Check out this great remix that Four Tet has done of Neneh Cherry & The Thing’s Suicide cover Dream Baby Dream

Here is a list of new live dates for Neneh Cherry & The Thing. The album The Cherry Thing is out the 18th of June 2012 on LP, CD and digital.

May 17 Buckminsterfullers Dome Stockholm, Sweden
May 17 Bar Brooklyn Stockholm, Sweden
Jun 30 Ljubjana Jazz Festival Ljubljana, Slovenia
Jul 01 Porgy & Bess Bezirk Innere Stadt, Austria
Jul 02 Lucerna Music bar Prague, Czech Republic
Jul 05 Traena Festival Træna, Norway
Jul 10 Copenhagen Jazz Festival Copenhagen, Denmark
Jul 15 Village Underground London, United Kingdom
Jul 16 Mlekweg Amsterdam, Netherlands
Jul 18 Radialsystem Berlin, Germany
Jul 20 Teatret Vårt Molde, Norway
Jul 23 San Sebastian Jazz Festival Donostia San Sebastian, Spain

Check out this great video for the MF Doom/Madvillain track Accordion. The track is taken from the album The Cherry Thing to be released on LP, CD and download the 18th of June 2012.

Today it is two years since we lost Steve Reid. We feel lucky and honored to have been given the opportunity to release music by Steve Reid. Last years Kieran Hebden/Steve Reid/Mats Gustafsson album “Live At The South Bank” is one of the proudest moments in the label’s history. And we are forever grateful for this.

RIP Steve Reid

Check out this great track review of Neneh Cherry & The Thing’s Dream Baby Dream on Pitchfork here. And here is the whole review:

When Bruce Springsteen covered Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream” to close out shows in the Devils and Dust tour, he burrowed deep into the song and discovered something essential about it. By stretching it out, stripping it down, and putting the focus on a series of lyrical mantras (some of which were his own), Springsteen made a case for dreaming as the only rational response to the absurdity and ultimate futility of life. Gotta keep that fire burning– what choice do we have? Neneh Cherry, the eccentric singer whom you may or may not remember from 1980s dance pop hits like “Buffalo Stance”, comes at the song from another angle while teaming with the Norwegian/Swedish avant-jazz ensemble the Thing. Where Springsteen imagined the dream as a Sisyphean rage against death, Cherry and co. hear it as a path to ecstasy. The rhythm, beaten out on toms, mimics the dinky Latinized drum machine patter of Suicide’s original but makes it a little slower and a couple of fathoms deeper. Cherry’s voice begins as more of a late-Billie Holiday croak but ascends along with the song, one step leading to the next as it grows in intensity and feeling. For their part, the Thing treat the song’s simple melody the way Albert Ayler did European folk ditties, mixing breezily sentimental yearning with a rush of emotion so torrential it borders on violence and terror. “Dream baby dream baby dream baby dream baby dream baby dream… keep those dreams burning… forever.” They’ll never last that long, and neither will the people dreaming them, but that’s the beautiful thing about music: When the song reaches its peak about six minutes in, I start to believe.

You can listen to Neneh Cherry & The Thing’s beautiful version of Suicide’s Dream Baby Dream here

Neneh Cherry & The Thing “The Cherry Thing” out 18th of June on CD, LP and download

Neneh Cherry and jazz trio The Thing met for the first time at a recording session in London in the fall of 2010. It clicked right away as they all shared an open, free approach to the music. The high energy of The Thing’s playing found a fitting counterpart in Neneh’s intense style. After a performance at Strand, Stockholm in March 2011, they decided to continue the collaboration resulting in their forthcoming, self-titled album, The Cherry Thing, out June 19 on Smalltown Supersound. Apart from their own compositions, the album features the music of such diverse artists as Ornette Coleman, Suicide, Don Cherry, Martina Topley-Bird, The Stooges, and MF Doom.

The Thing took its name from a piece by world/free jazz trumpet great Don Cherry: when they first got together it was to play his music. So it makes sense that they should eventually team up with Don Cherry’s daughter.

A born pioneer, Neneh Cherry fits naturally into the forefront of musical and social change, whether it’s post-punk, rap, or giving the music world a new image of female pop stars. Starting out by joining key punk girl band The Slits, Neneh next became the voice of the renegade free-blowing post-punk Rip, Rig and Panic and their successor: Float Up, C.P. After attracting further attention with her vocals on The The’s classic “Slow Train To Dawn,” Neneh became part of Buffalo, the creative collective assembled by the late visionary Ray Petri, whose style so shaped the 1980s. Now a solo artist, Cherry hit it big straight away with the worldwide hit singles “Buffalo Stance,” “Manchild” and “Inna City Mamma” from her debut album Raw Like Sushi. More followed, like “Buddy X” from the Homebrew and Man albums, which also featured “Woman” and “7 Seconds.” After the Man album Neneh decided to step off the corporate music business tread mill preferring to collaborate with artists such as Tricky, Damon Albarn/Gorillaz and her own family collective, cirKus.

The Thing, established in the spring of 2000 when Mats Gustafsson (saxophones), Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (double bass, electric bass), and Paal Nilssen-Love (drums) met to play several concerts and to record their first album on the Crazy Wisdom label. The trio was a long wanted constellation where several musical styles meet in a very high energetic outlet. All members are influenced by different traditions of free music derived from Germany, England and the US, and these influences are to be felt, but not necessarily heard. The Thing has performed with guests like Joe McPhee, Ken Vandermark, Otomo Yoshihide, Jim O’Rourke and Thurston Moore. It is now signed to Smalltown Superjazzz.

Mats Gustafsson is one of Europe’s biggest names on the free music scene. Through groups like Gush, AALY trio and Peter Brötzmann`s Chicago Tentet he has established himself as a very powerful saxophonist who has somewhat reinvented the way of playing the saxophone. In 2011 he received the Nordic Council Music Prize, the biggest price for a musician in the Nordic countries.

Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and Paal Nilssen-Love have become known as Norway`s heaviest rhythm-section. Since their long-time collaboration started in 1992, they have been working together in several groups like School Days with Ken Vandermark, Scorch Trio with Raoul Björkenheim, and the Swedish/Norwegian jazz-group Atomic.

The Cherry Thingtracklisting:
1. Cashback (Neneh Cherry)
2. Dream Baby Dream (Suicide)
3. Too Tough To Die (Martina Topley-Bird)
4. Sudden Movement (Mats Gustaffson)
5. Accordion (MF Doom)
6. Golden Heart (Don Cherry)
7. Dirt (The Stooges)
8. What Reason (Ornette Coleman)