SOLD-OUT - Alfa Mist I New Fossils

"I’ve been focused on who I am in my music, but now I’m exploring where I am," says Alfa Mist, talking about his new album due out in April 2023. "I’m asking: how did I get here?" For the first time ever the British nu jazz, neo-soul artist will arrive in Hungary on tour with his fourth album Variables, where he will perform at the House of Music alongside a fresh local supergroup New Fossils, formed with members of Mörk, Deep Glaze, MORDAI and Laiho, amongst others.

The question voiced in the introduction supplies the backdrop to Alfa Mist's fifth album Variables. Featuring big band swing, head-bobbing boom-bap rhythms and bewitching melodies, the album is spacious, soulful and moving. On this album, released on ANTI, Alfa has achieved his most fully-developed work to date a mix of emotive piano melodies coupled with intuitive grooves and free-flowing jazz improvisation.

Since the release of his first full-length album, Nocturne, in 2015, Alfa Mist has burst onto the scene as one of the UK's most unique musical voices, working with artists such as Jordan Rakei and Tom Misch, drummer Richard Spaven, producer Lester Duval and singer Emmavie. He cannot be pigeonholed into any single genre, since his music ranges from hip-hop beat-making to producing (for artists such as the rapper Loyle Carner), composing neo-classical works for the London Contemporary Orchestra, and arranging music by composer Ólafur Arnalds and pioneering jazz label Blue Note.

An energetic live artist, he is restlessly creative. "Music is the gift that will never cease, because I'm always trying to figure out something new. There will always be a question and I'm just searching for new ways to answer it." And we are lucky enough to get to listen to Alfa Mist's soulful answers.

New Fossils

The first half of the evening will feature a fresh local supergroup, New Fossils, who also impressed the Icelandic band ADHD who once they had finished their own House of Music concert, watched the Hungarians in a house concert. The members of New Fossils are committed to constantly searching out new paths and the inherent tensions in opposites. Their music is permeated with a sense of languor, while the link to the latest wave of contemporary urban jazz evident in the end result is clear. Song-centric compositions are taken to a higher level, sometimes with electronics, sometimes through improvisation. They achieve this with consummate ease given that they were prominent figures on the Hungarian jazz and popular music scene as members of the Dresch Quartet or Mörk long before this band started. Their debut album was recorded in 2022 and will be released in 2023 on their own label, Morotva Records.