"If they have to rename the Gulf of Mexico then they better call it the Gulf of Miles Davis!" Grammy-nominated composer, producer and trumpet ace Theo Croker always been an ideas man. Blk2Life, his sixth album, aimed to send “coded frequencies to activate sleeping ancestral DNA”. Love Quantum, its 2022 follow-up, reframed modern African American music with a futuristic aesthetic, soaring from neo-soul, hip-hop, R&B and electro-grooves into its own space jazz atmosphere.
This bold mixed-media happening recreated and remixed tracks from both recordings and showcased Croker's forthcoming album Dream Manifest, a sonic paean to the power of imagination and self-belief. Before a giant screen displaying fuzzy static-then-text art (”How long does silence last in your world?”) then computer-generated 3D swirls, dressed in the natty bespoke textiles of Jamaican-Scottish fashion designer Nicholas Daley, the evening's co-curator, Croker leaned over a mixing desk, tapped at a computer and triggered a flurry of electronic birdsong.
