Hackney Colliery Band

I run the Hackney Colliery Band, a nine-piece modern brass band playing rock, jazz, electronica and soul.

We have released five critically-acclaimed albums, the most recent being Collaborations: Volume One in 2019, featuring an amazing variety of guests including Mulatu Astatke and Angelique Kidjo.

We sold out Barbican Hall in 2019 with our Collaborations show. Here’s a taste, featuring the great Mulatu Astatke himself.

Our critically-acclaimed third album Sharpener reached number 3 in the jazz charts and 14 in the independent album charts in 2016. After putting out our first two records with WahWah 45s, we put Sharpener out independently, and it went on to be featured on iTunes, Spotify and in store at HMV and Fopp. It had superb reviews from the likes of the Sunday Times, Guardian, Uncut, Big Issue, Express and many more.

Our fourth album LIVE! was released in 2017 and showcased the band playing mostly material from Sharpener at live sets at venues including Village Underground and Wilton's Music Hall. 

Our forthcoming album Collaborations: Volume One is by far the most exciting and ambitious project that we’ve undertaken to date, and will be released in mid 2019.

Here's our complete set from the sold-out show at Koko in London, May 2017:

We've been played on the radio all over the world including almost a complete set of BBC stations: Radio 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6Music. We're working on getting played on talk station 5Live and Asian Network.

In non-pandemic times. we're more or less constantly touring the UK and Europe, which is exhausting, but a lot of fun. 

We play a lot of festivals as we manage to sneak in as the leftfield jazz choice, headlining Avalon at Glastonbury in 2017, for example, but also as the leftfield rock/electronic choice at jazz festivals like Love Supreme. Oh, and we put on a good show, too, I think (so does The Times, who said that we 'reinvent the brass band format for the 21st Century', and BBC Radio 2 who said that we are 'one of the greatest live bands we have in this country').

Head to the band’s website for all the latest, and to buy music and merch directly from us.