The debut album from the Fraser Smith Quartet is out now on prestigious UK label Ubuntu music.

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'Some jazz musicians can’t help but devote themselves to a specific idiom or era. This is usually a necessity borne out of love and can thereby generate a heartfelt sincerity often absent from the self-consciously cutting-edge. Though nostalgia and romanticism for the ‘Golden Era’ of jazz - usually encased between the carefree 1920s and the moon landings - undoubtedly colour this view, it remains true that many of our finest instrumentalists, singers and fans alike have preferred to peer round the ultra-modern corner, back home to the past. The best of the artists who perform in older styles always avoid pastiche and manage to make bygone music - tied so utterly to specific social-history - seem completely relevant here and now. 

Fraser Smith is such an artist and Tip-Top is his brilliantly executed love-child.'

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By Fraser Urquhart