Tone presents Jordan Smart

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Above the Street is the striking debut solo album from Jordan Smart, widely known for his work with Mammal Hands (ACT Records), Vega Trails (Gondwana Records) and Sunda Arc, yet here revealing a markedly different and deeply personal side of his artistry. Recorded alone in a small attic studio in Norwich, the album captures a period of intense creative focus, where long, solitary hours gave rise to quiet and introspective improvisations shaped without the presence of an audience.

Created in the transformative months leading up to the birth of his first child, and often recorded late at night in a state of deep fatigue, the record inhabits a dreamlike space between waking and sleeping, imbuing the music with a fragile, intimate atmosphere. Much of the album was recorded live to old and sometimes unreliable tape machines, whose limitations and unpredictability became integral to the process, adding warmth, texture and a sense of impermanence that reinforces its hazy, otherworldly tone.

During this time, Smart experienced a recurring dream he came to call “The Blue Palace,” an image that evolved into both a poem and a central conceptual thread within the album, symbolising a space beyond the self — a dissolution of ego and an opening into infinite creative possibility.

Musically, Above the Street drifts between ambient soundscapes, expressive woodwind improvisations and expansive field recordings that situate the listener within a wider sense of place, while subtly extending the textural and electronic language he previously explored with his brother. This period also marked a wider artistic outpouring, with Smart simultaneously writing poetry, taking photographs and documenting the moment in parallel forms, all feeding into the album’s immersive world. The result is a contemplative and deeply immersive listening experience — a meditative journey that prioritises atmosphere, presence and emotional depth over virtuosity — and one that gently echoes the spirit of solitary exploration associated with Sonny Rollins during his Bridge era, positioning Above the Street as a profoundly reflective and quietly powerful statement of artistic identity.