Hippo and Paisley Mess at Crash of Moons Club

This was the last one until September. Another Crash of Moons success! Despite the original headliners The Brackish cancelling at the last minute, the team pulled together and came up with a great replacement, local soul-psych quartet Paisley Mess. Hippo from Bristol were clearly blown away by the enthusiasm and size of the audience for this, the last night on their tour. They're doing some wonderful future-jazz weirdness with drums, analogue synths (pushing the squelchiness to almost comical limits) and processed saxophone. At times like a 21st century Soft Machine. Very cool, very well received. Paisley Mess surpassed by expectations, can't believe I've missed out on them until now. Check their latest tune, "Cube", it's brilliant! They've got soulful vocals and well-crafted songs, but they can also seriously rock and there's some great bluesy jamming (of the tasteful, Peter Green school) going on.

As resident DJ Professor Appleblossom, I played sets before/between/after (psych/jazz, soul/psych, soul/dancehall), which you can check out here:

The first tune I put one was "Play Mass" by Sons of Kemet which, I thought, was pretty obscure. Sons of Kemet is a band involving drum god Seb Rochford, so there's a British contemporary jazz thing there which seemed relevant to Hippo setting up to play. But I was amazed when sax/synth player Doug Cave came over, himself looking amazed, to tell me that someone had played that tune at every single gig on this tour! I wasn't sure if I was just being predictable, or really attuned...