I Rise With The Birds CD

Singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Pete Josef has always made music that prioritises soul and feeling over sticking to arbitrary genre templates. It's what made his 2015 debut album Colours such a refreshing listen. It is also evident throughout long-awaited follow-up I Rise With The Birds, a gorgeously tactile, positive and life-affirming set that sees Josef add his immaculate blue-eyed soul vocals to songs that variously mix, match and mangle elements of jazz, broken beat, tropicala, Latin soul, jazz-funk, downtempo grooves and easy listening. Rich in atmospheric string arrangements, hazy horns, and breezy instrumentation, it's the kind of set that doesn't need to try too hard to entertain. In other words, it's a brilliant follow-up to Colours that could well find an audience well beyond his existing underground fan base.