How the jazz-dance underground has broken into the mainstream

For Ed Cawthorne, AKA producer and multi-instrumentalist Tenderlonious, jazz came through the dancefloor. Finding his first love for music in the rave-influenced tracks on The Prodigy’s early ‘90s output, he saved up to buy a pair of CDJs as a teen and by the new millennium, he had taught himself to mix drum ‘n’ bass records at gigs throughout London.

It was in the darkened basements of the English capital’s clubs that Cawthorne started to hear the plucked reverberations of a double bass string or a muted Fender Rhodes jazz lick on records by Roni Size or LTJ Bukem. “It was all these enticing, exciting new sounds,” Cawthorne says. “I had to know where they were coming from.”

Read the feature in Mixmag.

[This piece was published on 14/11/22]