Ewan Bleach - Mystic Mood (2026)

London-based multi-instrumentalist Ewan Bleach (clarinetist, saxophonist, pianist, singer, composer, teacher and session musician) specialises in the early styles of jazz, ragtime, blues and swing. Alongside this he works on new-music projects with various ensembles and has dipped into Afrobeat and traditional Turkish music. He leads the London bands Cable Street Rag Band and The Fleeting Paradise Orchestra and has played internationally with notable groups from across the pond. His core passion is pre-war music “for dancing and romancing”: he happily plays weddings and private parties, setting the mood rather than seeking the spotlight. His passionate, guileless music seems to exist in its own temporal bubble.

His new album Mystic Mood has drawn enthusiastic responses. Jonny Greenwood of Radiohead rejects the label “retro” as meaningless, arguing that the musicians reproduce not old recordings but the “enormous yes” Philip Larkin compared to love, in a sound that is by turns anarchic, sweet, melancholic and joyous. Critic Stevie Chick hears “captured transmissions” from other universes and pasts: cryptic melodies moving in their own rhythms, telepathic interplay among the musicians, horns trading solos, and pre-bop jazz enriched by Bleach’s far-flung musical travels. Among the highlights he names the jauntily melancholic September Rag, the sonorous clarinet croon of Sipihr Song and the restless rhythms of Rolling Home, and he ranks the album’s uniqueness alongside the work of Moondog.

Tracklist:
01-01 Ewan Bleach - Mystic Mood [4:03]
01-02 Ewan Bleach - Rosa Lee Alley [5:17]
01-03 Ewan Bleach - St Petersburg Gelatery Blues [3:35]
01-04 Ewan Bleach - September Rag [4:00]
01-05 Ewan Bleach - Fleet River [5:03]
01-06 Ewan Bleach - Sipihr Song [4:07]
01-07 Ewan Bleach - Spring Schottische/The Colour of the Sky [4:48]
01-08 Ewan Bleach - Looming Shadows [5:18]
01-09 Ewan Bleach - Rolling Home [5:08]