Interview with London Jazz Soul Band CROOKS INC. on their new single ‘Let Go’ & more

MuzicNotez: First off, it’s an honor to be doing this interview with you, thanks for taking the time to sit down with us. Introduce yourselves, what are your names and rolls in the band?

CROOKS INC.: We’re a Jazz & Neo-Soul band based in London. There’s six of us all together including: Aya – Vocals, Zac – Keys, Dan – Guitar, Tom – Sax, Mia – Bass, Jacob – Drums.

How did you meet and form up? How long have you been together?

CROOKS INC.: We formed around October 2021. We were all doing our degree at Bimm music university based in Fulham, when we realised our music tastes all crossed over substantially, and we all got along really well together. So it seemed almost logical to start a band and we quite quickly came up with our first song NGL.

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How did you come up with the name CROOKS INC.?

CROOKS INC.: It happened fairly organically and we didn’t workshop ideas for too long. After a month or two of being a band, we were all in a room coming up with ideas (most of which were fairly unusable). We starting reworking each other’s names into half-serious, half-baked band names, for example, Daniel Payne > Daniel & the Paynes. Eventually Zac, who’s second name is Crook suggested ‘Crooks inc.’ and that seemed to fit quite nicely.

Who were your musical influences, idols, or bands growing up that have helped mold you into the band you are today? Or helped mold the music that you create?

CROOKS INC.: We all have particular influences, but for the most part they’re all Jazz, Soul, Funk, Rock, and Blues artists. The Band’s sound is heavily influenced by the London Jazz scene, which we’ve all been following closely for a good few years. Artists like Alfa Mist, Tom Misch, Ezra Collective, Oscar Jerome are particular sources of inspiration.

What’s the greatest concert you’ve ever been to or performed?

CROOKS INC.: We all went to see Domi & JD Beck last year at Cross the Tracks Festival in Brixton. We were all blown away by the musical technicality. Zac and Jacob, our keys player and drummer were probably just as envious as they were impressed, but it was really great to see such young musicians effortlessly blending genres and styles.

We’ve played a good few Sofar Sounds gigs across London. We played at a huge church in Westminster which was an incredible experience. The venue was packed full of people and the acoustics were really distinctive, so it created a really cool atmosphere.

What’s the ultimate goal you want your music to achieve, or for you to achieve in your career as a band? Any particular message you wish to send?

CROOKS INC.: I think overall we want to make music that’s lyrically thought -provoking; blending a range of influences with our own original creative stamp. We ultimately want to keep developing our musicianship as well as our collective songwriting ability and keep making music which people enjoy!

Your latest release is the single ‘Let Go’, which we really love! What inspired this track? What does it mean to you?

CROOKS INC.: Written by Aya: The track was inspired by a close friend’s situationship that she went through not long before I wrote the lyrics. We had a lot of discussions about their short relationship and I naturally wrote about it in my notebook. I wasn’t sure I’d write a song though because of how painful and fresh this experience was for her but when we got together as a band and had the instrumentals figured out the words fit perfectly and it all just made sense.

The first verse is focused around an incident that led to the break up and how dating someone older than you doesn’t always mean they’re mature. The second verse is more about how in this case one of them knew exactly what they wanted where’s the other didn’t, which is what “either give me your hand or let go of mine” talks about; either be all in or let me go. The C section where the instrumentals are suddenly changed in the way they play, become more sharp and the vocals are pushed to the front. That section represents the end of the relationship, where the person has made the final decision to leave and the rest of the song till the end is quite repetitive which is her way of trying to accept that the relationship is truly over.

I think a lot of people resonate with this song and its words. We go through “situationships” all the time and some are more painful than others and this was definitely a painful one for my friend and for me to witness. Just to be clear she has given me her consent on this song and absolutely loves it.

You’ve found a way to create your own soulful, fresh version of jazz. How do you think you discovered your unique sound?

CROOKS INC.: We try to make music that makes certain nods to previous decades of Jazz, but that is distinctly rooted in the modern UK Jazz sound, that has it’s own recognisable identity. However, we want our music to have broad appeal, so we haven’t try to go too avante-guard with our overall style.

What else are you working on? What can we expect to see and hear from you in the future?

CROOKS INC.: We have two more songs that we are just finishing up, so you can definitely expect to hear from us very soon! We have one that is written in 3/4 which is an NBD for us and so we are very excited to share that in the next few months.

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