Drummer, composer and producer Sebastian Rochford has been able to completely turn the British jazz scene upside down for a while thanks to his idiosyncratic approach. Influenced by Beethoven, Björk, Skepta, Burial, Prince and idm electronics, he knows very little boundaries when it comes to musical inventiveness. The raw, dramatic music of his band Polar Bear mixes jazz with live electronic
… soundscapes and an anarchic punk feeling, supported by breakbeat and rock rhythms. This sounds vague and it is. Almost as vague as the www.polarbearmusic.com website. Accompanied by tenor saxophonists Pete Wareham and Mark Lockheart, double bass player Tom Herbert and Leafcutter John (electronics expert and player of various instruments including a balloon), Rochford creates his own hypnotic, often ghostly universe in which the experiment is being experimented with. This often leads to very fascinating moments that, however, demand a lot of the listener's stamina. It is not without reason that Rochford warns in the CD booklet: 'This is a long album.' (AD)more
