Loose Tubes were a British jazz big band/orchestra active during the mid-to-late 1980s. Critically and popularly acclaimed, the band was considered to be the focal point of a 1980s renaissance in British jazz. It was the main launchpad for the careers of many future leading British jazz players including Django Bates, Iain Ballamy, Eddie Parker, Julian and Steve Argüelles, Mark Lockheart, Steve Berry, Tim Whitehead, Ashley Slater. In 2015, the band reformed to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the band's formation, with concerts at the Cheltenham Jazz Festival, Brecon Jazz Festival and a sold out week at Ronnie Scott's.

"The band’s individual brand of contemporary orchestration incorporates a welcome humour (often lacking in such weighty aggregations), drawing on a diversity of sources – minimalism, spacey ECM-inspired balladry, funky blues, Latin, swing, even Carla Bley-like passages – in all, a combination of cool precision and collective pandemonium, performed with a persuasive joie de vivre. The ’85 album Loose Tubes and the ’86 Loose Tubes Too (distributed by the London-based Import Music Service division of Polygram) combine into an excellent two-part catalogue of a wealth of inspiration."

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