Melt Yourself Down are a band with outstanding pedigree. The band started when saxophonist Pete Wareham (Polar Bear) decided to make some “Nubian-inspired party punk music” and gathered his friends bassist Ruth Goller (Acoustic Ladyland), drummer Tom Skinner and saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings (Sons of Kemet), vocalist Kushal Gaya (Zun Zun Egui) and percussionist Satin Singh to make it happen.
The result is an avant-garde mix of freewheeling jazz, punk and afrobeat, a fast-past monster of sound combining some of the best musical talents out there. While not to everyone’s taste, the output of Melt Yourself Down bashes together some inspired ideas and shows what can happen when you let uber-musicians collide. Their self-titled debut album from 2013 has just been re-released as a special double album, and we’re just hoping this means there is more to come from them in 2015.
Conal Dougan