Jazz /
Sitar Beat
**2019 stock, reduced price** Big Jim Sullivan was a well-known session musician in his time and was asked by many bands including The Who, The Rolling Stones, The Animals, Lulu, The Kinks to name just a few. Going to a music school must have been a novel idea as Big Jim had been playing guitar on sessions since 1957, resulting in his presence on more UK hits than anyone else. He studied with a famous Indian sitar player who gave Jim the necessary insight to be a creditable player. The result wa…
Integration
Pheon is the new label started by Jonny Trunk with James Pianta from Votary / Roundtable. Both have a love of obscure library music, film music and jazz. Using those musical fields as a starting point, the label will be issuing very limited, vinyl only short runs of desirable and obscure LPs, compilations and new old discoveries. The third Pheon Records LP release is the 1969 debut by Indian jazz guitar legend Amancio D’Silva. A perfect storm of amazing, accessible British jazz and incredi…
Black Fire
Matsuli Music is proud to announce the re-issue of Black Fire, the 1976 debut album of legendary Cape Town spiritual jazz funk band Pacific Express. The band was home to jazz musicians Chris Schilder, and Basil ‘Manenberg’ Coetzee as well as fusion and soul musicians Robbie Jansen, Issy Ariefdien, Paul Abrahams, Jack Momple and Zayn Adam.This album is hard evidence of that 1976 musical moment in which Pacific Express forged an entirely new South African sound and musical identity out of what was…
African Songbird
Matsuli Music is proud is announce the re-issue of African Songbird, the masterpiece from South Africa's greatest jazz singer, Sathima Bea Benjamin. Originally released in 1976, African Songbird was a debut long overdue. The splendid vinyl reissue of African Songbird opens with a cavernous, spacious, enormous sound, Bea Benjamin’s voice is introduced by Dollar Brand’s plangent, lingering electric keyboards before the ensemble joins in like rolling thunder. The vibrant plucked bass (provided by L…
World Galaxy
''My Beloved Brothers and Sisters: I am overwhelmed with joy to see the entire youth of America gathered here in the name of the fine art of music. In fact, through the music, we can work wonders. Music is a celestial sound and it is the sound that controls the whole universe, not atomic vibrations. Sound energy, sound power, is much, much greater than any other power in this world. And, one thing I would very much wish you all to remember is that with sound, we can make—and at the same ti…
Based On A Novel
Svart Records is proud to reissue Olli Ahvenlahti’s first three LPs. This is his third and most difficult to find album, Based on a Novel. Olli Ahvenlahti’s first albums were issued by the independent company Love Records which then went bankrupt in 1979. Otto Donner, one of the founders of Love Records and the power behind the scenes of Bandstand and The Poet, decided to form a new recording company, Ponsi. The doors were once again open for Olli Ahvenlahti to enter the studio. Ponsi was, howev…
Springboard
The quartet of Ian Carr, Jeff Clyne, John Stevens and Trevor Watts - encounter here in their only recorded document, is among the most important gestures in the history of British free jazz. Issued in 1969, but recorded three years earlier, Springboard offers a window into the origins of an entire movement - the flowering of change within a music in geographies not its own. Free jazz always had a more receptive audience in Europe than in America. It’s not surprising that indigenous realisations…
Prophecy
ESP-Disk present a reissue of Albert Ayler's Prophecy, originally released in 1975. Recorded in concert at the Cellar Cafe, NYC, June 14, 1964. Three weeks before this trio recorded ESP-Disk's first jazz album, the epochal Spiritual Unity (ESPDISK 1002CD/LP), it was captured "live" by Canadian poet Paul Haines, who also recorded the New York Eye and Ear Control soundtrack (ESPDISK 1016CD/LP). This is one of the most influential groups in jazz history, a coming together of like-minded innovators …
European Jazz Sounds
Alto Saxophone – Klaus Marmulla (tracks: 1-1 to 1-10, 2-1 to 2-15), Peter Reinke (tracks: 1-11, 1-12) Bass – Hajo Lange (tracks: 1-1 to 1-10, 2-1 to 2-15), Wolfgang Lauschert (tracks: 1-11, 1-12) Drums – Heinz von Moisy (tracks: 1-1 to 1-10, 2-1 to 2-6, 2-8 to 2-11), Joe Nay (tracks: 1-11, 1-12), "Eminenz" Roberts (tracks: 2-7, 2-12 to 2-15) Piano – Michael Naura Vibraphone – Wolfgang Schlüter (tracks: 1-1 to 2-6, 2-8 to 2-15) Vocals – Gitta Eilers (tracks: 2-14, 2-15) In the booklet drums for t…
European Jazz Sounds
Alto Saxophone, Clarinet – Bernd Rabe Baritone Saxophone, Vibraphone – Karl Blume (tracks: 1 to 8) Bass – Eberhard Pommerencke Drums – Helmut Perschke Guitar – Heinz Kitschenberg (tracks: 14 to 21) Piano, Accordion – Klaus Wunderlich (tracks: 1 to 8) Piano, Vibraphone – Gerd Mann (tracks: 9 to 21) New Jazz Group Hannover recorded November 1954 by the BFN (1, 2) December 1954 at Studio A, BFN Cologne (3 to 8) May 19, 1955 at Kongresshalle, Frankfurt/Main (9 to 13) May 30, 1955 at Volksbildungshei…
Rebirth Cycle
Limited remastered edition of 250 copies only. Nearly everyone on the planet has heard Mtume. Notorious B.I.G.’s sample of his 1983 single Juicy Fruit, is as iconic as they come. What few know, is that prior to entering the world of R&B, the drummer James Mtume was a seminal figure in the 1970’s New York free jazz scene - among the wildest of its fiery voices. Part of a remarkable musical legacy - his father and uncles made up the Heath Brothers, he began his career working with Don Cherry, Herb…
More Is More
t’s a rare feeling when music can give you the sensation like a bullet through the head, and you call it a pleasure. No Balls ‘More is More’ gives a new meaning to what we used to call ‘heavy shit’, filling the missing spot between rock and harsh noise. Anders Bryngelsson (Brainbombs, Orchestra of Constant Distress), Kjetil Brandsdal (Noxagt, Ultralyd), David Gurrik (Anal Babes, Astroburger), Jan Christian Lauritzen (Noxagt) blessed our ears with a masterpiece of brutal honesty and perverted bea…
The power of negative thinking
The International Nothing is the Berlin-based duo of clarinet players Kai Fagaschinski and Michael Thieke. The two have been working together since 2000, refining a highly personal language focused on introspective, microtonal textures through stasis, patiently investigating timbre, multiphonics and extended techniques, with a commanding intensity spiced with a dry sense of humor (reflected also in the cover art by Japanese Masae Tanabe). This duo has released three albums on the Japanes…
Sex Tape
Recording of Heather Leigh and Peter Brötzmann's great set at Unlimited Festival, Wels, 2016. Personnel: Heather Leigh - pedal steel guitar; Peter Brötzmann - tenor saxophone.
Duet
Great improvisers reveal a lifetime of experience and artistry in every note. For both pianist Satoko Fujii and bassist Joe Fonda, that brings to bear an estimable history of collaboration with some of the music’s greatest practitioners and travel that spans the globe. It also means that despite the fact that their winding paths had never previously crossed, they immediately tapped a rich vein of musical understanding during their first-ever performances together. On Duet, a live recording of th…
Trouble No More… All Men Are Brothers
It all started on “Brothers And Sisters”. Actually, the process began prior to that, with my discovering the Blues through John Mayall’s records, but that’s a different story…Seeing the picture of that “super-extended family” on the inside cover with musicians, roadies, friends, women and kids, and listening to the Bluesy flavor of Gregg Allman’s voice and Dicky Betts’ guitar just hit me really deep, and in my dreams I wished I could have been there, stopping the clock to stay….in some sort of a…
Live At The Jazz Mill 1954
A fantastic addition to the Barney Kessel catalog of the 50s – a never-heard live set that has the guitarist in form that's every bit as strong as his famous albums for Contemporary Records! In fact, the strength of the recording may well capture Kessel at a level that beats those sessions – as Barney's playing live, with a bit more bite – and really grabs us with the strong tone on his solos – and the sense of energy he gets in a quartet that also includes a young Pete Jolly on piano! The recor…
Marching Song Volumes 1 & 2
The brilliant third album from Mike Westbrook – a sharp-edged, two volume set with a scathing anti-war theme! The work is Westbrook's first total-concept album, and it's still one of his best – written with an edge that's free from some of the more whimsical touches that showed up in Mike's later years, and played by a core group of British avant soloists with searing intensity! You've never heard large group scoring like this – bold, ambitious, and quite different than most of what's c…
Rhesus O
The French band Rhesus O was formed in 1971 by future Magma keyboarder Jean-Pol Asseline with musicians from the jazz and jazz-rock field and released one self titled record. Soft Machine is the main influence to be found on the record and to a lesser extent Magma, Miles Davis and Frank Zappa. The record presents a melodic jazz-rock with folk and classical elements, based on an instrumentation of two keyboarders: Alain Monier on organ and Jean-Pol Asseline on e-piano and harpsichord, two bass pl…
The Conscience
Paul Rutherford's been making amazing sounds on trombone for decades – and he still sounds incredible here on this late 90s performance in Japan – a set that has the trombonist working with percussionist Sabu Toyozumi – but at a level that really seems to let Paul take the lead on most numbers! The set begins in a slightly tentative way – with Rutherford maybe going for some more familiar modes of expression, but quickly opening up as Toyozumi fills in the spaces between the notes – always in wa…