Firstly - a very big thank you to three fantastic trumpet players, Paul Spong, Simon Gardner and Darren Wiles, who between them have filled the very large trumpet-shaped hole left by Roddy’s extended residence in Thailand. And an assurance that despite any rumours to the contrary we are still very much alive and Kicking!

It’s been a joy working with Baaba Maal again. First, Simon was called in last year to play saxophone on the new ‘Television’ album. Then in summer 2009 we played a series of memorable live shows. First, in the Island Records’ 50th Anniversary week at Shepherd’s Bush Empire, when U2 made a surprise appearance, joining Baaba for an acoustic version of their own ‘One’ segueing into Bob Marley’s ‘One Love’.

Then a night to remember at the Royal Festival Hall on June15th. David Cheal wrote in the Daily Telegraph:

“There were times during this show when Baaba Maal and his band made music that was as beautiful, as glorious and as joyous as any that I have ever heard. Yes: it was that good – percussion, guitars, keyboards, voices, and, crucially, a tight-knit four-piece brass section were locked into a pulsating, hypnotic groove. For a moment, as his band – a mixture of African and Western musicians – created this rapturous noise, Baaba Maal, in his shiny gold suit, stood with his arms outstretched and grinned, as if to say: "Look! Behold my creation." It was sensational.”

Nick Hasted said in the Independent:

“You can hear James Brown in the bass-line and brass of a  band by now swollen to 15, and Maal too won't rest till we're all feeling good. He dances on one leg, springs in mid-air, spins on his bottom and one palm, then uses both hands to invite us in.”

Everybody else calls us the Kick Horns, but not Baaba. For him we are forever “FROM LONDON, THE KICKING HORNS’. But no complaints when the shows are as great as this one. There were moments when we really felt what it might have been like to play in James Brown’s band in the 60s. Arrangements were reinvented on the spot as Baaba cued full band accents with a wave of the hand... A total blast.

An even bigger show with Baaba on the Jazz World Stage on the Saturday night at Glastonbury  2009. A beautiful warm evening, the sun cooling gently as the band got hotter... Then on July 10th to the world’s best-known Jazz Festival - Montreux in Switzerland, with Quincy Jones in attendance... Other festivals followed: The Trowbridge Pump, Rock en Seine in Paris, and Stradbally in Ireland.

Then in September Baaba brought us into the studio for two days, where the engineering expertise of the great Gerry Boys captured all that live energy. Recording the old-fashioned way, the whole band playing together, we put down six tracks - revved-up versions of existing material as well as completely new songs.

Another highlight of the summer was the  Africa Express  show in Paris on August 5th. Africa Express, set up by Baaba Maal and Damon Albarn in response to the lack of African musicians invited to appear at Live 8 in 2005, celebrates the cultural richness of the continent by bringing together African and European musicians in unrehearsed, informal collaborations. The music mixes chaos and inspiration in equal measure. This time we played with the magisterial Oumou Sangare, with Vieux Farka Toure and Rachid Taha, whose Rai version of the Clash classic ‘Rock the Casbah’ brought the five-hour show to a suitably raucous close.

Gareth Grundy wrote in The Observer:

“Sangare’s easy fusion with the Kick Horns, who add firepower without treading on anyone’s toes, suggests subtlety can occasionally trump the search for explosive connections... The Parisian audience? They’re dancing.”

Recent or upcoming releases:

Pixie Lott - ‘Spooky’. Great Dusty Springfield song recorded with rising star producer Nglish.

Graham Coxon - ‘Spinning Top’. Simon provided some flute solo work on ‘Brave the Storm’ with the legendary Danny Thompson on bass.

Oumou Sangare - ‘Iyo Djeli’ on the album ‘Seya’. Recorded as an e-session at the Live Room for Nick Gold at World Circuit (first time to be heard on the same track as Prince...playing Calabash).

Christie Hennessy - ‘A Friend of Mine’, the second posthumous album from the great Irish singer-songwriter.

Sugababes - ‘For Once in my Life’

Pete Townshend’s legendary big band Deep End (including David Gilmour, Simon Phillips, Rabbit, Chucho Merchan) - a DVD of the band’s third and final gig is at last to be released by a German company.

Simon contributed three string quartet arrangements to Victoria Hart’s album ‘The Lost Gershwin’ (four-star review in The Times) recorded with the Pavao quartet.

Tim has started writing tracks for the Kick Horns’ second album at our own recording HQ, the Live Room,  following up ‘The Other Foot’.