★Honest Jon's
Lamin Fofana And The Doudou Ndiaye Rose Family
Epic, grooving, dazzlingly creative, perfectly attuned blends of complex mbalax drumming, field recordings, thumping kick-drum, and cosmic, bubbling, jamming synths and electronics.
Labour
Senegal’s master mbalax drummers are rendered in killer electro dubs and club rub ’n tug by Valentina Magaletti’s Holy Tongue trio, Beatrice Dillon and Lamin Fofana, for an instant Honest Jon’s classic.
The Paths of Pain: The Caife Label, Quito, 1960-68
A dazzling survey of the last, bohemian flowering of the so-called Golden Era of Ecuadorian musica national, before the oil boom and incoming musical styles — especially cumbia — swept away its achingly beautiful, phantasmagorical, utopian juggling of indigenous and mestizo traditions.
Twenty-One Sabar Rhythms
Tip! *In process of stocking.* Magnificent Wolof drum music, performed by an extended griot family over seven consecutive days, in the mystical setting of Lac Rose, outside Dakar.
Doudou Ndiaye Rose — who died in 2015 — is a key drummer in the musical history of the world. He developed a system of five hundred original drumming patterns, ancient and new. Amongst the modern rhythms here is Bench Mi — 'under the Baobab tree,' a spot where where problems get solved. Also Hibar Yi — 'passing on inf…
Leaf-Playing In Quito, 1960-1965
Tip! *In process of stocking.* The out-of-this-world recordings of Dilson de Souza, leading a kind of tropical chamber jazz on leaves from a ficus tree. Dilson was from Barra do Pirai, in the Brazilian countryside; moving to Rio as a young man, where he worked in construction. He recorded his first record in 1954, for RCA Victor. He travelled to Quito around 1957, soon hooking up with Benitez & Valencia, who introduced him to the CAIFE label. Dilson played the leaf open, resting on his tongue, h…
Something Is Wrong: Songs From East Africa
Killer compilation -- selections from an HMV run of more than 400 78s -- recordings made in Uganda and Kenya from the mid‐1930s to the mid‐1950s. Part 2 encompasses this material circa 1952-1957. Three main types of performance are featured (not forgetting a lovely early Kenyan big‐band calypso, as if straight from the pen of Lord Kitchener). Most are minstrelsy, with songs ranging dazzlingly through subjects including loneliness and death, bastards and cut‐off trousers, trains of fire and no‐go…
Fourteen Years
Fourteen Years is the first of three 10" comprising Charlotte Courbe's third album. It marks her return to Honest Jon's after two decades. Recently, Charlotte joined Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, singing and playing scissors. Her recording "Born To Lie" featured prominently in the TV series Killing Eve. After a cancer diagnosis last year, Charlotte felt the urge to produce and release new music. "It became like a vital thing." "MRI Song" and "Planet Ping Pong" were recorded during chemothe…
You Better Get Ready: Savoy Gospel 1978-1986
The third of three volumes surveying surely the mightiest Gospel label of them all. Seventeen gems of fierce funk, rapturous soul and transcendent disco and boogie, super-charged with celebration and affirmativeness, loaded with roaring choirs, rocking horns and popping bass guitars, from the years leading up to Savoy's acquisition by Malaco. Hardly any of these recordings have been reissued since their first release.
The stupendous opener by Edith Moreno only appeared as a blank-label promo, in…
Turn It Loose, Ain't No Good: Savoy Gospel 1970-1979
The second of three volumes surveying surely the mightiest Gospel label of them all. Sublime crossings of gospel with the soul, funk and jazz of the Black Power era. Twenty rapturous cuts dot dazzlingly between Muscle Shoals soul, screwed breakbeat, Mizells-style fusion, disco and proto-house. Triumphant re-workings of Sly Stone, Donny Hathaway, and Herbie Hancock's "Head Hunters" will have listeners throwing their pew cushions into the air. Drawn from hard-to-find 45s and LPs, hardly any of the…
A Stranger I May Be: Savoy Gospel 1954-1966
The first of three volumes surveying surely the mightiest Gospel label of them all. Stomping, rollicking gospel music, intermingling with raw soul, searing blues, hard-rocking doo-wop and jazz, and storming R&B. Infused and incandescent with the hurting, surging indignation of the Civil Rights movement, here are twenty-four precious scorchers by giants like the Staple Singers and Jimmy Scott, alongside devastating sides by less celebrated names like the Harmonizing Five of Burlington, North Caro…
1981
Previously unreleased recordings by various line-ups drawn from Derek Bailey, Tristan Honsinger, Christine Jeffrey, Toshinori Kondo, Charlie Morrow, David Toop, Maarten Altena, Georgie Born, Lindsay Cooper, Steve Lacy, Radu Malfatti, and Jamie Muir. Journalists often make the brief history of free improvisation conform to the idea that the history of music is a nice straight line from past to present: Beethoven... Brahms... Boulez. Thus Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, and John Stevens -- together wit…
Epiphany
Honest Jon's Records present a reissue of Company's Epiphany, originally released in 1982. Epiphany \ i-ˈpi-fə-nē \ (1) a manifestation of the essential nature of something (usually sudden) (2) an intuitive grasp of reality through something (usually simple and striking) (3) an illuminating discovery or disclosure. All three definitions apply perfectly to this span of music recorded at London's ICA in July 1982. It's a miracle of group interaction, wonderfully paced, moving steadily between mome…