The Plain Black T-Shirts are a Melbourne ensemble playing soul jazz, funk, Latin, and everything delicious in between. Trumpet, flugelhorn, saxes, flute, trombone, Wurlitzer, drums, bass, guitar; the full spread, recorded live at Pughouse Studios in Thornbury. The Plain Black T-Shirts are built around a simple idea: put great players in a room together, set up the mics, press record, let the magic happen and don’t get in the way. Only play what you hear, only play what you feel. Capture all the mojo.
Their debut album Intentionally Left Blank is the document of that experiment: eight tracks of soul jazz, funk, Latin, reggae, and slow-burning ballads, captured live at Pughouse Studios in Thornbury. The writing comes from the group, with one Nat Adderley classic (“Sweet Emma”) thrown in for good measure. What you hear is the band as it actually sounds in a room; the tunes and arrangements provide structure without strangling it. Designed to be as much fun as possible, there’s room for band members to stretch out and totally go for it, to reach for something just beyond their grasp. These human moments of audacity are left in and celebrated.
It’s music that can get you off the couch and onto the floor, or stop you still and make you feel something. Sometimes both are in the same track. Fans of Vulfpeck, Khruangbin, Soulive, and the deeper end of the soul jazz catalogue will find a lot to love here. No algorithms were harmed in the making of this music.
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