New Soil announces MATTERS UNKNOWN’s debut album ‘We Aren’t Just’ (out October 28th), the new project by multi-instrumentalist and composer Jonny Enser and shares new single “Orange Triangle.” The long-standing brass player for celebrated Afro-Jazz collective Nubiyan Twist has created a wide-ranging double album that channels his concepts of living dynamism and communal practice through a prolific musical compendium. It boldly encompasses Afro-jazz, celestial blues, soulful funk, electronica, hip hop and more. At its heart is a personal response to the physical and mental pain he has experienced in his life as a musician confronting disability; a coping mechanism alchemised as a universal healing force.
The newest single “Orange Triangle” combines grand orchestral strings, blissful keyboard runs, deep bass lines, and breathy trumpet lines to deliver a warmly funky and meditative jazz hymn.
MATTERS UNKNOWN says: Orange Triangle came to me at a time when I was really struggling to find unity between my head, my heart and my spirit. It really helped me on that journey.
Captivated by the trumpet from an early age, Enser spent years honing his craft alone before beginning a career that has seen him develop alongside a broad range of collaborators, coupled with an ongoing role as a mentor to young musicians. As a member of Nubiyan Twist, the band for whom he composes and provides brass instrumentation, he has collaborated with Mulatu Astatke, Pat Thomas, Tony Allen and Soweto Kinch. His renown and respect within the musical community has enabled him to gather some of the UK’s finest young players for this latest project, including members of Nerija, Emma-Jean Thackray’s band, Noya Rao, Golden Mean and COLECTIVA.
An artistic upbringing in rural Oxfordshire fed into a musical path defined by a relentless curiosity alongside profound reverence for a broad range of musical traditions, social histories and ritual practices. This has seen him spend periods living in New Orleans, Chicago, Detroit and Cuba in search of authentic immersion into diverse cultures. This deep-seated appreciation for musical roots comes allied with an innovative and free-thinking approach to leadership that allows his groups to function as naturally in a trio setting as a 15-piece large ensemble – a concept based on the movement of energy that Enser refers to as Living Dynamism:
It’s the idea that things have cycles, they are evolutionary and they are dynamic and can respond to change in any one moment.
Five years in the making and begun initially as a product of his relationship with New Orleans music, the album has had a lengthy gestation period.
It was a slow process of unpicking certain ideas and exploring each melody’s root. Peeling back the layers of complexity to allow it to be something really vulnerable at the heart of it and the root of the expression. And then it was finding the right folks to play with, people that you can find kinship, camaraderie, commune and all those manifestations of bringing people together to let the idea swell in that vessel and blossom. ~ Jonny Enser
The results are a cerebral and emotional response to the challenges he has experienced throughout his life both as a result of bouts of depression as well as disability, which along with chronic physical pain, brought with it bullying and exclusion:
I wasn’t emotionally capable of owning up to it until the last couple of years when I had to start wearing my blue badge on the tube. I thought I can’t do this, society has disabled me. I’m in pain all the time as a result of the expectations put on me. Enser hopes to use his experience to shine a light on conditions and experiences of invisible disabilities that are all too often marginalised. Society needs to find a place for us. I only recently found out that Tutankhamun had the same disability that I do, which is clubfoot. It’s amazing that some god-like representation in ancient Egypt had the same disabilities as I do and was there as the figurehead.