Having written, performed, produced, and recorded countless club hits, first with the band he founded, Freeez, and then solo under his own name, John Rocca quit the music business halfway through the 1990s. A tech fanatic he went back to Uni, retrained, and became a player in the telecommunications / dot.com boom instead.

When I spoke to John in 2018 – around the time that Be With Records were reissuing a couple of 12s from his `80s side project, Pink Rhythm – he told me that he was still making music, but only for his own entertainment. Relaxing and watching the LED lights on the gear in his home studio flash and blink late at night, while the jungle surrounding his Kuala Lumpur home came to life. However, after something like a 25 year break, John has a new album out. With tip of its chapeau back toward a loved-up early `90s, and production proper enough to make it sound timeless, Reflections Of The Sun is 6-song set, that finds John ably assisted by his sons, Ben and Joel. The pair providing, respectively, some damn fine sax and Fender Rhodes. Three of the pieces, in particular, shine for me.

The title track begins as a beautiful beatless ballad. Just pensive piano, reverb, and John’s angelic falsetto. A lyric that dreams of a pure, pain-free world. Eventually joined by a cool contrabass line and a head-nodding beat, it’s a sublime slice of sunset jazz that spotlights some stratospheric soloing.

Close Your Eyes, in brackets, Take The Ride, similarly, starts as a soothing synth-scape. A feather-like, feel good float, that slowly moves to machined slap-bass sounds and tumbling, trippy IDM touches. John’s voice subjected to vocoder treatments in its final moments. 

Open Spaces, Open Minds is an intricately arranged, and layered, instrumental. The rolling acoustic keys incredible. That Fender, phenomenal. The saxophone smooth, subtle, sympathetic. The tune taking its classic chilled template and totally stretching out. 

John Rocca’s Reflections Of The Sun – trust me this one’s a real grower – can be purchased from selected stores and order from online institution, Juno.