Polar Bear - Polar Bear

'This is a great piece of work’  **** METRO (UK)

'Electronic jazz outfit find spookier territory.’ **** UNCUT

'Killer, Minimalist cool.’ **** TIME OUT
 
'Brilliant third album' **** THE GUARDIAN
 

Polar Bear have earned a reputation as one of the most creative acts on the UK music scene. Their raw-boned, dramatic music mixes jazz with an electronic soundscape and a punk sensibility, underpinned by break-beat and rock rhythms.

Combined with their compelling contrapuntal melodies and driving energy it's a sound that has already won them critical acclaim and a devoted audience.

Drummer and bandleader Sebastian Rochford, who is as likely to listen to Bjork, Devendra Banhart,  Beethoven and Pig Destroyer as he is to Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane, won the 'Rising Star' Award at the 2004 BBC Jazz Awards. He also leads Fulborn Teversham and is a member of Acoustic Ladyland and alt-rock band Menlo Park.

Alongside Sebastian Rochford, Polar Bear is Pete Wareham (tenor sax), Mark Lockheart (tenor sax), Tom Herbert (bass) and Leafcutter John (electronics).

Polar Bear’s self titled third album follows 2005’s Mercury Award nominated ‘Held on the Tips of Fingers’.

“A third album for Seb Rochford's jazz rats, and by far their best. Pete Wareham and Mark Lockheart are the frontal tenor sax lobes, but what makes this their most accomplished, coherent recorded work is the LP's unitary vibe: by the sound of it, the group now constitute a single brain, a listening one. As the old jazz-hat saying has it: groups that listen together play together. There's nothing easy about the music, but this floating swan's nest of Ornette Coleman, English prog-quirk, trip-hop and electronic twiggy bits doesn't need to be easy to work deep into the ear.” Independent UK  Reviewed by Nick Coleman Sunday, 20 July 2008

“With few inclined to police the borders separating the out-there jazz of Albert Ayler and Sun Ra from the avant-rock of Godspeed You Black Emperor! and Radiohead, and the joyous noise of OOIOO and Sunn O))), conditions have probably never been better for a post-modern jazz combo like Seb Rochford's Polar Bear. Adopting an all-channels-open approach to jazz, they draw on its wide-ranging catalogue of styles with no regard for outdated rivalries. If it feels good, they do it, augmenting bass, drums and saxes with looming electronic drones in "It Snows Again", mandolin and viola in "I Am Alive", twinkling gamelan in "Voices", and sundry squeaks and scratches in "Woollen Blanket". Their real triumph, though, is in balancing experiment with entertainment by incorporating dramatic shifts in tone and attitude, most notably when shifting from the pained squawks and clanks of "Industry" to the minimalist cello and sax cycles of "Leafcup": from free-jazz noise to delicate formality in the blink of an ear.” Rated 4/5 Independent (UK) Reviewed by Andy Gill Friday, 18 July 2008
 
 
 
Reviews of Polar Bear -
 
"This is not nu jazz, acid jazz, Jamie jazz, Parky jazz, Brit jazz, beardo jazz, post-jazz or twee jazz. It's dream jazz."
Paul Morley, Observer Music Monthly

"The big-hitters of the current new wave"
Phil Johnson, Independent On Sunday - ABC

"Polar Bear blast out of the past, full of straight, cool school skills, and detonate the past, bursting with edgy, forward-looking lust."
Paul Morley, Observer Music Monthly "

[Polar Bear] explores a mix of trance-like, long-note music over eerie, hypnotic grooves, full-on electronics and free-improv, melancholic songs, punky thrashes and some of the best two-sax conversation to be heard on the current scene."
John Fordham, The Guardian

"Polar Bear… snort, shriek and wrestle somewhere ominous and charming between the tumultuous energy of Keith Tippett's 50-piece orchestra Centipede, and the eclecticism of Tortoise" Paul Morley, Observer Music Monthly

"Castanet-like handclaps trigger long, guttural sax lines; electronics fly across the speakers and give way to free-blasting; and odd, pogo-dancing themes over bumpy drumming sound like punk interpretations of Parisian café music."
John Fordham, The Guardian

"…a highly creative successor to the equally distinctive Dim Lit" John Fordham, The Guardian "Here's something worth your time. Polar Bear are a significant ripple in the new wave of youthful, ahem, post-jazz".
Nick Coleman, Independent On Sunday - ABC

Tin Angel