The New Mastersounds
British jazz fusion and funk band
The New Mastersounds are a British four-piece jazz fusion and blues/funk band from Leeds, England. Over the last 16 years, they have issued ten studio albums, two live dates, two remix collections, and a compilation album.
History
In the late 1990s, guitarist and producer Eddie Roberts was running a night club in Leeds called The Cooker. When The Cooker moved into a new venue with a second floor in 1999, there was space and the opportunity to put a live band together to complement the DJ sets. Simon Allen and Roberts had played together in 1997 as The Mastersounds, with a different bassist and no organ. Through friends and the intimate nature of the Leeds music scene, Pete Shand and Bob Birch joined the band on bass and Hammond organ respectively, establishing The New Mastersounds. Their first rehearsal produced a release for Blow it Hard Records on two limited-edition 7" singles in 2000.
As a band, and as individuals, the New Mastersounds have collaborated with an array of musicians DJs and producers, including: Soul Rebels Brass Band, Lou Donaldson (Blue Note), Corinne Bailey Rae (EMI), Quantic (Tru Thoughts), Carleen Anderson (Young Disciples / Brand New Heavies), Keb Darge & Kenny Dope (Kay Dee Records), John Arnold (Ubiquity), Mr Scruff (Ninja Tuna), Snowboy (Ubiquity), Fred Everything (2020 Vision), Andy Smith (Portishead), James Taylor (JTQ), LSK (Faithless), and Karl Denson (Lenny Kravitz, Greyboy AllStars).
In 2006, as well as playing club gigs in France, Spain, Belgium and Italy, the band toured the US and Japan. In August, they finished recording their fifth album, 102% (released on One Note Records in 2007).
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3522002. VIAF identifies the subject as 128214435. The Library of Congress control number is no2010139316. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1999, 1997, 2000 and 2020.
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This entry incorporates text from “The New Mastersounds” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.