★We Are Busy Bodies
Alex Express
Hailing from Cape Town, tenor saxophonist Winston Mankunku Ngozi (1943-2009) is a venerated figure in the pantheon of South African jazz. Inspired by Coltrane while rooted in indigenous folklore, he released the classic album Yakhal’ Inkomo at the ou…
The Peacemaker
Hailing from Alexandra and nicknamed "Ratau" (meaning "lion"), saxophonist Mike Makhalemele (1938-2000) was a force of nature with a robust yet soulful tone and seemingly endless breath. He embraced the pop music scene as an enthusiastic collaborator…
The Bull And The Lion
Bringing together Johannesburg’s two saxophone titans for a supergroup recording project was a visionary move by Jo’Burg Records in 1976. Following the success of Makhalemele’s debut The Peacemaker and Mankunku’s long-awaited sophomore release Alex E…
Littlefolk
Mount Maxwell returns with another full-length journey into memory, melody, and geography - this time roaming beyond the BC environs of his previous records into a stranger, less knowable country. While still woozily nostalgic in the vein of Only Chi…
How To Unravel
How To Unravel is about how we might fall apart, and how we find the ways to come back together again. The first half follows all of the paths that lead in circles, the tangled yarn that never finds the end. But it holds on. It’s stronger than you th…
Tengger
The album represents an opportunity for the globetrotting family trio to explore their origins. Tengger means ultimate expanded sky in Mongolian. The album finds Tengger accepting the mood of the world, using the motion of wind and waves as sonic ins…
Puna
Huge Tip! Oiro Pena is a Finnish jazz collective helmed by prolific composer Antti Vauhkonen. Their last album, Puna, recorded in bedrooms, studios and other salubrious locations around Helsinki during 2022, is a mix of lo-fi spiritual jazz, experime…
Universal Synthesizer Interface Volume One
In 2019, Vancouver artist Kristen Roos came across a floppy disk for sale on eBay containing the Commodore Amiga version of Laurie Spiegel's 'Music Mouse'. This was one of the first intelligent instruments for personal computers, created by Spiegel i…
Universal Synthesizer Interface Volume Two
In 2019, Vancouver artist Kristen Roos came across a floppy disk for sale on eBay containing the Commodore Amiga version of Laurie Spiegel's 'Music Mouse'. This was one of the first intelligent instruments for personal computers, created by Spiegel i…
Synthetic - A Synth Odyssey: Season 2
On Synthetic: Season 2, Halifax pop artist and composer Rich Aucoin continues his journey through the history of synthesizers. The second entry in his quadruple LP series once again features an armada of the world’s most rare, historic, and highly so…
Mind On The Run
Big Tip! Basil Kirchin, a forgotten genius of post-war British music, was an influential jazz drummer, creative free-spirit and pioneer of Musique Concrète. He spent most of his life living and working in Hull, the 2017 UK City of Culture, which is h…
Astral Plains
Peace Flag Ensemble are a free jazz collective from Saskatchewan. Their sophomore LP, Astral Plains, arrives July 18 via We Are Busy Bodies.
Find Yourself Lost
Michael Scott Dawson is a Canadian producer and sound artist. Anchored by frayed melodies, tape loops, and pastoral field recordings he has crafted a body of tender and nostalgic ambient work.
Elegua
Latin music, with all its spirit, all its intensity, and all its magic, expresses itself in the decade of the seventies as a cultural revelation. Europe recognizes, listens, and dances to our music, the United States jumps to the sound of it. Latin A…
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 ap…
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 compositi…
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…
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, …
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 Afr…
Synthetic - A Synth Odyssey: Season 1
Rich Aucoin is announcing his next album entitled Synthetic. The record is a rare Quadruple Album with its 4 seasons/LPs being staggered in 6 month intervals over the next 2 years. The album, which began at The National Music Centre in Calgary, Alber…