Matthew Halsall

Salute to the Sun features lush wholly improvised tunes inspired by ambient rainforest and jungle field recordings, deeply soulful tunes built around hypnotic harp and kalimba patterns, deep Strata-East inspired spiritual jazz grooves and some of Halsall's most beautiful playing and inspiring healing melodies yet recorded.

Composer, trumpeter, producer, DJ and founder of Gondwana Records, Matthew Halsall has always worn many hats. A trumpeter whose unflashy, soulful playing radiates a thoughtful beauty and a composer and band-leader who has created his own rich sonic world, his sound draws on the heritage of British jazz, the spiritual jazz of Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, as well as world music and electronica influences, and even modern art and architecture, to create something uniquely his own. "I feel ‘Salute to the Sun’ is a positive earthy album. I wanted to create something playful but also quite primitive, earthy and organic that connected to the sounds in nature. I was listening to lush ambient field recordings of tropical environments such as jungles and rainforests and found myself drawn to percussive atmospheric sounds which replicated what I was hearing (bells / shakers / chimes / rain sticks) and I started to experiment with more wooden percussive instruments such as kalimba and marimba". The result is arguably Halsall's most beautiful and complete recording to date, playful, charming and imbued with the warmth of the sun and the energy of life.