Are You Really Real

Icrom Bigrad - Jazzsensibilities.com

To question reality is to engage in one of the oldest inquiries of art, philosophy, and music alike. In their 40th year, Shuffle Demons take up this challenge with Are You Really Real?, a musical statement wrapped in a swirl of saxophones, groove-laden basslines, and the percussive alchemy of drums. This thirteen-song album is a conversation between their signature blend of jazz, funk, blues, Latin, and spoken word. The Demons bring an energy to the music as they playfully bend jazz reality to their funky will.

From the earliest traditions of jazz, improvisation has been a dialogue between musicians, between artist and audience, between the known and the yet-to-be-discovered. Shuffle Demons, born of Toronto’s street scene in the 1980s, have always embodied this ethos. Their music is kinetic, alive with the kind of creative combustion that happens only in spaces unbound by convention. Here, on Are You Really Real?, they retain that urgency while embracing the studio as an extension of their ever-expanding stage.

The Shuffle Demons are led by Richard Underhill on alto and baritone saxophones. Kelly Jefferson and Matt Logan are on tenor saxophones, forming the rest of the reed frontline. Mike Downes is on an electric bass and an acoustic bass. Stich Wynston is on drums.

The album’s title suggests an existential pondering; it reflects the nature of jazz itself as an art form that thrives on invention, reinvention, and the delicate tension between structure and abandon. Recorded at Canterbury Music Company and mastered for immersive listening, the album’s sonics demonstrate that fullness is not about excess but about intent.

This record hums with echoes of jazz-funk’s past, Maceo Parker’s bite, Weather Report’s fluidity, and Tower of Power’s muscle, but it never succumbs to imitation. Instead, the Shuffle Demons take these ingredients and reassemble them into something unmistakably their own.

“X Marks The Spot” launches the album with precision and fire, its interlocking horn motifs cutting through the engaging rhythmic landscape of the bass and drums. The jazz-funk language of this track speaks with fluency to inspire us to dig deeper into the album’s expressions.

“Out To Sea” conjures images of vast horizons, propelled by a hypnotic bass figure and waves of saxophone interplay that ebb and flow like shifting tides. The title track, “Are You Really Real?” is the album’s centerpiece and thesis, fusing spoken word with impressive frontline parts and solos. Here, the Shuffle Demons tap into the philosophical heart of jazz—where the line between improvisation and composition, performer and listener, is a thin and mutable one.

“Bottom Dollar” is created with a gritty shuffle groove that has long been part of the band’s DNA, while “Ride The Wave” surges forward with a momentum of a jazz-funk feel that refuses stagnation, mirroring the ever-evolving nature of jazz itself.

“Good Mourning” swings with insistence; its harmonic subtleties allow the soloist to explore the blues vocabulary while nudging it towards modern jazz’s fluid and elusive patterns.

The spoken biting social critique of “Money Is My Only Religion” reminds us that jazz has always been an art of resistance as much as celebration. Underhill’s spoken-word delivery is influenced by hip-hop mixed with jazz.  The message is clear: in a world obsessed with material wealth, authenticity is a radical act.

As the album progresses, “Scala Rosa” and “Sunny Side Up” paint with different textures, one intricate and harmonically adventurous, the other buoyant and infectious. “Prism” lives up to its name, refracting ideas and motifs into shifting patterns, while “In The Air” floats effortlessly, its post-bop leanings a testament to the band’s versatility.

The album closes with “Run The World,” a defiant declaration that, after four decades, the Shuffle Demons are still commanding the funky space between jazz’s past, present, and possible futures.

If jazz is, at its core, an ongoing conversation, then Are You Really Real? is a particularly compelling chapter. The album reflects that they have not lost their curiosity or settled into complacency. The Shuffle Demons have a joyful listening experience waiting to confirm your expectations. If reality is found in the electric moment of creation, in the space where tradition and exploration, then The Shuffle Demons are as real as jazz itself.

https://jazzsensibilities.com/fusion/shuffle-demons-are-you-really-real-review/

George W. Harris - jazzweekly.com

Here’s a swinging team of saxes that know more about hip riffs than James Brown’s Famous Flames. The reed section of Richard Underhill/as-bs, Kelly Jefferson/ts and Matt Lagan/ts create a magma of music for the grooves dug in by “Mike Downes/b and Stich Wynston/dr. Downes and Wynston confidently hold their own, getting funky for the horns on “Nice Signal” and creating a rivulet for the palpable harmonies of “Are You Really Real” , which even feature some jivey rap for extra fun. . The saxes get bluesy and deep as Underhill’s alto sways on “Bottom Dollar” and bold around the  horns that  punch like Evander Holyfield on “Ride The Wave”. Reed rapture!

https://www.jazzweekly.com/2025/03/shuffle-demons-are-you-really-real-le-coq/