Due March 4 on Funkiwala Records, Archie the Goldfish’s “Begin Again” starts with gentle guitar, keys, and sultry trumpet, which is echoed softly in the background too. Nadia Basurto’s then vocals ease in – gentle, enigmatic, and smooth as velvet. She sings of longing and painting dreams in colors and raising our voices on the air: “rising to surprising heights, alight with solar flare, all longing gone below.”
All is gentle so far, until the guitar and percussion lead a rhythm change into a sashaying sway with trumpet and vocals feeling the groove now, propelled by the drums and guitar which form a tightly bonded rhythm section.
“Can you tell me why it’s so hard to say that the that the poor must eat and the rich must pay? What the hell is wrong with us today?”
The middle section of this track is a dialogue between Archie the Goldfish’s keys, guitar, percussion and trumpet, singing its improvisational voice across the top. The rhythms uplift and the trumpet rises until the guitar sets a new pace and the vocals tell of forests aflame: We demand to start again and begin again.
“When the oceans choke and the rivers dry, and the plumes of smoke stain the morning sky – ‘What the hell is wrong with us?’ we cry.”
Trumpet player Graeme Flowers (Clement Regert’s Wildcard, Hexagonal, Gregory Porter, Paul Weller, Kyle Eastwood, and many more) formed Archie the Goldfish with Chris Bestwick. The guitarist has played the WOMAD festival and toured with Flowers, been part of the U.K. jazz scene and played abroad with Turkish, Moroccan and Algerian musicians and for the past few years led projects in Helsinki, Prishtina, and the Hague. Bestwick and Flowers met on tour and worked together at the Pori Jazz Festival in Finland, where Bestwick met his future wife.
In 2020, Archie the Goldfish released Hidden Depths, an album inspired by the desire to break down boundaries between improvised music and the wider audience. Water and Light followed last summer, introducing Nadia Basurto. She is a Barcelona native, now living in the Hague, where she graduated from cum laude from the Royal Conservatory. She has performed in Europe, Korea, Japan, and Mexico, released an album with her trio For All We Know in 2016, and collaborated with pianist Miguel Rodriguez.
Flowers and Bestwick are also joined on “Begin Again” by Kishon Khan on keys and Simon Lea on drums. Kishon Khan is a pianist, composer, arranger, and singer born in Bangladesh and raised in London. He trained as a classical pianist but turned to jazz in his teens. Khan graduated from the Royal Conservatory and now leads band Lokkhi Terra; he has collaborated with artists across the globe, including the late great Hugh Masekela and Tony Allen.
In 1999, Khan founded the Afro-Cuban funk-jazz outfit Motimba whose lineup included Graeme Flowers of Archie the Goldfish. Current collaborations include Afro Dub collection Soothsayers, contemporary-jazz artist Arun Ghosh and hip hop artist King Pin. Khan won the South Asian International Film Festival award for his soundtrack to the film The Last Thakur, released in 2009.
Simon Lea studied at Brunel University and the Guildhall School of Music. In the late 1990s, he began playing in London clubs with musicians including Finn Peters, Dave O’Higgins, and Guy Barker and in 2006 became house drummer at Ronnie Scott’s. He is now an in-demand session and touring drummer, who plays various genres. He performed in David Bowie’s musical Lazarus for a three-month run in 2016. He then toured globally in 2017 as part of Temperance Movement.
Lea’s album Deeper Cut followed in 2018, reaching the No. 1 slot in the U.K. rock, indie, and vinyl charts and No. 6 in the U.K. Album Chart. He played on John Newman’s platinum-selling album Tribute and Rizzle Kick’s gold-selling album Roaring 20s. In 2006, he became house drummer at Ronnie Scott’s. He has toured, recorded, or performed with Katie Melua, Boy George, Rumer, Just Jack, Beverley Knight, Dionne Warwick, Rod Stewart, and many more.
Together on “Begin Again,” Archie the Goldfish sparks a discussion about how societies can rebuild themselves in better ways. As yet, there is not much evidence of that happening. But this song asks for things to change and, typical of Graeme Flowers and Chris Bestwick’s humor, Archie the Goldfish adds that good music is always consolation if they don’t.
There is an important message surrounding “Begin Again” and we should listen it, and the wonderful, beautiful music that Archie the Goldfish creates.
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