TC & the Groove Family - First Home (2022)

Soaring horns, jangly highlife guitars, Latin-Caribbean polyrhythms and rousing, socially/politically-charged lyrics collide in pulsing afrobeat and UK jazz conversation on First Home, the debut album by Leeds-raised 10-piece, TC & The Groove Family, forthcoming this June 2022 on the Gilles Peterson-approved, Bristol based label, Worm Discs.

Produced by Nubiyan Twist’s Tom Excell (Onipa, Ego Ella May, Nerija) and following in the footsteps of fellow Leeds-grown talents, Submotion Orchestra and Necktr, TC & The Groove Family’s First Home melds a divergent and international pool of influences whilst also telling the story of a group of friends returning to the city where they once assembled, to chant down the powers that be and further widen the British jazz sound through a distinct 2022 Leeds filter.

Comprising members who learnt their chops performing across Leeds’s thriving live-music circuit, the band formed as the brainchild of drummer/percussionist and Midlands-raised, Tim Cook. All but one of the group studied at the renowned Leeds College Of Music and through their communion on the dancefloors/streets of Leeds’ famous Subdub, Leeds West Indian Carnival and at Cosmic Slop parties, TC & The Groove Family’s mixed-gender and multicultural unit bring together a stylistic range that encompasses Soulful house/UKG-inspired vocals, King Tubby, post-punk/indie and DJ Shadow. Inviting such a disparate group of musicians might have seemed random at first but what was to follow was an unmatched sense of comfort and familiarity.

Recorded over the course of a hot early summer’s week in Sheffield at Yellow Arch Studios, First Home blends dexterous Latin percussion, Central African psychedelia and UK soundsystem culture across eight exchanges of cross-genre exploration, augmented by Tom Excell’s finessed production and studio engineering.