The Herbaliser Band - Session 2 (2009)

Session 2 spans more than a decade of Herbaliser live favourites, from the underground beats and breaks of their 1997 album Blow Your Headphones to the more lush, soulful grooves of Same As It Never Was. “It’s interesting that some of these songs are 12 years old, and some just one year old, yet it still feels coherent as an album,” says Jake.

One recurring thread across the album is a clear love of cinematic moods and atmospheres - whether in funky, revved-up, infectious party grooves like Geddim and Amores Bongo or in psychedelic sci-fi epics like Moon Sequence and Theme From Control Centre. This may be booty-shaking club music at heart, but many of these tracks are as dense and richly detailed as the classic movie scores of Quincy Jones, John Barry or Lalo Schifrin.

“One thing Ollie and I agreed when we started was we didn’t want people to just drop a needle on one of our records and hear the same loop over and over, like many records in the 1990s,” says Jake. “We wanted to have changes, like soundtracks or movie themes. With all our instrumentals, we’re always writing music for scenes in imaginary films.”

Although Jake and Ollie have worked with many MC’s and a couple of singers in recent years, they kept the arrangements on Session 2 as pure instrumentals. Future instalments in the series, Jake says, will concentrate on The Herbaliser’s strong track record of vocal collaborations.

Session 2 is another Herbaliser classic, the sound of an ever-evolving band at the peak of their powers. Forget the old Hollywood rule: sometimes a sequel can be just as good as the original. ~ Stephen Dalton