★Verve Records
Le Déjeuner Sur L'Herbe
2024 Stock, reduced price. Remastered edition on British Jazz Explosion series. ‘Le Déjeuner Sur L’Herbe’ features key players in modern British jazz including Henry Lowther, Ian Carr, Michael Gibbs, Derek Wadsworth, Barbara Thompson, Dave Gelly, Dick Heckstall-Smith, Frank Ricotti, Jack Bruce and Jon Hiseman, under the directorship of Neil Ardley. ‘Nardis’ features solos by Ian Carr on flugelhorn, George Smith on tuba and – rarely heard – Jack Bruce on acoustic bass. Complementing this is what…
Black Unity
2024 Stock. For 1971’s Black Unity, Pharaoh Sanders added groove to foundation of spiritual and free jazz he had explored on his previous Impulse! albums. The result is a piercing and emotive 37-minute rhythm-driven title track exploration of African, Latin, aborigine and Native American sounds. "By 1971, Pharoah Sanders had taken the free thing as far as he could and still live with himself. He was investigating new ways to use rhythm -- always his primary concern -- inside his music and more t…
Chelsea Girl
She is beautiful. And in a world where so much can easily be possessed on a whim or for a promise, she is not comparable. She has a clear, pure ring, a trueness, like an arrow that has hit an inner mark and can’t be wedged loose. Her voice and her manner, that stretch farther into the past than perhaps she realizes, may set the new style: an existential pop style that is as earthy as Mary Travers (Peter, Paul & Mary) yet more elegant, more isolated. Her name is Nico. I don’t know where she was b…
Psychicemotus
Psychicemotus was released in 1965 and features Yusef Lateef on various flutes and tenor saxophone, Georges Arvanitas on piano, bassist Reggie Workman, and drummer James Black. And while the Coltrane era of modal and free jazz was in full swing, Lateef always followed his own muse, and continued looking forward while looking back to ancient musics. His use of bamboo and Chinese wood flutes on the title track and "Bamboo Flute Blues" added not only dimension and texture, but rhythmic invention to…
Crescent
*2023 stock* "John Coltrane's Crescent from the spring of 1964 is an epic album, showing his meditative side that would serve as a perfect prelude to his immortal work A Love Supreme. His finest quartet with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones supports the somewhat softer side of Coltrane, and while not completely in ballad style, the focus and accessible tone of this recording work wonders for anyone willing to sit back and let this music enrich and wash over you.
While not quite at th…
Out Of The Afternoon
"Drummer Roy Haynes was just about everywhere in the golden age of jazz, recording classic albums with some of the most legendary names of the genre. The hard-bop-verging-on-post-bop Out Of The Afternoon is an excellent example of the adventurous spirit that was taking flight in the jazz world in the early 1960s. Haynes swings as the leader of this 1962 Impulse! session, featuring A-list jazzmen Roland Kirk (multiple instruments including stritch and nose flute!), Tommy Flanagan (piano) and Henr…
The Rubaiyat Of Dorothy Ashby
Essential Dorothy Ashby! This high quality Verve By Request edition is cut on 180 gram vinyl at Third Man Pressing in Detroit from a newly remastered transfer. Original Lab review: Released in 1969, Rubaiyat was the follow-up to the cult-favorite Afro Harping. Lesser known, perhaps due to its rarity, Rubaiyat follows in line with more of the funky awkwardness established by its predecessor. The monster track here is "The Moving Finger," with a chanting intro setting off a nice break followed by …
Ptah, The El Daoud
* Recorded in the basement studio of the Coltrane family home in Dix Hills in 1970, Alice Coltrane’s fourth album is a transcendent masterpiece of spiritual jazz. The title track is an ode to the Egyptian God, Ptah (the El Daoud meaning “the beloved”). Many moments on the album reach what Coltrane herself defined the term Turiya as: “A state of consciousness — the high state of Nirvana, the goal of human life.” Verve By Request Series features 180-gram vinyl, pressed at Third Man in Detroit.. *…
A Love Supreme
2023 Official reissue. Transfers from the analog tapes and remastered 180-gram vinyl in deluxe gatefold packaging. One of the most important records ever made, John Coltrane's A Love Supreme was his pinnacle studio outing, that at once compiled all of the innovations from his past, spoke to the current of deep spirituality that liberated him from addictions to drugs and alcohol, and glimpsed at the future innovations of his final two and a half years. Recorded over two days in December 1964, Tra…
We Get Requests
The new Acoustic Sounds series is mastered from the original tapes, pressed on 180-gram vinyl and packaged in high-quality gatefold ("book-like") covers, curated by Stoughton Printing Co. where the printed sheet of paper is applied to the cardboard. All under the supervision of Chad Kassem, CEO of Acoustic Sounds, the most established company in the field of publications for audiophiles. The publications are selected from the extraordinary Verve/UMe catalog, and to begin with, the series focuses…
The Velvet Underground & Nico (LP)
2017 Release. 180 g, Gatefold. Over Half a century later, this record still slays; if any album is deserving of the "classic" tag, it's The Velvet Underground & Nico. Lou Reed's affected vocals, Nico's female Lugosi-style recitations, John Cale's droning strings, Moe Tucker's minimal kit - this landmark work laid down paths that musicians today are still trying to follow. Just pick any track: "I'm Waiting For The Man," "Sunday Morning," "Venus In Furs," "All Tomorrow's Parties," "There She Goes …
Chelsea Girl
2019 repress. Her debut originally released in 1967 (mere months after the groundbreaking The Velvet Underground & Nico album). A masterpiece of dark orchestral folk-pop featuring playing and songwriting help from the VU's Lou Reed, John Cale and Sterling Morrison (as well as the then unknown Jackson Browne who was dating Nico at the time). Features the definitive version of Browne's 'These Days,' as well as classics like the title track and Tim Hardin's 'Eulogy For Lenny Bruce."Although Chelsea…
Brown Rice
Out of print in the U.S. for more than four decades, Don Cherry‘s meditative, inventive outsider jazz classic, Brown Rice, is available on vinyl once again as of today via Verve/Universal Music. The album is pressed on standard weight black vinyl and housed in a replica sleeve with original liner notes from acclaimed jazz critic Stanley Crouchuite reach this level of wild invention again. Brown Rice contains the apogee of Cherry’s influences: African, Indian, Arabic and American music are all th…
The Cycle Is Complete
restocked, 180 grams edition, long out of print, few copies available...A really great trance psychedelic album from 1972, with only 4 mainly instrumental tracks spread across it's 2 sides. The Palmer group is largely made up of unknowns but I do recognize Paul Lagos (drums ) and Templeton Parcely ( violin ) as members of "Incredible" era Kaliedoscope but then again I should mention the ever popular Big Black on congas.The music presented here is a loose trippy sound that reminds me a great deal…