What Kinda Music
Tom Misch & Yussef Dayes
This track announces itself through Yussef Dayes' drums before anything else, and those drums are an event in themselves — fluid, polyrhythmic, deeply rooted in jazz tradition while carrying an energy that feels thoroughly alive and improvisational. Tom Misch's guitar playing is warm and conversational, full of the kind of melodic intelligence that makes jazz harmony feel approachable rather than academic. Together the two instrumentalists create something that sounds simultaneously composed and entirely spontaneous, as if the song is discovering itself in real time. The production has a live, analogue character — there's air and room in the mix, the sense of actual bodies in an actual space generating sound together rather than assembling it from digital components. Emotionally, the track occupies a particular register of joyful inquiry, a sense of celebration that is also fundamentally curious, as though the music keeps asking itself questions while already having a wonderful time. It belongs to a lineage of British jazz-influenced music that draws on both bebop and contemporary urban sounds, representing a scene that reclaimed jazz as something vital and present rather than museum-piece. The title functions almost as philosophy: the kind of music this is resists easy categorization, and that resistance is entirely the point. For listeners willing to let themselves be swept along without needing a genre label, it opens up into something genuinely generous and alive. Best heard through good speakers with room to fill.
medium
2010s
live, warm, vibrant
British jazz-funk, south London scene
Jazz, Funk. British Jazz. joyful, curious. Opens in celebratory energy and sustains a spirit of playful inquiry throughout, the music asking questions of itself while already having a wonderful time.. energy 7. medium. danceability 7. valence 9. vocals: instrumental — no vocals. production: live polyrhythmic drums, warm jazz guitar, analogue recording, natural room sound. texture: live, warm, vibrant. acousticness 7. era: 2010s. British jazz-funk, south London scene. Through good speakers with room to fill when you want music that rewards open attention and resists categorization.