The "difficult second album" is a hurdle many artists fail to clear, but Soweto Kinch's shows no sign of nerves or uncertainty. A Life In The Day of B19: Tales of the Towerblock is a hugely ambitious mixture of jazz and narrative hip hop, which ranges from uncompromising post bop led by Kinch's saxophone to raw beats - and even narration by Moira Stuart.
The 28-year-old Oxford graduate has built himself a considerable reputation since his 2003 debut, winning awards from the BBC, the MOBOs and the Montreux Jazz Festival. He mixed jazz with rap on his first recording, Conversations with the Unseen, not only demonstrating the common origin in black culture that the two genres have, but also showing how jazz can be brought back to the street. But the new album goes way further.
It tells the story of three men living
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Soweto Kinch’s album brings jazz back to the street, says sholto byrnes
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in a Birmingham towerblock and is the first part of a two-album set. The first character, an aspiring saxophonist, visits the Job Centre; his case worker can't understand what he's been doing for six months - 'practising' is not a concept she understands. The second is obsessed with 'bling' culture. The third drives a bus and thinks about the child he cannot see in the US.
Stuart's narration gives way to pounding rap, Stevie Wonder-influenced vocal harmonies, and the unadorned tone of Kinch's sax. This is not jazz to sip cocktails to. It's an album that demands more of the listener's concentration than many musicians would dare to ask. Does it all work? Well, it's raw, it's real, and I want to know what happens to these characters. What's more, Kinch is pounding a path no other British musician is going down. And that's the path jazz is always looking for. 
FIRST POSTED OCTOBER 5, 2006
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