Adult Jazz have shared their first video today for “Springful”, offering a glimpse into the Leeds-based band’s vision as heard on their recently released debut 12”, “Am Gone / Springful.” The 12” is out now digitally and on vinyl on the band’s own label, Spare Thought, and Adult Jazz are pleased to play their first headlining dates in the UK next week, with dates below. Concerning the concept of the video, Harry of Adult Jazz explains an interest in Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha, amongst other themes:

“Siddhartha had learned how to transact business affairs, to exercise powers over people, to amuse himself with women; he had learned to wear fine clothes, to command servants, too bathe in sweet-smelling waters. He had learned to eat sweet and carefully prepared foods, also fish and meat and fowl, spices and dainties, and to drink wine which made him lazy and forgetful. He had learned to play dice and chess, to watch dancers, to be carried in sedan chairs, to sleep on a soft bed. But he had always felt different from and superior to the others; he had always watched them a little scornfully, with a slightly mocking disdain, with that disdain which a Samana always feels towards the people of the world.” – Siddhartha (1922), Hermann Hesse.

In the ‘Springful’ video, the character makes an attempt at some kind of sensory purge but it is SO BORING. No one gets to see his holy focus, apart from us, and we can’t pat him on the back. He then embarks on a kind of parade to stage a public refusal. His restraint is then deified, it now looks as holy as it probably is/was all along, and, more importantly, it gets witnessed. Like in the Siddhartha quote – an interesting dislocation when the asceticism of the wilderness is brought into the town. How the refuser and the rhetoric of non-attachment can live on in the worldly person, when he gorges he proves to himself he is not seduced, he is a meta-gorger! I’m with fat cheeks!

For the past three years, Adult Jazz have been writing and self-recording their debut full-length record in various locations in the Scottish Borders and Leeds, where the band first took shape. “Springful” and its companion, the brittle and bluesy “Am Gone” introduce the four-piece’s embrace of progressive song structure, a compositional approach which the four-piece describe as “an exciting form to explore the tensions between friendly pop sensibilities and uncommon character.” While referencing Van Morrison, Arthur Russell and Joanna Newsom as influences to the compositional element, sonically, the band favor a considered eclecticism over a necessarily unified aesthetic.

The 12” also includes a collection of recordings captured between 2010 and 2013 – which serve as a nod to the time and individual spaces that have characterized the recording of the album.

“Am Gone / Springful” 12” Tracklisting

A1 Springful

A2 Am Gone

B1 Untitled 

Adult Jazz 2014 UK Tour Dates

02.05.14 – Servant Jazz Quarters – London, UK

02.06.14 – Wharf Chambers – Leeds, UK

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