“Festivals are great opportunities to create different kind of experiences,” Chelsea Wilson explains. “A lot of jazz venues in town do not have the stages or infrastructure to be able to do something like that, so were very fortunate to have Chapel Off Chapel as a festival hub this year; it has lots of space for the bands to explore.”
Those who saw the Shaolin Afronauts last year shouldn’t expect the sequel to be just a repeat of the original. “We didn’t want to repeat anything that we had used; we wanted this to be a completely new experience for the listener”, says Ross McHenry. “This time, we’ve actually written a lot more new material; we’re working towards a new album so it was a bit of an opportunity to ‘try some new material”.
