Loz Speyer’s
INNER SPACE
Loz Speyer - trumpet, flugel
Dee Byrne - alto sax
Xhosa Cole - tenor sax
Olie Brice - double bass
Gary Willcox - drums
Inner Space re-emerged in 2021 with an exciting new lineup, featuring rising star saxophonists Xhosa Cole (winner of the BBC Young Jazz Musician of the Year award, 2018) and Dee Byrne. Already making waves with their own groups, their joining Inner Space opens up new directions in the music, while building on a band sound developed through extensive touring over a longer period (thanks to Arts Council support, 2015 and 2018).
The current Inner Space album “Life on the Edge” (Leo Records 2017) really captures that live, interactive quality in the music - Jazz with a rare warmth and immediacy, with a range of sounds drawing on Bebop, New Orleans, Free Jazz and beyond. Each piece evolves its own balance of structure and freedom and its own particular atmosphere, but the key is the immediacy of the playing, with five highly distinctive musicians working it all out in the here and now.
Inner Space is also now exploring extended forms in the shape of Speyer’s growing set of ‘Jazz Portrait’ compositions - each piece dedicated to a particular inspirational figure in the development of the music - with titles such as: Innate Ornette, Chimes for Grimes, Even Stevens and Sun the One Ra the Far! The pieces based in part on actual meetings, come with personal stories that emerge during live performance.
"Life on the Edge" (2017 Leo Records) - Album reviews
**** 'Superb outing that effectively highlights the leader's jarring and perceptively constructed compositions.'
Glen Astarita, All About Jazz, USA
**** 'The integrity they bring to the emerging free jazz push-pull structure of ’Space Music’ pilots the musicians further towards destinations unknown.' - Philip Clark, Jazzwise, UK
'Upon listening, I was hooked…. the contrapuntal moments when the horns venture just over the edge make me think that if ODJB had arrived 100 years later they may have sounded like this.' - Lance Liddle, Bebop Spoken Here, UK
'It starts with Blue Note- and Ogun-spirit, with Spirits Rejoice-mood and Mingus-power... Rocket Science is
unfailingly retro-futuristic, tardis-blue, open for everything that was considered amazing in the 60s...'
Bad Alchemy magazine, Germany
'A joyous atmosphere reigns throughout the album, bop rhythms coupled with the pure interaction of the quintet… there are solar moments during which the quintet communicates to the audience its own enjoyment in playing these compositions.'
Vittorio, Musiczoom, Italy
'...A constant flow of ideas, the horns sometimes jostling busily for attention, sometimes conversing, sometimes singing sweetly together... While you listen, thoughts of influences fall away and you can just enjoy this newly created music for itself. That is the sound of success.' - Jon Turney, London Jazz News, UK (click for full review)
'Loz has really got his musical concept and the group together - terrific.' - Mike Westbrook, UK
EARLIER LIVE REVIEWS
'There was something utterly warm and personal about this gig, and very moving. Even though the leader’s trumpet was often to the fore, his role seemed as much to create situations that forced the band to think on their feet or to stitch together different fragments of a tune with frantic signalling as the moment dictated...'
- Mike Collins, jazzyblogman, UK (Bristol 2011)
'One of the happiest evenings I've heard in jazz for many a long night... Music as rare as this defies description. Go along and see them! Or get their forthcoming CD...'
- Karl Dallas, the Morning Star, UK (Halifax 2005)
REVIEWS OF FIRST ALBUM - 'FIVE ANIMAL DANCES'
'Music of marvellous clarity, buoyed by loping, shifting rhythms. More lyrical than free, and human than abstract, this is serious fun of the first order.'
- Mike Butler, Metro, UK
'Wonderfully vigorous, sprightly music, infused with bustling, fiercely interactive energy. Recommended.'
- Chris Parker, Vortex Jazz, UK
Five Animal Dances
The first Inner Space album, released on Spherical Records, 2008
Loz Speyer - trumpet, flugelhorn
Chris Biscoe - alto sax, alto clarinet
Julie Walkington - double bass
Seb Rochford - drums
