and rhythmic techniques I had developed playing jazz. I performed many of these tunes in club gigs over the past few years, both in duo mainly with John Ashton Thomas but also with a full band at the Soho Jazz Festival. I am happy with the results and thought that making the tracks available on CD Baby was a good idea.

Many thanks to some of the great players who contributed to the album. They include Rob Taggart who played piano on “Equinox”. Asaf Sirkis; drums, Phil Lee; guitar, Barry Green; rhodes and Oli Hayhurst; bass on the “James Bond Gadgets Theme”. Gilad Atzmon; alto saxophone;, Frank Harrison; piano and melodica, Brian Neil; guitar and Oli Hayhurst; bass on “Café Paradiso”.