Kokoroko, the London-based contemporary jazz collective, shares their new single “Three Piece Suit” featuring Nigerian-born UK artist Azekel, whose discography boasts features with tastemakers such as Massive Attack and Gorillaz and style blends R&B, Neo soul and Afro-pop. Warm, rich and sumptuous in sound, “Three Piece Suit” is a heartwarming tribute to the Nigerian immigrant experience.
The single’s release is paired with the announcement of Kokoroko’s new EP Get The Message, due November 1st via Brownswood Recordings, and arrives ahead of the launch of the band’s forthcoming North American and UK and EU tour that launches next week in New York City. After that tour’s North American run the band will return for a string of UK dates that culminate with a date at London’s O2 Academy Brixton — the biggest headline show of their career thus far. This upcoming run marks the band’s first live dates in North America since their appearance at Coachella (and string of dates surrounding it) earlier this year.
Crackling through the track’s snug and patiently arranged grooves are subtle touches of funk, adding new dimensions to the band’s signature afrobeat and jazz sound in a way that recalls the work of Cymande. Further caressing the instrumentation is the incorporation of the Brazilian nose flute and woozy-sounding synth lines, effortlessly transporting the listeners back in time. A conversation between Onome Edgeworth, the band’s percussionist and Azekel about their grandfathers who both landed in Balham from Nigeria in the 1960s would yield the finishing touches that its rough sketches needed, bringing the song home to its final form.
Speaking on the track’s lyrics, Onome shares: “When we wrote the lyrics we were thinking of our grandfathers arriving in London and the way they carried themselves and dressed in the 1960s. They were part of a dapper and suited generation that sowed the seeds for the worlds we’re building now. It speaks to our sentimental memories of a time that we know we can’t have back.”
Palpable throughout are spiritual echoes resonating with ideas of home, lineage and ancestry. Speaking on this, Azekel shares: “The song is about coming back, letting go and realizing that all things, past, present and future are intertwined.”
Created as an intentional vessel for joy, Get The Message is filled with themes of community, connection and relationships both romantic and platonic, that make up the collective’s inner world. Their forthcoming EP will mark Kokoroko’s first dose of new music since the release of Could We Be More Remixes. The experimental and kaleidoscopic sister project to their 2022 debut album Could We Be More, which was praised upon its release by the likes of The Guardian, The Telegraph, Financial Times, Jazzwise, CRACK Magazine and Downbeat Magazine. The release would also garner their first Top 40 placement on the UK Albums Chart, peaking at No.30. Enlisting some of contemporary music’s most forward-thinking artists like KeiyaA, Ash Lauryn, Stefan Ringer and Hagan to re-imagine the original album through a club-focused lens, Could We Be More Remixes marked the beginning of the band being cast beyond spaces unrelated to the jazz sphere, a signal of their incoming next phase.
