Saxophone player Michael Blake, with the Lounge Lizards under His Majesty John Lurie for quite a while, is a leader in his own right.

In 1997, Blake's long awaited solo debut "Kindom Of Champa" gave a first impression of his potential to musically outgrow his (in)famous mentor and master of days past. Virtually without exception, enthusiastic reactions by the media throughout the world attested Blake's first release under his own name ''qualities of an all-time-classic''; and the audience all around the globe thought alike -- having made "Kingdom Of Champa" a smash success in the meantime. In late 1999, Blake added another strike -- this time not solo though, but with his then brand new working band SLOW POKE (featuring David Tronzo [guit], Tony Scherr [bs] and Kenny Wollesen [dr]; all excellent musicians from the creative surroundings of the Knitting Factory). Their debut "Redemption" was a 'most wanted' item even before release: Regular shows in the New York 'Tonic' club and a homegrown pre-release-CD had carried the news of this hot new group across the boundaries of NYC and the american continent so quickly that requests for the album hit the home office of intuition like a hailstorm before "Redemption" even made it there from the pressing plant. A similar phenomenon could be witnessed in the case of "Drift", the second solo album of Michael Blake, released on intuition records in November 2000 -- perhaps no wonder after the development outlined above.