Incognito

Another year, another residency at the Blue Note club in Milan for the British acid jazz band Incognito. Well over 40 years long standing, with talisman “Bluey” Jean-Paul Maunick at the helm, the band have always plied their trade, worked hard on the road all over the world and this has seen them through the high’s of chart success and the low’s of the early 2000’s with a label change from Gilles Peterson’s ‘Talkin’ Loud’, the specialist Acid Jazz record label to more minor, independent ones. Now with a resurgence of the soul/jazz genre in the last 10 years, a band like Ezra Collective even winning the 2023 Mercury Music Prize, it’s business as usual for Incognito with big tours and albums on the go. It has to be said that Milano and Italy in general have always been good to Incognito in the last three decades and that explains the 12 sold out sets at the Blue Note with tonight’s late set being the very last one of the series.

The Milanese crowd can be a bit standoffish sometimes unlikely to make themselves look awkward or be footloose and fancy free but as ever the Incognito band are always joyous and a certain infectious enthusiasm rubs off on the crowd midway into the set. Great jazz/soul licks by Charlie Allen on lead and rhythm guitar and Francis Hylton along with drummer Francesco Mendolia simply groove, making one’s heart pump and shoes tap in time to the beat whether you like to or not.

The band seem to stick to a regular set of songs, at least that’s what I’ve seen over the years but they play around with the format so sometimes all 13 musicians are on stage, at other times just a few. Indeed, it was cool to see some band members grabbing a drink and in the crowd enjoying their fellow band members doing their stuff on stage whilst they chilled for a while.

“Always There”, “1975”, “Don’t You Worry About a Thing”, never disappoint; the glorious “Still a Friend of Mine” always rings true but tonight’s highlight for me was “When The Sun Comes Down” with a splendid Tony Momrelle on main vocals really nailing it.

Bluey always tells tales and spouts messages of peace and love from his microphone and he means it too. The vision he had 45 years ago of a band that would fulfill his boyhood dreams is still full on and Incognito always leave you in a good place in both body and mind. They have just completed 5 days of shows at Ronnie Scott’s but they will be playing over Europe and England this coming summer. Go see; Grab an aperol spritz and chill out.