Theon Cross - Intra-I (2022 New Soil Vinyl LP)

Theon Cross - Intra-I | Vinyl LP - 2022 New Soil (NS0015LP)

• Theon Cross's second album as a leader, recorded at Hoxa HQ, London and produced by Cross and Emre Ramazanoglu; a duo record built around tuba and drums, expanded across ten tracks with guest vocalists including Shumba Maasai, Afronaut Zu and Consensus, and closing with a two-tuba improvisation with Oren Marshall
• Dedicated to the memory of Errol Cross, Theon's father; the album was made partly through the grief of his death, and "Watching Over (Bless Up Dad)" addresses it directly
• Vinyl LP on Cross's own New Soil label, lacquer cut at Electric Mastering, pressed at Schallplattenfabrik Pallas GmbH

Theon Cross came up through Tomorrow's Warriors — the London jazz education programme run by Gary Crosby OBE — alongside Nubya Garcia, Moses Boyd and others who would form the centre of the UK jazz revival of the late 2010s. He went on to the Guildhall School of Music and became a core member of Sons of Kemet, Shabaka Hutchings's Mercury Prize-nominated group, for which the tuba provided not decoration but structural weight. His debut solo album Fyah (Gearbox, 2019) made explicit how far he had pushed the instrument's possibilities. Intra-I — the title meaning roughly "inner self" — goes further, stripping the ensemble to its minimum. The record's core is a duo: Cross on tuba and Emre Ramazanoglu on drums, percussion, keys, effects and programming. Ramazanoglu is a producer whose credits span Ill Considered, Noel Gallagher and Spiritualized, and his engineering shapes the record's scale considerably beyond what two people might be expected to produce.

Cross made the album partly through the grief of losing his father, Errol Cross, during the pandemic. "Watching Over (Bless Up Dad)" is a direct address. The music draws on jazz, dub, reggae, soca, grime and hip-hop without announcing the transitions — the tuba moving between sub-bass pressure, melody and drone within single tracks. Guest vocalists appear on five of the ten pieces: Shumba Maasai on "Roots," Afronaut Zu and Ahnansé on "The Spiral," the Mathurin siblings on "40tude," Consensus on "Play To Win." "Universal Alignment" closes the album as a duo for two tubas — Cross with Oren Marshall, the tubist who preceded him in Sons of Kemet.