Jazz /
Plays Horace Silver
The music of Horace Silver is magically presented here by drummer Hideo Shiraki – grooving nicely in the same exotic approach to soul jazz you'd find on Silver's best Blue Note sides of the late 50s! Shiraki's always had a bit of a Jazz Messengers approach in his music – at least at this point in his career – so it's no surprise that he does such a great job with Silver's music – recreating some of the best grooves made famous by Horace at Blue Note, but also bringing a bit of his own flavor to …
Scenery Somewhere
"How magical that in an improvisation recorded in a former hospital funeral chapel, we hear the sounds of life. We hear the sounds of breath. Not only the gentle sibilance of the air spilling from the edges of the mouthpiece, as it escapes life as a note; not only the airiness of those low drums: but also the sound of the music being allowed to breathe within the space’s very special acoustic. We hear the sounds of the heartbeat in Cornelia Nilsson’s low drums, now urgent, now reassuring. And we…
Jewels of Thought
The compositional minimalism of Jewels of Thought is a major thread through Sanders albums of this period, setting up a sparse canvas for colorful tenor saxophone meditations. In one instance Sanders' playing may be soft, beckoning and glad, while elsewhere his saxophone becomes a crazed, outraged beast unleashing its fury on the world. Regardless of which way these compositions lead, listeners are made to feel more like sonic travelers than mere consumers.
As-Shams Archive Vol. 1 - South Africa Jazz, Funk & Soul 1975-1982
As-Shams Archive Vol. 1 introduces the core catalogue of As-Shams/The Sun, the independent record label that documented some of the most exciting developments in jazz, funk and soul from South Africa in the 1970s. With 10 tracks from 10 iconic albums featuring 10 different artists and 10 original compositions, this compilation delivers 85 minutes of South African music history.Including essential tracks by the likes of Dick Khoza, Black Disco and Harari, remastered from the original analog tap…
Finn Von Eyben Workshop
150 hand numbered copies. Kick-ass free music recorded in the glorious year of 1966 in Copenhagen. From Finn Von Eyben a leading exponent of the fertile Danish free jazz movement of the 1960s, comes these never-before-released live and studio recordings, offering an interesting addition to our understanding of a time in Danish music history where past, present, and future clashed to create a whole new sound. This is as essential as it gets. Piano, double-bass & drums in total interaction.
150 h…
Obeah
Recorded directly to two-track digital Mitsubishi X-80 tape recorder at Rudy Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ on June 4th & 5th, 1987.
True Or False
A great live Cd by drummer giant Roy Haynes. Roy Haynes's very active and his different approach to drumming comes out very well - hard swinging and with a lot of joy and very spontaneous.
The Aiki
Masahiko Satoh is a Japanese jazz pianist, composer and arranger. Yoshisaburo 'Sabu' Toyozumi is one of the small group of musical pioneers who comprised the first generation playing free improvisation music in Japan. As an improvising drummer he played and recorded with many of the key figures in Japanese free music including the two principal figures in the first generation, Masayuki Takayanagi and Kaoru Abe from the late 1960s onwards. The Aiki was recorded live on the 26th March 1997 at C.S.…
Punk Circus
*2022 stock.* Futura Marge presents Some Jive Ass Boer / Live at Jazz Unité by John Dyani (double bass, piano & vocals) & Mal Waldron (piano) - Guest on one track : Pablo Sauvage (percussion)Recorded live on 16 April 1981 at Jazz Unité (Paris-La Défense)
Ethiobraz
“Ethiobraz” documents the meeting of Paal Nilssen-Love’s Large Unit big band and Ethiopian dance/music ensemble Fendika at Molde Jazz Festival in 2018. Joining them as a special guest is guitarist Terrie Ex, who was a key component in getting making the meeting happen with his long involvement with the Ethiopian music scene. And, Paal Nilssen-Loves’s first travel to Ethiopia was with The Ex in December 2009. This changed his life. Paal’s first travel to Brazil was in June 2013. This also changes…
For Future Reference
Never-before-released early 1980s sessions by a band of top British players and composers which never released an album, led by drummer Trevor Tomkins. This is, in effect, the late Trevor Tomkins debut album release as leader, as well as his memorial. We were working on this with Trevor when he died last last year and it's now released with the help and support of his family.
Jazz For The Jet Set
“In much the same way hippies can be an iconic symbol of the late ’60s, the early ’60s might be represented by the world of the Jet Set. The Jet Set was a carry over from the Café Culture of the ‘50s and first popularized in such films as Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960) and Edward’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961). The women were beautiful, glamorous, and sexually available. The men were slick, sharply dressed, and talking the fast hip lingo. The alcohol flowed, cigarettes burned, and the music alw…
Deeper In Black
Deeper in Black was inspired by the 1969 Blue Note recording of American trumpeter Blue Mitchell entitled Collision in Black and took its name from Pillay’s cover of the album’s Peggy Grayson composition. Pillay’s album featured another two compositions from Collision in Black by way of the Monk Higgins track “Keep Your Soul,” with distinct arrangements straddling Side A and Side B, and Vee Pea’s “Jo Ju Ja” closing out the set. Although the source material was over a decade old when Pillay recor…
Thrust Too
Thrust barely made a blip in the marketplace; it was mostly available around the Akron area. But Niles was undeterred. He returned the following year with the just-as-good Thrust Too, which is a touch more muscular, more precise — partly due to being recorded in a slightly upgraded studio meant for jingles. What Thrust Too loses in atmosphere, it makes up for in deep grooves, like on “Hang Ten,” “Parrott City,” and “Machelle.” McNeal — the namesake of the latter — appears on the final track, “Su…
Thrust
At the makeshift Man-Ray Studios in Akron, Ohio, where barrels of soap were rolled away to make room for recording, guitarist Wilbur Niles and his then-girlfriend, Machelle McNeal, recorded "Ja Ja." Niles, a history major, titled it after King Jaja, who rose from slavery to become a wildly successful broker of palm oil in the 19th century. The humid tranquil track would lead off the pair's first and only album together, 1979's Thrust. It begins with an elliptical little electric-piano hook by Mc…
Plum And Cherry
Following the April 2022 reissue of the album Shrimp Boats, We Are Busy Bodies presents companion titles Plum and Cherry and Deeper in Black to round out a Lionel Pillay and Basil Mannenberg Coetzee “trilogy” as part of the label’s As-Shams South African jazz archive series. The connection between these three albums is tight as the 1987 release Shrimp Boats compiled unreleased recordings from both the 1979 session for Plum and Cherry and the 1980 session for Deeper in Black. These two rare recor…
Requiem for Jazz
Composer, clarinetist, singer and educator Angel Bat Dawid announces the release of a new work, Requiem For Jazz. A 12-movement suite composed, arranged, and inspired in part by dialogue from Edward O. Bland’s 1959 film The Cry of Jazz, the album is a wide-ranging treatise on the African American story from one of its most astute narrators.
Itself an incisive critique of racial politics in the USA, The Cry of Jazz draws formal comparisons between the structure of jazz music and the African Ameri…
Live Under The Sky, Tokyo, 1982
The short-lived 'Super Star Quintet', which formed specially to play at the Live Under The Sky festival in Tokyo in July and August 1982, was accurately named. After all, those involved - tenor saxophonist Joe Handerson, pianist Kenny Barron, bassist Ron Carter, drummer Tony Williams and trumpeter Freddy Hubbard - were all living legends at the time. Famously, the quintet's expressive, exuberant performances - think fizzing grooves, almost telepathic communication, extended improvisations and bl…
Blasé
Florida-born saxophonist, composer, poet, actor and playwright Archie Shepp was one of the most articulate exponents of politicized black culture in the late ‘60s, a time of enormous upheaval and radical thought. Relocating to Paris he made a number of highly influential albums, such as Blasé, that broached the essential themes of freedom and racial equality, and tapped into the bedrock of African-American music. Gospel and blues were a major part of the work, which also had a strong avant-garde…
Black Children
A little masterpiece of soul afrofunk with carpets of dreamy keyboards on their swirlingly seductive sound and their really cool voices. The second album of Black Children Sledge Funk released in 1978 is a delight. Repressed for the first time.