Jazz’s critics often overlook the simple truth that when the wide ranging, often maligned, genre locks into a groove, it can be as rhythmically charged and dance‑inducing as anything on a club system. That pulse has been there from the earliest swing bands through the breakbeat gold of Blue Note and the fusion era, right up to today’s easy dialogue between jazz and hip‑hop. Raffy Bushman’s solo debut taps directly into that lineage. Across its seven tracks, moments of introspection sit inside an undeniable forward drive, the whole record coated in an infectious rhythmic sheen. The centrepiece, ‘Renaissance,’ is the clearest example. A springy double‑bass line sets the foundation before Bushman’s piano is at first coordinated with the bass riff but quickly pushes the tune into a rolling surge of ideas. When the trio suddenly drops away, he unspools a lattice of interlocking keyboard figures which are almost Bach like in their intricate, looping patterns that toy with time and tug the ear in multiple directions at once. The band then snaps back together for a final, exhilarating climb. This is music that balances complexity with immediacy, full of heat and precision, and delivered with the confidence of a trio who can play it structured and yet still sound loose, in the moment and totally responsive to each other.

Raffy Bushman’s path to his first solo album reads like a long, looping circuit finally hitting the home straight. He emerged in the UK jazz underground as a pianist with a sharp ear for the places where jazz and hip‑hop meet, building early projects around that rhythmic dialogue. As his ambitions widened, so did his ensembles: string‑laden classical‑jazz hybrids, chamber‑sized experiments, and collaborations that pushed him deeper into arranging and orchestration. Those years broadened his palette without ever pulling him away from the instinct that drives all his work, namely taking familiar forms and bending them into something newly alive. Today he is back at the piano trio format that first defined him, carrying the weight and clarity of everything learned since. With Matt Davies and Alec Hewes anchoring the rhythm section, he folds his arranging experience into a leaner setting, creating seven pieces that move fluidly between tender audio lyricism, tight, bouncing grooves and bursts of harmonic colour. The album plays through like a summing‑up of the journey so far; a musician whose roots in hip‑hop, jazz, classical and gospel have fused into a voice that is indisputably his own, and a trio sound buffed and polished by years spent exploring every corner of his musical identity.

The album’s lead single,‘The Leopard,’ arrives late in the running order but acts as one of its clearest statements of intent. Built on a deceptively simple three‑note riffing piano figure, it grows into a full‑bodied groove that lifts off with real force. Bushman tips his hat to the film that inspired the song title, echoing its themes of clinging to tradition, yet he twists that idea by blending bebop phrasing with a lightly Latin, swung backbeat. As he explains, “the foundation of the composition is the left-hand repeated figure, which I had on a loop in my head for about a year before starting to add the other elements. I like how this figure blends with the very slow legato melody – this piece is all about textures.” That interplay between repetition and colour gives the track its charge as we hear a simple motif transforming into something vivid and propulsive. The album is bookended by ‘Two Peopleʼ and ‘New Life,ʼ both of which offer serenity and a reflectiveness to the conversation, which are highly understandable when learning of the new relationship developments and impending fatherhood anticipation that was inspiring Raffy while this album came together. “’Two People’ was written for my partner,” he explains, “who encouraged me to record my solo pieces, whilst ‘New Life’ gave me the opportunity to step out of the strict stylistic aesthetic I normally work within, and just express myself, and how I feel about becoming a father.” Considering all these real life, circumstantial, musical and background elements that hit a timely synchronicity for the birth of this album, we can safely say that it instantly stands as one of the pivotal moments in a serious jazz artists career. Furthermore, ‘New Life’ has a timelessness and classicism about it that will ensure it endures far beyond the year of its creation.

Danny Neill

The album is available via this link: https://amzn.to/4vyHbGm