Cymande (sah-man-day). The most important black British group of their generation, a band so many people have heard, but yet not “heard of.” In the early 1970’s in South London, a group of black musicians, who all emigrated to the UK from the Caribbean as children, formed the group.  Led by Patrick Patterson (guitars, vocals) and Steve Scipio (bass, vocals) Cymande was so unique and ahead of its time that, notwithstanding the success in the States in the early ‘70s, it hasn’t been until recent years that the general public has truly begun to catch on. Their first three albums: Cymande (1972), Second Time Round (1973) and Promised Heights (1974) combined jazz, funk, soul, and Caribbean grooves to create a unique sound of their own; music that was both political and spiritual. While they found success in the U.S. (referred to above) becoming the first British band to ever perform at New York’s legendary Apollo Theater and touring arenas and stadiums with Al Green, there was little enthusiasm from the British music industry to promote or patronize home grown black acts individually or as a collective scene.  “Total lack of interest,” Steve says bluntly. “Had we been a white rock band returning to the UK we wouldn’t have been ignored, and that impacted on our thinking at the time. How long should we put up with this? So… let’s take a break, get our heads together and revisit in a couple of years.” That couple of years became almost forty. However, their music lived on as new generations of artists discovered and reworked their pioneering sounds.  Over and over again, several tracks from their albums were sampled by golden age hip-hop icons like De La Soul, The Fugees, MC Solaar, Masta Ace, EPMD, and Gang Starr just to name a few.   Now, in 2025 they return to finish what they started.  The band’s forthcoming new album (via BMG) Renascence is ten shots of purest Cymande. A true return to form and jewel in the crown of their iconic discography, Renascence picks up where their 1974 album Promised Heights left off – a spiritual and sonic follow-up, bringing a fresh modern edge to their iconic sound.  Produced by Ben Baptie and recorded in London at RAK Studios, Renascence has everything both old fans and new would want from a Cymande album – spacious, haunting grooves that build over time, letting saxophones wail, drumbeats echo, and guitars trill, on tracks like “Coltrane,” and “How We Roll” which features Jazzie B. “Our singer Ray has worked a lot with Jazzie B from Soul II Soul, so he got in touch with him and asked him if he’d like to consider collaborating,” Patrick says.  “Lovely man. Big fan of Cymande, and he’s also in the documentary. The track talks about us and our brethren, our people, our community...” The first single from the album “Chasing An Empty Dream,” features a thundering bass line opening by Steve. “The original creation was Steve’s,” Patrick remarked. “Chasing An Empty Dream speaks to how Steve and I have worked over the years. We both tend to go back and look at what we have and think ‘is there a core idea that supports the record?’ I went back through his material and ‘Chasing’ stuck out to me. He’d put it away in his mind; I thought it merited consideration for the album.” “The song is a reflection on what's happening in the world, with everyone's focus moving away from family to individuality, the materialism of this society,” Steve commented.  “You can accumulate wealth, but without family it's an empty dream. Social media affecting children, being left to their own devices with uncontrolled access to negative influences.” Elsewhere on Renascence are soulful ballads like “Road To Zion” and “Only One Way” which features Celeste on lead vocals.   “We got together with her in New York some time ago,” Patrick remarked.  “Celeste approached it melodically and lyrically from a perspective we thought was great, we came back to the UK and perfected it. Her performance is wonderful. It deserved an orchestral arrangement, and we had an arranger, Chris Cameron, who could elevate it up to the firmament.” Continuing to be led by its founding members Patrick Patterson (guitars, vocals) & Steve Scipio (bass, vocals), Cymande now also comprises long time members, Adrian Reid (keyboardist) and Raymond Simpson (vocalist), with the full complement of players being Richard Bailey (drums), Donald Gamble (percussion), Denys Baptiste (saxophone) Kevin Davy (trumpet) and Toni Kofi (saxophone). The soul of the band has never been restricted to any individual player – Cymande’s guiding spirit is that inimitable mix of Caribbean sensibility and English experience. “There needs to be a connectedness,” says Steve. “A need to buy into what we try to do musically, the messages.” “We represent a community,” Patrick says. “Our musicians tend to come out of that community, recommended by others who worked with us or know us.” Earlier this year, Cymande’s unique story was told on the on big screen for the first time in the UK (via BFI) and in cinemas around the world (via Abramorama) with Getting It Back: The Story Of Cymande (directed by award winning director Tim Mackenzie-Smith).  This empowering and thought-provoking documentary shows the band’s depth of influence across decades and features interviews with Mark Ronson, Laura Lee and Mark Speer (Khruangbin), DJ Maseo (De La Soul), Jazzie B (Soul II Soul), Cut Chemist, Jim James (My Morning Jacket), Louie Vega, Kool DJ Red Alert, and so many others. The film debuted at SXSW in 2022 and has now travelled the world twice over.  It continues to play in cinemas around the world globally. Since Cymande’s reformation several years ago, they have been quite active touring.  Recently they’ve played at We Out Here and All Points East to audiences packed with teens and 20-somethings. “And singing along with the songs!” marvels Steve, “They’re familiar with the material.” “It’s the hip-hop community loving the music through crate digging,” confirms Patrick. “The response has been fantastic,” Steve continues. “Even far out places like Romania where we played earlier this year was one of the best receptions we had anywhere.  Our first tour of Australia also happened this year and we were so surprised that we did ten shows in two weeks and every single one sold out. I don’t know if we could ask for any more than that expression of love.” A headline European tour earlier in 2024 in Europe led to every single show selling out as well.  The band will return to the road globally in 2025 to support Renascence.  Their success story continues to reach new heights and new audience’s decades into their career. 

On the surface, Bathe’s radiant R&B is as inviting as the waves lapping the shoreline at a five-star tropical resort. But listen closer, and there are shadowy depths within.  Singer-songwriter Devin Hobdy and guitarist-producer Corey Smith-West, who formed Bathe eight years ago while attending the University of Pennsylvania, make music that sounds like a balm for the anxieties of modern life. This flowing sense of ease contributed to their 2021 debut album Bicoastal drawing in more than 30 millions streams on Spotify. Amid that record’s unhurried grooves, though, were pangs of yearning and desperation that complicated Bathe’s placement in so many chill vibes playlists. The Brooklyn duo’s follow-up LP, Inside Voice(s)—which will be released in two parts, with Side A arriving September 13, 2024 and Side B out in early 2025—doubles down on this beguiling contrast. Serene chords, luxurious beats, and infinitely hummable melodies soundtrack songs about familial grief, numbing millennial angst, and the cyclical despair of underserved communities. Featuring vocal production from Jake Aron (L’Rain, Snail Mail), mixing by Joe Visciano (SZA, Kendrick Lamar), and mastering by Joe LaPorta (David Bowie, Beach House), Inside Voice(s) follows in the lineage of albums like Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On and Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange in being both lush and sorrowful—a plea to the present filled with ghosts of the past, emerging in an era when the future seems anything but certain.  “Most of the songs on this album deal in that dissonance of being split between two places—where you are and where you want to be,” explains Smith-West. Running with the thought, Hobdy adds, “It’s about the idea that you might not ever get to the place you want to be, that you might feel that longing for the rest of your life, and that’s as OK as it can be.” Underlining this split between reality and fantasy, the title of first single “Avalon” refers to both the sensible Toyota sedan and the mythical island paradise. Atop dreamy guitars and a boom-bap beat, Hobdy sings of being listless and unemployed—“out of shape in a rat race with no rules”—before letting his mind wander to more idyllic locales. Listening to the song is like standing in a crowded subway car en route to another longshot job interview as you stare at an ad for a faraway beach; its smoothness is a mirage in itself. For both Hobdy and Smith-West, two millennials entering their 30s who have already endured several corporate layoff cycles, songs like “Avalon” and the similarly disillusioned track “Furloughed” are all-too-relatable slices of life for a generation that’s never known stability, that can only escape by staring at a screen. Throughout Inside Voice(s), family members are evoked in tribute and remembrance as they guide Bathe through doubt spiritually and musically. As the duo worked to write and record the album over the last few years, Hobdy moved back into his mom’s house to help take care of his ailing grandmother. The album’s hushed closing ballad “Bbyboy” finds Hobdy empathizing with his grandma, who passed away last year, with aching lines like, “Your hands are unfamiliar to you/Time moved, your memories forgot about you.” Smith-West also lost a grandmother recently, and she is immortalized via a voicemail that appears on “Hosannas,” a heavenly caress of a song about the inner turmoil that comes with losing your religion. Meanwhile, the legacy of Smith-West’s grandfather, a reggae guitarist, is heard through his grandson’s playing and production, especially on the psychedelic dub odyssey “Heaven.” And the influence of Hobdy’s mother, who studied jazz and took her son along with her to nightclub gigs in his youth, is felt in his searching vocal lines and pillowy harmonies. Talking about his exacting mom, Hobdy admits with a smile, “She still gives me notes after every show.” The album’s two halves are a reflection of the differences between Hobdy and Smith-West as people and artists. Smith-West, who grew up in the Connecticut suburbs, tends to gravitate toward sounds that are brighter and bouncier; Hobdy, who came of age in Jamaica, Queens, usually ends up with something darker and moodier when he sits down to write a song. On Inside Voice(s), Side A is warmer and fuzzier, a more complex and rewarding extension of the styles Bathe explored on Bicoastal; Side B is spare and pained, dotted with exploratory flourishes—blown-out outros, featherlight dance beats, dancehall loops—that hint at the myriad directions the duo could go next.  After the success of their first album, Bathe came to understand what tens of millions of streams can and can’t do for an artist, both creatively and financially, in today’s music landscape. It gave them confidence to trust their instincts as songwriters. It served as a beacon for like-minded collaborators, who helped them achieve the sound they were striving for. It offered some welcomed financial latitude—though not nearly as much as their friends and family thought it would bring. “Our heads can’t get too big because there’s a reality check around every corner,” Hobdy says. Inside Voice(s) is all about those moments when the real world intrudes on our best laid plans, when our inner monologues chafe against the image that’s present to the outside world. Its waters are welcoming, just don’t forget about the undertow.