B-Side Guys

Some collaborations get planned into existence across months of scheduling and negotiation. “Kinetic” started with a conversation after a show at The Great Escape in Brighton, moved quickly to Bluey’s Colibri Sound Recorders, and was built with a session-style approach that prioritized the energy in the room over detailed arrangement. You can hear that decision in the track.

Bluey, the architect of INCOGNITO and a central figure in the UK’s Acid Jazz and Jazz Funk scenes since the 1990s, brings exactly what you’d expect from someone who helped define the genre: a horn section arranged around the groove rather than imposed on top of it. For Tokyo five-piece Kroi, whose sound draws from R&B, funk, soul, and hip-hop, the fit is close enough to their own influences that the collaboration reads as mutual recognition rather than a stylistic stretch. INCOGNITO was already in their record collection before the Brighton show.

The track sits comfortably in the Jamiroquai lineage, groove-forward and unhurried, with enough forward momentum to justify the title. Kroi’s Leo Uchida handles the vocal with the kind of ease that comes from a band already five years into a major label run, including arena tours and anime theme commissions. The polished internationalism of the track doesn’t feel borrowed. It’s where the band has been heading.

What Bluey’s production does is sharpen the low end while letting the horns breathe above it, a balance that separates Acid Jazz at its best from its imitators. Kroi arrived in Brighton with the right influences. They left with the record to prove it.