Tabloid - Hot Gossip (2025) [Hi-Res]

This is the third album from Tabloid, which started in 2020 as a one-man fusion jazz project from guitarist and composer Johannes Wamberg.

Since then, step by step – and not least via the many concerts Tabloid has given since – it has developed into a regular band, which incidentally consists of the same people who have been with the whole way; friends Jonathan Bremer (bass), Oilly Wallace (sax), Felix Ewert (drums) and Malthe Rostrup (keyboards).

All of them are around 30 and gradually an established collection of musicians who frolic widely within all kinds of genres and in many different contexts, and also often in their own right or name – no one mentioned, no one forgotten.

At Hot Gossip, they have all contributed actively for the first time from the start in connection with the creation of the tracks. Many of the tracks were sampled for concerts before they went into the studio, and it has actually given a result that feels alive and fresh in all the 37 minutes the album unfolds into over nine tracks.

If you like the first two albums from Tabloid, you are guaranteed to still feel at home in the listenable g catchy musical landscape. No revolutionary things have happened, but an even clearer, coherent and stylish expression has emerged.

They play and perform as a band, where it is clear that they are united to lift each other in a dynamic whole and not via his own ego. Each of them is fabulously talented musicians, but there are never style exercises or ’because-I-can’ solos on the agenda here.

The album is a rooftop self-table with the kind of fusion jazz that has separated waters and lands for over 50 years. The stylish and funky opening track’ Kintsugi ' pays homage to one of the genre's pioneering bands – Japanese Casiopea – who made their album debut in 1979 and released their latest album last year. Then we are, to put it mildly, well underway, and fortunately there will be no shards of joy since then.

There are also colors and celebrations at ' Mr. Tabloid', whose keyboard and guitar theme, has something Toto about it (and it should be read as a praise), on ’Roses’ and not least in the closing title track, where Wallace puts a thick line under why the rumors about his excellence are not just hot gossip but have quite hold in reality.

Four out of numbers out of nine numbers in a very laid-back tempo is perhaps just one or two very much, because now you don't lose your breath from the more moving numbers either.

That being said, there is a nice sonic balance and lots of lovely lyrical tones to enjoy on tracks like ’Firefly’ and ’Arrival’. Tracks that feel like they were a free-floating soundtrack to a pleasant trek towards better times. With not so accomplished competent musical craftsmen and composers, it could have ended up in the Department of muzak, but now it ends up instead in the Department of real and heartfelt musical well-being.

An absolutely complete and stylish album - just look at the album cover. Decadent, in that modern and inclusive way. Light and lively, in that way that just makes you want to hear the album again, and dream about hearing it all LIVE soon.

And it can actually happen here in February and March, when the band is on tour, just like they play at Heartland Festival and Copenhagen jazzfestival this summer.