Tune Recreation Committee – The Future Is Now

Led by trumpeter Mandla Mlangeni, Tune Recreation Committee brings together a sharp, open-eared collective of Cape Town musicians digging deep into South Africa’s jazz lineage while pushing it somewhere resolutely forward-looking. The Future Is Now moves fluidly through free jazz, highlife, American funk, Balkan folk, and underground club rhythms, driven by five fearless improvisers who listen as hard as they play. It’s music built on communion and risk — tight grooves dissolving into exploratory passages, melodies bent and reimagined in real time. Praised by the New York Times for its sense of thoughtful togetherness, the album captures TRC as a living, breathing workshop: part tribute, part experiment, and very much its own thing.