MonoNeon

On Tuesday 12 November, thanks to the collaboration between Piñata Music, The Project and the 56th Barcelona Jazz Festival, the just over four hundred people in attendance had the enormous pleasure of witnessing a stratospheric concert by bassist, singer and composer Dywane Eric Thomas Jr., better known as MonoNeon. This musician — not to be confused with Dywane Thomas, the veteran soul bassist — treated us to a magnificent performance that packed jazz, pop, funk, fusion, soul and p-funk into a little over an hour and a half. Behind this artistic feat were Dominique Taplin (keyboards and vocals), Xavier Lynn (guitar and vocals), Jackie Whitmill (drums and vocals) and MonoNeon (bass and vocals).

The concert opened with the electrifying ‘Jelly Roll’, a song in the purest funky-disco style that came across far more open and wild than on the studio version, leaving room for every musician to leave their mark with solos, starting with Jackie Whitmill’s opening statement. Songs kept weaving into one another for practically the whole show, taking in tracks like ‘Put on Earth for You’ and ‘Wish Our Party Would’ve Last’, a song that was the perfect crossroads between the most p-funk side of Prince and a Stanley Clarke from his golden jazz-rock era — a sticky, danceable tune with a limitless dose of virtuosity, its electric bass channelling the fingers of Marcus Miller or the aforementioned Stanley Clarke; also worth noting on this track was Dominique Taplin’s synthesizer solo. The set also included songs like ‘Stereo’ (taken from his 2024 release ‘Quilted Stereo’), ‘Basquiat & Skittles’, ‘Hot Cheetos’ — a vigorous funk number with a powerful bass riff running through the whole composition — the rocker-leaning ‘Just Getting High, Just Getting By’, the delicious, Stevie-Wonder-esque ‘Invisible’, and an electrifying ‘Life is a Glittery Fuckery’ to close the set.