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Mark de Clive-Lowe
During his hugely formative decade at the epicenter of London’s underground music scene, MdCL helped evolve broken beat alongside some of the UK’s most forward-thinking trailblazers, establishing himself as a new voice in progressive electronic music and leading global tastemaker DJ Gilles Peterson to designate him “the main behind a million great tunes”. Since 2008, MdCL has called Los Angeles, California home where his acclaimed club night CHURCH has taken his signature sound of technology and beat-infused jazz mash-up from coast to coast and around the globe. Equal parts pianist, composer and live production wizard, MdCL’s sets are a treat for the listeners, the dancers, the progressives and the purists alike - as he casually erases the lines between genres and eras.
Whether he’s remixing classic Blue Note Records in real time, on stage joined by the likes of Kamasi Washington, Nia Andrews or Eric Harland, improvising solo piano or creating live soundtracks to classic film material, MdCL is an artist in constant evolution, reaching for that next level. He has performed with Harvey Mason, Miguel Atwood-Ferguson, Dwight Trible and Jean Grae; remixed Shirley Horn, Hiatus Kaiyote, Mantombi Matotiyana and Jerry Goldsmith; and recorded as producer and collaborator with artists all over the planet. Having contributed to over 300 releases, to call MdCL prolific is something of an understatement.
MdCL has featured at festivals including Montreal Jazz, North Sea Jazz, Uberjazz, Tokyo Crossover Jazz Festival, Montreux Jazz Atlanta and is an established performer globally from South Africa to Japan and across the US and Europe.
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Mark de Clive-Lowe, Melanie Charles, Shigeto: Hotel San Claudio
by Chris May
Lovers of Pharoah Sanders' fundamentally acoustic spiritual-jazz may experience something of a road-to-Damascus moment listening to Hotel San Claudio: the realisation that high-tech, digital-era excursions can, in the right hands, bring more than just novelty to the music. Almost half of Hotel San Claudio--a collaboration between keyboardist Mark de Clive-Lowe, vocalist and flautist Melanie Charles and drummer Shigeto--is an explicit tribute to Sanders, with two complementary but singular versions of his The Creator Has A Master Plan" ...
read moreMark de Clive-Lowe: Celebrating Pharoah Sanders
by Chris May
It is a curious thing, but among the present day champions of Pharoah Sanders' fundamentally acoustic music are two early adopters of post-production heavy, digitally-enabled, high-tech mutoid jazz: bassist and producer Bill Laswell and keyboardist and broken-beat pioneer Mark de Clive-Lowe, whose Freedom: Celebrating The Music Of Pharoah Sanders (Soul Bank) was released in July 2022. Laswell, a generation older than de Clive-Lowe, was first out of the traps in the 1990s, with his avant-funked up productions ...
read moreMark de Clive-Lowe & Friends: Freedom: Celebrating The Music Of Pharoah Sanders
by Chris May
Albums by artists who are best known for their work outside jazz are best approached with caution. Keyboard player Mark de Clive-Lowe's Freedom: Celebrating The Music Of Pharoah Sanders is one such. Before moving to Los Angeles, Clive-Lowe lived in London, where he was prominent in the late 1990s/early 2000s broken beat movement, which, without getting too complicated about it, fused electronic dance music with a little jazz and funk. Clive-Lowe, however, is no wannabe jazz musician. ...
read moreMark de Clive-Lowe at Nublu 151
by Tyran Grillo
Mark de Clive-Lowe Nublu 151 Winter Jazzfest New York, NY January 10, 2019 New York City's Winter Jazzfest is about nothing if not cross-pollination. This guiding principle crystallized at every venue, but perhaps nowhere so psychosomatically as at Nublu 151, where Mark de Clive-Lowe spearheaded late-night jamming of a decidedly electronic persuasion. Trading in his jazzier hat, as worn with such humility in his recent Heritage, for that of DJ, he promised the dance ...
read moreMark de Clive-Lowe: Heritage
by Tyran Grillo
On Heritage, pianist/composer/producer Mark de Clive-Lowe sows two rhythmic seeds for every melodic plant reaped from an autobiographical crop. The half-Japanese, half-New Zealander's spiritual kinship with Japan runs deep. His blending of electronics and sampling elicits a precision that only enhances the freer passages, and provides a fitting platform for his copilots Josh Johnson (alto sax and flute), Teodross Avery (tenor sax), Brandon Eugene Owens (bass), Carlos Niño (percussion) and Brandon Combs (drums). At home in jazz and ...
read moreMark de Clive-Lowe: Live at the Blue Whale
by Phillip Woolever
This fine, four-song EP provides testimonial insight to de Clive-Lowe's influences and inspiration, through three cover songs and one extended original piece recorded at a Los Angeles club during March of last year. Contrasting some of de Clive-Lowe's more recent beat-based techno projects this is primarily and predominately a jazz record, and quite an enjoyable one, indeed. De Clive-Lowe joins a well-rounded quartet with Josh Johnson on sax and flute, Brandon Eugene Owens on bass and ...
read moreJason McGuiness
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Take The Space Trane
From: Take The Space TraneBy Mark de Clive-Lowe