Ezra Collective became the first British jazz band to make a splash at the Brits in 2025, winning Best Group and making headlines with their plea to save the nation’s youth clubs.

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I’m not always a fan of slavishly retro sounds but I can make an exception for the funky, murky psychedelia of Project Gemini – the musical vision of Paul Osborne.

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My December playlist, as you might expect, features a handful of Christmas tunes towards the end. But it’s also got some eclectic choices for a cold winter month, kicking off with a much-needed winter warmer of Electricity. There’s a prominent African flavour to blast away the chills, and some vintage jazz and funk.

Long Island rapper Roc Marciano samples old soul and jazz records and Memphis horrorcore instrumentals to create his unique style of hip-hop.

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When it comes to jazz and classical music, the examples I like best are when they incorporate subtle electronic undertones. That’s the case here with German composer Ralph Heidel, though that element is almost  subliminal on this track, Wake Up.

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Dub maestro Elijah Minelli takes an ancient English folk song, A’Soalin’, and rearranges it as a 21st century reggae tune.

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As the days grow shorter and darker, why not fill two hours of them with my latest playlist? From the warm embrace of The Cure to the date-adjacent celebration of The National, there’s soul and disco, reggae and ska, country and jazz, with a bit of an early-Eighties flavour running through it.

This is powerful stuff: it reminds me of when I first heard Linton Kwesi Johnson back in my youth. Like LKJ, Cleeshay uses spoken word, though the music is stripped-back R&B rather than roots reggae.

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Celeste channels her fellow BRIT School alumna Adele in the smoky cinematic theme song of Sky TV’s remake of The Day Of The Jackal.

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