Soleil Collective are difficult to pin down — and that's exactly the point. The Manchester four-piece blend live jazz instrumentation with electronic production in a way that feels neither forced nor formulaic. We caught up with them after their sold-out residency at Band on the Wall.
Maya (keys): We all knew each other from different circles in the Northern Quarter. I was doing solo keys stuff, Ade was producing broken beat in his bedroom, Tomek was gigging with a post-punk band, and Rhi was busking with her sax outside Piccadilly station. We jammed one night at a house party and it just clicked.
Ade (production/DJ): The first jam was genuinely terrible. But there was something in the chaos that felt right. We booked a rehearsal space the next day.
Rhi (saxophone): Not really. We just play what feels good. Some nights that's deep house, some nights it's closer to free jazz. The electronic backbone — the beats, the synths — gives us a framework, but we improvise a lot within it. Every set is different.
Tomek (drums): I think the genre-blending thing is more of a byproduct than a mission statement. We all listen to wildly different stuff. Ade's into Theo Parrish, Maya's obsessed with Alice Coltrane, I grew up on Aphex Twin. When you throw all that into a room, something unique comes out.
Maya: We treat every gig like a DJ set — it has to build, it has to have peaks and valleys. But because we're playing live, we can react to the room in real time. If people are going off, we extend a section. If it's a more mellow crowd, we lean into the ambient stuff.
Ade: The technical side is tricky. I'm running Ableton alongside the live instruments, so I have to stay locked in with Tomek's tempo. We spent months getting that right. Now it's second nature.
Rhi: The album. Golden Ratio is nearly done — we're mixing it right now. It's the most ambitious thing we've done. Ten tracks, everything from a seven-minute dub workout to a three-minute jazz-house banger. We can't wait for people to hear it.
Tomek: And more live shows. We want to take it to Europe this year. Festivals, clubs, whatever. The live thing is where this project really lives.
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