Song of the Day: Mark de Clive-Lowe, Shigeto & Melanie Charles - Strings

A Strings is a second single from the unconventional forthcoming collaboration album Hotel San Claudio, made by Mark de Clive-Lowe, Shigeto & Melanie Charles.

Revered composer, pianist, DJ and two-decade-long bridge between jazz, dance and hip-hop, Mark de Clive-Lowe (MdCL), links up with influential drummer/producer/DJ, Shigeto and Brooklyn-based, Haitian-rooted, flautist/songwriter and Verve Records artist - Melanie Charles on Hotel San Claudio, a collaborative LP of spiritual jazz, live deconstructed beats, and a three-track set of Pharoah Sanders reinterpretations

Strings' speaks to the group’s love of hip-hop, with Shigeto’s Dilla-esque ‘hanging off the beat’ slap and Melanie Charles’ deft rhymes and MdCL’s sample-chops, whilst Kanazawa references a love of soulful house, with Charles’ 70s disco/fusion-tipping flute solo, leading into a euphoric and climactic club outro. The warrior-themed Bushido, first heard on MdCL’s album Heritage, leans even heavier on 70s jazz fusion as MdCL’s unruly synth impulsions and Donald Byrd-leaning soul-jazz production strides the line between atmospheric and experimental. MFT showcases Charles’ jazz vocals, treated here with big reverbs and delays, affording a vast, celestial quality that stands present throughout Hotel San Claudio.

Listen to Mark de Clive-Lowe, Shigeto & Melanie Charles new single Strings, from the project's new album Hotel San Claudio:

Mark de Clive-Lowe (MdCL), Melanie Charles and Shigeto unite for Hotel San Claudio, a nine-track sonic exploration and improvised artistic journey across jazz, hip-hop and soulful house. Following on from its lead single The Creator Has A Master Plan Part II, a celestial take on the Pharoah Sanders’ classic, comes the trio’s first original release, Strings. Shigeto’s Dilla-esque ‘hanging off the beat’ slap and Melanie Charles’ deft rhymes (here in her underground rap pseudonym, D’Flower), and SP404 sample-chops, latch onto MdCL’s fuzzy atari-console chords and screw-facing, subby synth bass lick, which tips its hat to LA’s fervent beat scene champions, Stones Throw & The Low End Theory,

One musician the group kept circling back to as a major influence was saxophone titan and cosmic sage, Pharoah Sanders. The trio’s absorbing 2-part versioning of Sanders’ 30m-long classic The Creator Has A Master Plan as well as his iconic Love Is Everywhere become the centrepiece of Hotel San Claudio’s spiritually-focused, reimagined jazz core

Watch the below video for Mark de Clive-Lowe, Shigeto & Melanie Charles new song Strings, from the project's new album Hotel San Claudio: