Hypnotic Brass Ensemble ?Bad Boys of Jazz? UK & Ireland Tour May-July 2014.

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

USA's Hypnotic Brass Ensemble will be touring in the UK and Ireland. Press release attached.

We have received the following press release regarding the forthcoming tour;

Hypnotic Brass Ensemble announce ?Bad Boys of Jazz? UK & Ireland Tour May-July 2014, ?Brothers Hypnotic’ documentary screenings and new music video

?City Living’ Official Video: http://youtu.be/pL2Ze2_EFu4
Watch The Trailer for ?Brothers Hypnotic’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzywHsrilHk
Tour Dates Below ?Kryptonite’, LIVE Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYUYFoNfBEE

?Their high-energy, New Orleans-inspired, bassy live sound is bombastic and funky enough to convert the coldest of cynics.? Time Out London

?Underneath the hip-hop attitude, hints of a strange cosmic mysticism emerge?
The Telegraph

Chicago hip-hop brass band Hypnotic Brass Ensemble bring their incendiary live show to the UK & Ireland this summer in a tour dubbed ?The Bad Boys Of Jazz Tour’, alongside the release of new video ?City Livin’ (taken from their 2013 album “Fly: The Customs Prelude”) and the European premiere of the documentary ?Brothers Hypnotic’ at screenings in Dublin and London.

Back on the road since completing work on their new album, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble will be airing new material alongside crowd favourites ?Kryptonite’, ?Balicki Bone’ and ?War’ (as heard on The Hunger Games 2 soundtrack). In addition to the gigs, ?Brothers Hypnotic’, Reuben Atlas’ documentary about the group, will be screened in Dublin and London following a successful run on the US festival circuit last year.

?Brothers Hypnotic’ offers a fantastic insight into a band that has developed like no other - For the eight young men in the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, ?brotherhood? is literal: they’re all sons of anti-establishment jazz legend, Phil Cohran. Cohran and their mothers raised them together on Chicago’s South Side on a strict diet of jazz, funk and Black Consciousness. Family band practice began at 6 AM. The film charts the brothers progress as they try to make their own way in the wide world?while playing in the streets of New York City, collaborating with Damon Albarn, Mos Def, Childish Gambino and Q-Tip or wowing a crowd at their legendary live shows ?they find the values their father bred into them constantly tested and must decide whether his principles really are their own. 

?Beautiful to behold? ? LA Times

?Lively, funny? philosophical… an intriguing microcosm of the tensions between the hip-hop generation and its civil-rights-era forebears.? ? Variety

?The film is as much a music documentary as it is an examination of a complex family history over two generations, asking two questions simultaneously: what does it mean to be an independent artist today trying to maintain your values while managing commercial success? And what does it mean to honor the legacy of the generation that raised you if those values aren’t always your own? ? a question that asks on its most basic level ? what does it mean to be a family?? ? OK Player

Screenings will be held in Dublin (5th May, Sugar Club) and London (20th May, Prince Charles Cinema) and the band will be present for a Q&A session after the film.

?Bad Boys Of Jazz’ UK & Ireland Tour 2014

May 5 - Dublin - Sugarclub (includes ?Brothers Hypnotic’ documentary screening)

May 7 ? Dublin - Sugarclub

May 9 - Cork ? Savoy (with DJ Mathman & Colm K)

May 10 - Belfast - Empire

May 14 - Glasgow - Oran Mor

May 15 - Newcastle

May 16 - Edinburgh - The Caves

May 17 - Manchester - Band on the Wall

May 20 ? London ? Prince Charles Cinema - ?Brothers Hypnotic’ documentary screening and Q&A

May 21 ? Brighton ? The Haunt

May 22 - Bristol - The Fleece

May 23 - Birmingham ? The Institute

May 24 - Cardiff

July 11 - London ? 229

Biography:

Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, an eight-strong cohort of horn-playing brothers (plus one unrelated drummer) were born and raised on the south-side of Chicago under the rigorous training methods of their musically talented parents. They started out playing on the streets of Chicago, New York, and elsewhere, selling their self-released CDs and gradually building a loyal following and an international profile. The youngest of some 23 children - the offspring of different mothers, but all sons of jazz trumpeter and composer Kelan Phil Cohran (a member of Sun Ra’s Arkestra) - Gabriel Hubert (trumpet), Tycho Cohran (sousaphone), Amal Hubert (trumpet), Uttama Hubert (euphonium), Saiph Graves (trombone), Jafar Graves (trumpet), Seba Graves (trombone), and Tarik Graves (trumpet) all grew up together in Chicago, watching their father rehearse with his band Circle of Sound, playing together in the Phil Cohran Youth Ensemble, and later writing rhymes as the rap group Wolf Pak.

Following the 1996 death of one of their older brothers, which shook up the family and prompted some of its farther-flung members to return to their hometown, the brothers, then mostly in their teens, started setting up around Chicago’s streets and El stations to perform. Later they began recording and self-releasing CD-Rs, beginning with 2004’s Flipside (aka Orange) and 2005’s Jupiter (Green) - the band’s early releases all feature the same cover photograph and eponymous title, so they’re referred to by the colour of their sleeves and the names of key tracks - which eventually sold hundreds of thousands of copies entirely through self-promotion.

The group relocated to New York City and began to tour worldwide, in the process forging a formidable reputation as one of the best live bands around and releasing 3 acclaimed albums on UK label Honest Jon’s Records. With a sound that calls to mind traditional New Orleans big-band jazz and nods to the avant-garde angularity of their father and his contemporaries, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble are equally informed by rap, funk and hip-hop. They have worked alongside Mos Def, Prince, Ghostface Killah, Childish Gambino, Gorillaz (including 3 tracks on ?Plastic Beach’), Damon Albarn, Erykah Badu, Robert Glasper, Chris Dave, Tony Allen and many more. Last year, their track ?War’ featured on the soundtrack for recent blockbuster ?The Hunger Games 2: Catching Fire’, as the theme music for Stanley Tucci’s character Caesar Flickerman.