Youngblood Brass Band are a ten-piece acoustic jazz punk funk band who are set to launch their fourth album, Pax Volumi, in September. Originally formed in the 1990s by school friends in Wisconsin the band now encompasses members from all over the US, including Madison, New Orleans, New York, Nashville, Minneapolis and Chicago.
The second single lifted from the forthcoming album, Ain't Nobody opens with the title track of the EP, an instrumental cover of the Chaka Khan original which is launched into with much aplomb and no small amount of passion. The band lay down the track with intensity but in a relatively traditional approach compared to the rest of this release. There's a huge amount of energy though and the track really demonstrates the group's musical ability.
The second track on side-a, 'Ê la ê', is more influenced by hip-hop, a summer-celebrating Latin-jazz party track. It's another instrumental that displays the band's strong percussive skills and also lays in some electronic components that give the track a fresh, modern feel despite the fairly timeless nature of its main hook.
The final track, 'The Plank Will Nod And You Will Go' is featured in both instrumental and original flavours. It is here that the Youngblood Brass Band show off their real contemporary edge, with Henzie-Skogen delivering some ferocious vocals that sound a little like Rage Against The Machine's Zack de la Rocha. His delivery alternates between somewhat subdued in the verses to an upbeat and aggressive scatter-gun delivery in the choruses that forces the music to break into a run just to keep up. Overall it's an interesting and varied release and a promising taster of that forthcoming album.
Ain't Nobody is released on Tru Thoughts on 12 August, available to pre-order from Amazon.co.uk on MP3 [affiliate link].