After their exciting 2019 debut album, You Can’t Steal My Joy, Ezra Collective have returned with their first new track of 2022, ‘May the Funk Be With You’. It’s a smooth and melodic four and a half minutes, which can be described as ‘space-jazz’. Their debut featured electrifying and memorable collaborations with Loyle Carner, KOKOROKO, and Jorja Smith.
This makes it even more exciting to see what they’ll unleash in their new album. ‘May the funk be with you’ follows Ezra Collective’s grime infused single, ‘More Than A Hustler‘; a collaboration with Novelist released in December 2021 and the band’s first new music in over a year.
Ezra Collective have also announced two small, warm up shows in Paris and London (which are now sold out) at the end of March. This is in addition to their performance at the BBC 6 Music Festival, which sold out in just 48 hours.
The track
With a funky start, piano, trumpets and snare drums in tow, the instrumental track is so smooth. I adore how free flowing it is, with a syncopated bass which comes in a bit later. Ezra Collective proves you don’t need lyrics for a track to be interesting. The entire four minutes is both soothing, and captivating. The only songs which had lyrics in their debut album were ‘Reason in Disguise’ with Jorja Smith, and ‘What am I to do?’ with Loyle Carner (both well worth a listen).
I feel as though their new album will likely follow a similar suit and be almost entirely instrumental. Their collaborative piece with Grime MC and record producer Novelist, shows the jazz supergroup slightly branching out from the effortless and exuberant tracks we’ve heard from them before.
They have also released a fun visualizer music video, in conjunction with the track, showing the band cruising through space.
This new music signals an exciting 2022 for them. Hopefully, we’ll only see more tracks, touring and festival dates from them.
Listen to ‘May the funk be with you’ here!
Listen to their first single with Novelist, ‘More than a Hustler’ here
