Freestyle Master, Scotland On Sunday, 30 March 2025
Freestyle Master | Off Axis Artist of the Week in Scotland On Sunday, 30 March 2025
Hip hop, traditional music and jazz combine to impressive effect on two new songs from Freestyle Master, write Derick Mackinnon and Olaf Furniss read Scotsman.com
Freestyle Master has been embedded in the burgeoning Scottish hip-hop scene for years, collaborating with Steg G, Solareye and most recently writing a couple of tracks for the cool collaborative compilation album Lab Raps.
Produced by The Glasgow Barons and recovery community event provider, Freed Up it sees musicians from the classical, folk and jazz worlds join forces with hip-hop artists.
Freestyle Master features on two tracks, on Testify (Improvised Freestyle 1), he raps about his experience in recovery from drug and alcohol abuse with a jaunty instrumental accompaniment provided by Roo Geddes (BBC Radio Scotland Young Traditional Musician of the Year finalist) on fiddle, Ewan Hastie (BBC Young Jazz Musician of the Year) on double bass and Neil Sutcliffe on accordion, and he appears with the same musical crew on the nostalgic Rewound (Rewind Mix).
Among the other artists featured on the compilation are Evie Waddell and AjForty7, both previously featured in this column, and Sweet Rogue, MOG, SVG who were accompanied by Lewis Banks, Zach Ronin, and Dan Griffin. For more information see https://www.glasgowbarons.com/ or https://www.facebook.com/frzamza
Off Axis is a DIY, artist development community interest company, positioning artists to operate as independent businesses. Musicians tour the UK and Ireland independently by swapping gigs, retain 100% of the ticket profits, perform at festivals and build nationwide fanbases visit https://offaxisgigs.com
Want featured as our Artist of the Week? Visit https://www.newfoundsound.co.uk/scotland-on-sunday email Akira Kasinata / Erin Glynn music@newfoundsound.co.uk