Polar Bear, the London-based group led by drummer Seb Rochford, recently announced the release of their fifth album. Titled In Each & Every One, it’s the follow-up to 2010’s oft-anarchic jazz trip Peepers, and will be released through The Leaf Label on 24th March. In the time since that album’s release Rochford has launched a singles club, Days & Nights At The Takeaway, that found him collaborating with the likes of Brian Eno, LV, Spoek Mathambo and more, and worked with rapper Jyager on the album Common Ground. He’s also a key player in Sons Of Kemet, whose album Burn was a Quietus favourite of last year.
All of those influences work their way further into Polar Bear’s new music, which thanks to Leafcutter John’s involvement in the group has always possessed a healthy component of electronic interference; on album cut ‘Be Free’, which you can listen to here, the band’s loose, exploratory meanderings are daubed with delay and reverb, and intercut with passages of anarchic, clattering electronics. ‘Be Free’ was made available as a single at the end of last week, complete with an alternate take (‘Be Free Be Free’) and a remix from roughed-up house producer Gerry Read. You can listen to Read’s remix below, which keeps certain thematic and melodic elements of the original intact while chopping them around a thick, clunking four-to-the-floor rhythm.
