First ever Empirical double album due in the late-summer
Empirical recorded their fourth album Tabula Rasa earlier this year during a five-day recording session at Assault and Battery 2 studio in Willesden, north west London. The new work, the award-winning post-bop band’s first double album, is to be released by Naim jazz on 26 August. String quartet the Benyounes Quartet join Empirical on Tabula Rasa, and their association stems from first working together as part of Empirical’s tenure as Golubovich Jazz Scholars at Trinity Laban conservatoire of music and dance.
The band say: “The music is ambitious, risky, epic and full of stories – everything you’ve come to expect from Empirical.” Tracks are: ‘The Simple Light Shines Brightest’, ‘Bellsonian Scales’, ‘The Prophet’, ‘Ascent’, ‘Descent’, ‘Empiricism’, ‘Studies In Time (The Healer)’, ‘Where Wisdom Is Found’, ‘One for ‘Bones’ Jones’, ‘The World In His Mind’, ‘Scoffie (The Moody One)’, ‘Repentance’, ‘Studies In Time (Relative)’, and ‘Conflict In Our Time’.
Lewis Wright top left Shaney Forbes, Nathaniel Facey, and Tom Farmer; with the album cover above