Words by Justin Turford
“It’s really interesting to me that black joy is something that I don’t see very often on screen. I grew up in this huge, vibrant and joyous family and I wanted to share just a glimpse of what that looked like; this is the family that “Francine” built. But at the same time there’s an edge to this song, to the whole EP, because the price for working so hard for the happiness of your children can sometimes be extremely heavy.”
We are delighted to share the video premiere of the brand new single ‘Lets Build The House’ from Marco Woolf’s forthcoming ‘Francine, i EP’ on Phlexx Records. An artist who straddles genres as well as cultures, the Malawian born UK jazz-folk musician has created an EP of great intimacy and self-confidence. Jazz and folk may be terms associated with Marco’s music but there is so much more going on. Beginning with the gentle lilt of the kalimba and the confessional poetry of Marco’s voice, the song is joined by Nottingham spiritual jazz wonderkid Pete Beardsworth (Running Circle) on swirling and surging tenor sax and flute building to a climax that is all post-rock angles and urgency with vocalists Rowan Lark and Lucie Meiselle guiding the song into a celestial cacophony. It’s quite something. The previous and first single from the EP, ‘Modus Operandi’ again sits somewhere new. Imagine the more esoteric side of Radiohead and the spacey bliss of Matthew Halsall and with plays on BBC 6 Music and championed by Gilles Peterson on WWFM, this uniquely gifted musician is building his own future. This new wave of the new wave of UK ‘jazz’ artists are stretching definitions into brand new shapes and Marco is one of the explorers.
The lyric video (below) for the single was shot and directed by Rowan Lark and edited by People Staring’s Rich Williams and is a beautiful representation of the song’s gentle potency with Marco’s actual family living their life around Marco’s calm central figure - “family bond is the central theme of this song, so when it came to thinking about how this song was to be presented visually, having my actual family present was a no-brainer” - the EP ‘Francine, i’ is a collection of songs that follow the narrative of an African woman, Francine, who decides to migrate to the west for the sake of her family’s future and throughout the EP, Francine considers the weight of this decision.
‘Lets Build This House’ is released on Friday 9th July on Phlexx Records
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