All the best music has a community underneath it. The extended family around London’s Total Refreshment Centre (TRC) connects continents and generations, creating the rich relationships in full effect on Transmissions From Total Refreshment Centre. It’s an eclectic and electric collection that draws from new school jazz, hip hop, dub, soul, funk, and drill: sounds you’ll hear trailing out of cars as they spin up the Kingsland Road or spiraling out of doorways like so much smoke. Turn it up loud to hear the widescreen young cousins of Guru’s landmark Jazzmatazz in full effect: top players from London, Chicago, and Melbourne seeking out new collaborations, new ways of working, or just new tunes, always coming back to that central truth – that we all need each other.

Founder Lex Blondin brought together TRC originals Soccer96 and MC Kieron Boothe, who is part of community-based recording studio Root 73 and is based in the building. They didn’t know each other before laying down this tune, but the idiosyncratic boom bap modernism makes it sound like they’ve been in each other’s pockets for time.

Then there’s Byron Wallen. The trumpeter has decades of experience and connects the younger players of today with the foundational generation that created seminal outfits including Jazz Warriors, with whom he played. The idea was for him to build new string arrangements for “Closed Circle,” which he’d written in 2002 in remembrance of London teenager Stephen Lawrence, who was murdered in a racist attack, and whose legacy still resonates today.

What else should you know? Jake Long’s spaced-out motorik dub “Crescent (City Swamp Dub)” was jammed into shape at TRC and recorded there with engineer Kristian Craig Robinson – aka Capitol K – in his studio. Or Matters Unknown’s ‘Eloquence’, a beautiful deep groove that shifts pace mid-way with a technicolour piano-sprung break from Lyle Barton that rolls with warm fire, and joyful vocals from Miryam Solomon. Then there’s Melbourne’s Zeitgeist Freedom Energy Exchange. One of their improvised jams generated maximum dancing during a gig at TRC’s sister night Church of Sound, and it became the foundation for this sun-soaked whistle posse gem. Vocalist Noah Slee brought additional vibes in a recording session in the Berlin studio belonging to ‘90s OGs Jazzanova.

It’s clear that Neue Grafik means business on his contribution, from the very first vibrations of the ultra-heavy double bass notes that he plays in the opening bars of “Black.” Brother Portrait speaks layers of vocal booth truth in his tightly-controlled and rolling flow whilst young don and PhD candidate XVNGO (say it ‘Shango’) spins out the sax solo.

Staying international ‘til the end, Resavoir bring their beautifully-spun cover of Charles Tolliver’s 1970 classic “Plight.” It’s another example of the cross-continental relationships that sit at the heart of this record – Resavoir’s Will Miller and TRC’s Lex bonded over the record in Chicago and recorded it at Total Refreshment Centre after the band played a Church of Sound gig in 2019. It’s the perfect conclusion to this set of trans-national, trans-generational and transformative Transmissions.

by Emma Warren

Various Artists • Transmissions From Total Refreshment Centre • Release Date: February 17, 2023