Little Animal! is a group of Montreal musicians that transcends the boundaries of jazz and electro. Their eponymous digital album is now available via Justin Time Records.
https://www.youtube.com/@littleanimal9478
Little Animal! is led by bassist Morgan Moore (The Barr Brothers, Martha Wainwright, Yannick Rieu, Ranee Lee), who is also co-founder of Blood & Glass and Black Legary. For the past two decades, Morgan has been travelling the world playing bass. More recently, he has been composing and producing cutting-edge electronic music.
In 2021 he was approached by Jim West of Justin Time Records to create an album uniting electronic music with the intensity of jazz. Morgan called on some well-known musicians to collaborate on the project and the chemistry and beauty of their work is undeniable. Besides Morgan Moore on bass, Little Animal! consists of Joe Grass (Patrick Watson, Elisapie) on pedal steel, Tommy Crane (Aaron Parks, Melissa Aldana) on drums and Lex French (Christine Jensen, CODE Quartet, Diana Krall) on trumpet. Together they create lush improvisations and mind-blowing grooves. When integrated into the lush landscape of Morgan’s electronic creations, the result is unique and inspiring sound.
The music of Little Animal! pushes the listener to explore the relationship between humans and technology: both our addiction and our aversion to it. Jazz is an art form that embodies human expression in its most spontaneous creation.
Listening to Little Animal! you can almost feel the musicians fighting the electronic sounds at times while other sections coexist in perfect harmony. The constant tug of war between man and machine begs the question: is technology controlling us or are we controlling it?
The band followed up a spring residency at Montreal music venue Ursa with their first appearance in July 2022 at the Festival International de Jazz de Montreal with more Canadian dates to follow in 2023. Little Animal! is gearing up to make waves in the jazz and avant-garde music scenes around the world.
