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What does jazz smell like? Whats the fragrance of funk? The aroma of electronica? The bouquet of Yorkshires brass bands? Individually, were not so sure. But stir these styles together and the scent is clear. Emma-Jean Thackrays debut album fuses all these genres and more, a balmy, sun-cooked blend of brass-band bops, psych-spiked funk, fleet-footed floor-fillers, swirling kosmische and spiritual jazz. Its parfum? Eau du Yellow? Patchouli, orange and ginger.

Emma-Jean Thackray is one of Britains brightest jazz prospects. Like London nu-jazz contemporaries Ezra Collective, Moses Boyd and Nubya Garcia, the multi-instrumentalist, bandleader, beat-maker, composer, producer, masters-level arranger, label manager and DJ is partly responsible for the recent and unlikely resurgence of homegrown jazz. Her debut album, suffused with deep-mind mysticism and stuffed with genre-jumping, rule-breaking compositions, has been praised by the likes of Pitchfork and NME. As well as drafting in help from her live band, Thackray plays practically every instrument on it: voice, vibraphone, bass guitar, bass clarinet, trumpet, percussion, synths, organ, guitar and more. Shes self-taught in almost all of them.

Emma-Jean Thackray in her home studio Movementt

Growing up in brass country, West Yorkshire, Thackray always wanted to be an artist. From the second I could talk, when the grown-ups would ask me what I wanted to be, Id be like, Artist. I want to be an artist. I willbe an artist, she says. There was never a doubt in my mind that that would be the way I lived my life.

At eight, she began learning the cornet. By the time she was a teen, shed become the principal cornet player in the Tingley Brass Band, before switching to jazz trumpet at 14. Throughout her teens, Thackray was back and forth between Leeds and its satellite towns partaking in regional band championships, as well as darting down to London for marquee events. All the while, this soon-to-be jazz master was finding her way into guitar music the same way many teens of the new millennium did: through the fading flames of 1980s rock and 1990s grunge and the rapidly rising stars of nu-metal.

Like many millennials, Thackray came of age in the era of Kerrang TV, MTV and Scuzz, musical tastemakers then at the peak of their powers. With Guns N Roses, Metallica and Nirvana videos on regular rotation alongside those by the likes of Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park and System of a Down, Thackray paid attention not just to the angst and the attitude but to the fingerings, the melodies, the harmonic movements.

It started with trying to get into a lot of rock stuff, she says. Slipknot, Korn, Papa Roach, it was that kind of time. Nu-metal was having its day. At about 12, Thackray found a beat-up acoustic at school and somehow already knew what to do with it. It was just really immediate, she says. I could already kind of play it. I sang the riff from Sweet Child O Mine, then I found where the notes were and then I could play it. Someone was like, You mustve been playing a while to be able to play a riff that hard. And I was like, Nah, Ive just picked it up today. I was very ear-led. Id seen that powerchord shape on Kerrang music videos. Oh, theyre doing that shape a lot. I worked it out and it meant I could play riffs. While I was working out what was going on in the music, I was working out how to play it on guitar.

With Kurt Cobains powerchords still reverberating on the airwaves, Nirvana proved a particularly strong influence on Thackray, occasionally to her detriment but then to her advantage. I loved Kurt Cobain, she says. Even though Im ambidextrous, I play lefty. I started playing upside down at first because I didnt know that you werent supposed to do that, so all the shapes I was learning were wrong. Obviously, there are some shapes that you cant do upside down, so I was finding my own way to voice things. At the time, that made it difficult but its given me a different mindset. You dont have to play everything the way everyone else does.

Cobains influence didnt just impact the way Thackray held the guitar but also the foundations of her songwriting. I think his harmonic movement influenced me, she adds. When you look at [Nirvana] stuff on paper, things arent necessarily functional. Its not necessarily a functional harmony. Theres some quite angular stuff. It was like, Oh, you cando that. You dont have to go I, V or I, IV, V. Its about letting the chords be a melodic element. So that powerchord movement, playing a riff, has set up the whole way I think about music.

Thackrays unorthodox approach to harmony saw her flourish in Cardiff, where she moved to study jazz at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama once she turned 18. Throughout her time in the Welsh capital, Thackray kept playing guitar but kept it quiet. I was always playing, she says. I just wasnt really showing people. I was playing just for fun. I wasnt necessarily writing jazz on it, because I didnt feel I was as good at the guitar as I am at trumpet, which is absolutely the case. But I always kept them with me. As I started producing my own music and releasing it, it was a case of, Oh, Im really hearing a guitar sound there

Thackrays first recorded guitar line can be heard on her 2018 debut EP Ley Lines, on laidback jazz number Red Bush, led by brass and bass but backed up by soft, slight, rounded guitar. Its quite quiet, she says, but there is a guitar in it. Thats the first time I ever released something with guitar on it and me playing it. Then on Yellow, theres loads of guitar.

Live band Ben Kelly, Lyle Barton, Dougal Taylor, Thackray and Crispin Robinson prior to the Yellow album release show at Colour Factory, East London

Released in July on Thackrays own Warp Records imprint Movementt, Yellowfulfills all the promises laid down by Ley Linesand more. Its a lavish record, packed with perambulating percussion and rhythmic trickery, wide-ranging vocals, exquisite chord progressions and gnarly harmonic movements alongside disciplined, unobtrusive, gently effected funk and jazz guitar.

Much of the guitar on Yellowcomes courtesy of Thackrays first-ever electric, a cheap right-handed Strat copy copped from Argos and gifted to her by her parents when she was 14. Its a Squier, she thinks. Not that youd know it she chiselled the name off the headstock.

I was a very intense 14-year-old, she says. Maaan, it doesnt matter about brands were all the saaame!, she adds, with mock new-age American affectation. Thackray also took a chisel to the Strats upper horn. I wrote some of my poetry on it and then I was like, Nooo, its too personal, I cant show anyone. I was such a dramatic beret-wearing twat.

Theres drama throughout Yellow too, and Thackray is keen to manufacture more in the wake of its release. Enlivened by rich vocal delay and warm keyboard stabs, hazy summer single Say Somethingis a sun-lit 4/4 toe-tapper that builds to a glorious midpoint crescendo, at which stage the song sidesteps into a slinky 7/4 groove as Thackray, looking every bit the flannel-clad grunge acolyte in the songs video, peels off a long solo on her chiselled Strat or so the video suggests.

On the recording its a synthesiser, she says. Then for the video I thought itd be funny to mime it on guitar. I deliberately mimed some of the phrases to match up so that people wouldnt know. Some of it Im just wagging my fingers, some of it is the actual phrase. I wanted people to question it. I love that kind of stuff. It couldve been stranger still; Thackray initially wanted to mime the part on bassoon but she couldnt find one in time.

From Yellows spiritual artwork by Meagan Boyd to its cosmic, third-eye-opening lyrics, Thackray is earnest in her appreciation of sacred spaces and mindsets, of the metaphysical. But theres a certain mischievousness to Yellowtoo and to Thackray, evident in her playful videos, the samples she drops into her live sets, and her fondness for self-mythologising. When we ask whether she bears any relation to Jake Thackray, another off-beat musician who was born around Leeds and later moved to Wales, shes wry about it.

I dont, she says, smirking. But maybe we should keep the mystery alive and not tell people that? I like being asked that, because hes a bit of a weirdo. How can we lay it out so I dont definitely say, No, Im not?

Even at its most mischievous, though, Yellow is never non-committal in its approach to genres. For the albums jazziest sections, as on the snappy jam About That, Thackray reached not for her Strat but for a more recent acquisition, a semi-hollow T-type built by the Wales-based Revelation and equipped with an Entwistle Nashville Star humbucker and an Entwistle single-coil pickup in the bridge and neck, respectively. It sounds really open and jazzy, she says. Its got kind of between an archtop and a Tele sound. For me, its the perfect jazz tone. About That is probably the jazziest song on Yellow. On that, the Revelation is panned way off to the right, loads of reverb, that kind of pure jazz sound pure guitar, no pedals.

Thackrays favourite guitar part on the album, though, is found on Spectre, the records steadiest and most emotive piece. Its really nice because its just so simple, she says. Its bathed in reverb and thats what brings the atmosphere, this kind of haunting quality. Theres so much reverb but not so much that theres no clarity. You can still hear what Im playing. Its quite ethereal-sounding.

Thackray on stage at Colour Factory with sousaphonist Ben Kelly

That ethereal ambience a chilly contrast to Yellows mostly golden hues was created via a mix of pedals and plugins, including the reverb section of Thackrays Space Echo and the Waves plugin RVerb, to better bed the part into the mix. Alongside reverb, Yellows palette is made up of compressors, a Boss chorus, an Electro-Harmonix POG (Polyphonic Octave Generator) and a Pitch Fork pitch-shifter, and even DIY units picked up from Deptford market. Thackray also keeps a loaded Pedaltrain Nano on which sits a yellow Roland SP-404SX sampler, plus an assortment of other small pedals on hand for live dubs and delays, applied not only to guitar but to trumpet and voice too.

Thackray doesnt see herself as a gear person, her attitude to equipment dictated primarily by money. Its only in the past couple of years that I started making money from doing this, she says. Before, I didnt have another job. I was just doing music but I was living on beans on toast. Crazy-poor. Dodging-the-bills poor. I got an acoustic, just for knocking about with, from Deptford market for like 20 and it was fine. I understand that if you want top-quality stuff youve got to pay top-quality money. But I always felt like this was good enough. The things that are more important for me are the ideas, rather than how good it sounds.

Listen closely to Yellowand youll hear things that sound amiss. But that DIY feel is part of the plan. I think its become part of what people hear when they listen to me, says Thackray. It should sound a bit wonky. If the guitars out of tune, Ive done it on purpose, to bring a certain colour. The Squier in particular sounds fuckin horrible. But sometimes thats what you want. You might try really hard to get that kind of sound with something nice but its right there in that 100 guitar.

Theres little to no crunch on Yellow, especially for an artist weaned on Kerrang TV. The only real dirt youll hear comes from tape manipulation. But the polymaths follow-up sounds like it might crank things up a notch. The stuff Im writing next is a little more rocky, she reveals. But thats not going to be out for at least a year, 18 months or so. Ive already started the next album but its just a start. In the meantime, therell be a few smaller releases to help tide audiences over.

Right now, though, Thackray is up to her trumpet in admin much of it Brexit-related as she prepares to embark on a proper tour in celebration of her debut album in 2022. Yellow is, unsurprisingly, Thackrays favourite colour. But it also holds a surprisingly practical purpose for her: as a visual trigger for meditation. In the same way you might use a singing bowl, a candle or a piece of music, Thackray uses the colour yellow to help her achieve a certain state of mind. She uses scents too.

I use smells, burning different incense to get into a different mental state or creative space, she says. If Im in a project, Ill make different essential oil blends and stuff. For Yellow, I had a certain smell and Id spritz it and that would help me get in the place.

So what does Yellowsmell like? Patchouli, orange and ginger. Judging by the lyrics to Golden Green, biscuits and weed too.

Visit emmajeanthackray.com for more.

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Introducing Emma-Jean Thackray, the British nu-jazz prodigy who owes her guitar style to grunge and nu metal - Guitar.com

Do you have the patience to waitTill your mud settles and the water is clear?Can you remain unmovingTill the right action arises by itself? Lao Tzu

I spent fifteen years as a nun in the Plum Village community of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh (whom I affectionately call Thay, or teacher in Vietnamese). Often people would ask Thay what to do when facing big life decisions, like which career path to take, whether to separate or stay with their partner, or whether to ordain as a monastic. Thay would often say, Dont try to figure out the answer by thinking about it. In thinking over a question again and again, we do not generally arrive at real wisdom, but we easily tire ourselves out and get even more confused or anxious.

These deeper life questions cant be resolved at the level of the mind, but must be entrusted to a different, deeper part of our consciousness. Thay suggests we consider this big question as a seed, plant it in the soil of our mind and let it rest there. Our mindfulness practice in our daily lives is the sunshine and water that the seed needs to sprout so that one day it will rise up on its own, in its own time. And then well know the answer to our question without a doubt.

But we must leave the seed down in the soil of our mind and not keep digging it up to see if it is growing roots. It wont grow that way! It is the same with a deep and troubling question. We ask our deeper consciousness to take care of it, and then let go of our thinking and worrying about it. Then in our daily lives we practice calming, resting, and coming home to ourselves in the present moment and that will help the seed of our question to ripen naturally and authentically. This process cannot be rushed or forced. It may take weeks, months, or years. But we can trust that the seed is down there, being tended to by our deeper consciousness, and one day it will sprout into a clear answer.

In Buddhist psychology this part of our mind is called store consciousness. This is because it has the function of storing our memories and all the various mind states we can experience in latent, sleeping form. For example, maybe youve experienced trying to solve a problem or find an answer to something that perplexes you. You think hard and circle round and round in your mind, but you feel you dont get anywhere. Then you let the question go, and suddenly when you least expect it, inspiration or helpful ideas come to you in a time of rest, and you just know what to do. That is store consciousness operating. It is working on the problem for you while your day-to-day consciousness rests. Store consciousness works in a very natural and easeful way and is much more efficient than our thinking mind. When wisdom arises from store consciousness, it feels right in the body and we no longer have doubts.

But waiting for the answer to arise can be challenging at times because we may really want to know the answer. We may find ourselves feeling deeply insecure and fearful if we dont know what to do, which path to choose. We worry we will make the wrong choice and we catastrophize about what will happen if we take this or that direction. Its hard to find our way if we continue to feed this worry and fear. We can recognize that we are not helping the situation and stop. Returning to this moment, anchoring ourselves in our body, we will find the solidity of the home inside of us, which is capable of helping us find our way, if only we let it, and if we can let go of trying to figure out the future in our heads.

Some years ago, I was trying to discern whether or not to leave the monastic life after having lived basically all of my adult life, from age twenty-five to forty, as a nun. During that time, I attended silent retreats at the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts, or IMS, for several years in a row that were six weeks or three months long. These retreats were times outside of time, weeks when I could not leave the grounds and take action, but just had to stay home with myself. Being in silence, social interaction was limited, and I had the luxury of time to look closely at myself and do nothing. It was an important time of pause, to look deeply, to return home to myself and let my own consciousness take its time to find the way.

When I decided to ordain as a nun at age twenty-five, in my heart I was making a lifelong commitment. So it was painful and confusing to find myself questioning this vow that I had assumed would carry me through my entire life. In that time of transition, I didnt know who I was anymore and had no idea who I might become. I was in the midst of a process, like the caterpillar that must dissolve itself completely in the chrysalis to become a butterfly. It was terrifying and extremely uncomfortable when I wanted answers and clarity, when I was used to knowing who I was and where I was going.

Joseph Goldstein was one of my interview teachers on these retreats at IMS and when I shared how distressing it was to find myself with no solid ground under me whatsoever, he mentioned Alan Watts book, The Wisdom of Insecurity. It points out that when we are clear and sure about what we are doing, we cannot be open to the many other possibilities available. But when we let ourselves hang out in the space of not-knowing, there is enormous potential and life could unfold in innumerable ways. So, rather than avoid and fear this place of uncertainty, we can embrace it and all its gifts.

When we are clear and sure about what we are doing, we cannot be open to the many other possibilities available.

What I found on these long silent retreats was not an answer to my dilemma of whether to disrobe or continue as a nun, but rather the ability to dwell more and more comfortably in the condition of not-knowing. I learned to allow the seed of my question to rest in the deeper layers of my consciousness. I was able to touch peace, joy, and wellbeing in the midst of not-knowing, in the midst of awkwardness and confusion. I learned to let go of fear and resistance right in the midst of dissolving and losing my identity.

By slowing down, choosing to rest back into the uncertainty rather than fighting it, I was able to touch into a sense of space, precisely in moments when it felt like there was no way to keep going, and I would be totally overwhelmed. If we can breathe in and out, putting our mind completely on our breathing, or feel our bodies and put all of our attention on the sensations in the body, we can create that space. We slow things down and let our nervous system recalibrate and center. The external situation may not change, but weve changed in relation to our external situation. If we can stop, we have the chance to touch into something deeper than overwhelm. This practice of pausing, or stopping, helps the seed of our question to mature and ripen into the guidance and direction we need.

In a sense, our culture, our society is dissolving. We are collectively entering the chrysalis, and structures we have come to rely on and identify with are breaking down and we dont know what the next phase will be like. We are in the cocoon. Learning to surrender in our own lives is essential to our collective learning to move through this time of faster and faster change, disruption, and breakdown.

***

To begin the practice, find a comfortable position, sitting, standing, or lying. Connect with your body and how its making contact with the chair or the floor. Allow yourself to rest back in some way and really feel the support of whatever is holding you. . . Every time you breathe out, let your body rest even more into the support of the earth.

Allow your face to soften, releasing the forehead, the muscles around the eyes, the jaw. . .

Let the tongue rest in the mouth. . .

Be aware of the shoulders and as you breathe out, let the shoulders soften. . .

Bring attention to the chest and belly, allow them to release and soften on the next exhale. . .

Notice your arms and hands, with the next exhale let them grow a little heavier, releasing tension. . .

Feel your legs and feet, as you exhale release, soften and let go. . .

Feel your whole body now as you inhale and exhale, allowing the whole body to soften and release its weight even more onto the earth. . .

Now bring to mind some question or challenge you may have right now notice how you feel about it, and the pull that may be there to resolve it. . . Without trying to figure out an answer or solution, see this question or challenge as a seed you are entrusting to the soil of your mind, down in its depths. . . just allow it to lie there, peacefully, quietly. . . let yourself rest back into the unknown, inviting your body to just slightly, actually lean back a tiny bit. . . let yourself reconnect with the feeling of being held by the earth. . . you can rest on the earth, just as this question can rest in the depths of your mind. . . while it may be scary not to know, there is also infinite possibility here. . . take a few deep breaths. . . feel your body, settling, present. . . and give the seed permission to take the time it needs to ripen into an answer. . . trust your own consciousness to show you the way when the time is right.

You may like to practice,

The Buddha is in meI have confidence

And if its helpful, you are welcome to practice it along with your breathing,

Breathing in, the Buddha is in me,Breathing out, I have confidence

It means the capacity of awakening is your nature. You can trust in this.

Let yourself breathe and open to this truth of your own ability to access presence, wisdom, patience, ease, even in the midst of uncertainty. You can do this.

Trust, resilience, wisdom is my nature,I have confidence.

I entrust myself, I entrust myself, to the earth, to the earth, and she entrusts herself to me. Plum Village song

***

You can bring this quality of resting back into your daily life. When you notice yourself leaning into the future, tensing up, trying to predict what will happen, straining to figure out what to do, whether on your own or with others, see if you can actually physically rest back. Open up the front of your chest, let your arms hang by your sides, and lean backwards slightly. This can support your mind to rest back, release and let be, even for a short moment and to whatever degree you are able.

Excerpted from We Were Made for These Times by Kaira Jewel Lingo (2021) with permission of Parallax Press.

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Kaira Jewel Lingo on Trusting the Unknown - Tricycle - Tricycle

Starling Bank CEO Anne Boden.

Starling Bank

LONDON British digital bank Starling expects to go public in two years' time, CEO and founder Anne Boden said Tuesday.

An initial public offering is "a year or two off," Boden told reporters. "It's at least one year away. But we're talking about one or two years away."

Starling, which counts Goldman Sachs, Fidelity Investments and Qatar's sovereign wealth fund as investors, is one of the U.K.'s leading challenger banks.

Along with other start-up competitors like Monzo and Revolut, Starling has attracted millions of users through only an app and a linked payment card no physical branches.

Boden said Starling's IPO was likely to take place in London, where the company is headquartered.

"I very much hope we can do it in London," she said. "I think that would be the default option, unless we're persuaded otherwise."

A stock market debut for Starling would add to a series of high-profile floats in the U.K.'s fledgling technology sector.

Fellow fintech firm Wise listed directly on the London Stock Exchange at an $11 billion valuation earlier this year. Food delivery giant Deliveroo had less success with its IPO, with shares sinking as much as 30% on the first day of trading.

Though Britain has produced successful tech companies like Google-owned artificial intelligence firm DeepMind and Arm, the chip designer being sold by SoftBank to Nvidia, it has yet to mint publicly-listed tech companies of a scale matching that of those in the U.S. or China.

Founded in 2014, Starling began life offering fee-free checking accounts through an app. It has since branched into lending and business banking, both of which helped the company break even recently.

The early days of Starling were marred by a bitter dispute between Boden and co-founder Tom Blomfield, who left to start rival online bank Monzo. The spat was the subject of a book released by Boden last year, called "Banking On It."

"It occurred to me that, up until now, I'd always marked our progress against Monzo, since they were our rival challenger bank and had launched at almost the same time," Boden said in a new print version of her book, which is due to be released Thursday.

"The extraordinary experiences of the year 2020 made it clearer than ever that our competitors are now Lloyds, Barclays et al."

Still, the challengers remain some way away from stealing significant market share from much larger incumbents. Starling, which was last privately valued at $1.5 billion, made 97.6 million ($133.2 million) in 2019, a figure that pales in comparison to that of traditional lenders like HSBC, Barclays and NatWest.

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Goldman Sachs-backed digital bank Starling expects to go public within two years - CNBC