Basmati Vice | photo by Tim Koen
Bazmati Vice announces new album, shares music video for “Slow Emotions”
Smoky, soulful vocals? Check. Soothing piano and atmospheric sounds? Yes. Sick guitar solos and groovy beats? You bet! And that’s just the tip of the iceberg Philly’s jazz fusion group Bazmati Vice‘s upcoming album. Onward & Outward will be released on May 7, but the group has given their first taste of the album with a music video for “Slow Emotions.”
As co-founder Andrew Szczurek explains in an email, “Slow Emotions” has gone through some changes since its conception.
Slow Emotions is the third and last single from our new album “Onward & Outward”, and was actually one of the first songs we ever wrote back in our college days! Originally a raucous basement banger with nonsensical lyrics, it took on a new life when we started playing it with Eric Proctor, the band’s drummer and newest member. We re-arranged it with more of a modern jazz influence and new lyrics about the joyful escape of music, sung alternately by me and guest vocalist Ari Michaels. The result is a genre-defying tribute to music itself, and one of our favorite recordings to date.
The track features vocalist Ari Michaels, who also lent her voice to three other songs on Onward & Outward. The whole thing has distinct jazz tones, but leans into several other genres. To an extent, it defies the classification of a single genre, and the rest of the album promises to follow suit. Szczurek details the way that “Slow Emotions,” and in fact the entirety of Onward & Outward, is a culmination of the group’s experimental nature.
Our upcoming album Onward & Outward is a tribute to change and growth, which our band has experienced a lot of over the last 7 years. From college basement hard rock jams to polished indie tunes, we’ve experimented with many musical flavors, and this collection of songs is our favorite blend yet. We were blessed to have Ari’s incredible vocal talents on half of the album, as well as Eric’s brilliant and playful drumming — the two of them really elevated the compositions to new heights! We’re very proud of this new release, which took us over a year to mix and master remotely, and can’t wait to soon be able to perform these songs live.
Be sure to check out the video for “Slow Emotions” below. If you like what you hear, you can pre-order Onward & Outward over on Bandcamp. Or you can pre-save it on Spotify, which will also automatically enter you in a raffle to win a merch bundle.