Space Cartel are back with “Something Often,” a live performance video filmed at Conway Sound in Denver, Colorado, and it captures exactly what makes this collective so compelling. The Denver-and-London-bridging 13-piece ensemble, filmed by Geoff Velando and engineered by Ryan Conway alongside Stephen “Eski” Edwards of Thievery Corporation, recorded the session live in a single-room setting with no safety net. Anchored by Johnny Bosbyshell’s driving piano motif (the one his roommate once asked why he played “so often,” giving the track its name), the performance expands outward into layered guitars, brass accents, saxophone lines and textured strings in real time. It follows the band’s breakout debut “Giant Jack,” which drew more than 50,000 YouTube subscribers within months of its release.
The session features Space Cartel’s core members, Bosbyshell, Justin Neely, Ted Kleist, Matt McElwain, Karl Summers and Joe Lilly, alongside newly permanent members London violinists Jenny Clare of Slate Quartet and Eliza Burkitt of Brixton Chamber Orchestra, whose addition deepens the ensemble’s transatlantic chamber identity. Rounding out the 13-piece lineup are percussionist Ian Maxwell, trumpeter Phil Ortiz-Gonzales, trombonist Jai Patel, violist Jess Kus and cellist Helen Erickson of the Longmont Symphony Orchestra. The collective’s first live show in this fully expanded configuration takes place April 18 at ZOLA in Spokane, Washington, marking the ensemble’s onstage debut as it currently stands.
Beyond the music, Space Cartel continues to invest in the communities that sustain it. Trumpeter Phil Ortiz-Gonzales recently launched a community music school initiative in partnership with Grupo Folklórico del Pueblo in Pueblo, Colorado, offering small-group instruction and instrument rentals for $55 per month in direct response to the ongoing reduction of arts education in public schools. For a band whose stated values are compassion, innovation and musicality, the initiative is not a footnote, it is the point. “Something Often” is out now.