★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 outset of his career with the Mankunku Quartet in 1969. Backed by the Cliffs, Alex Express documents Mankunku’s return to the studio in 1975 with a handful of new and original compositions and his inimitable tone on full display. Shaking off the burden…
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 Express, which both appeared in 1975, the bar had been set very high. Enamoured by their jazz contemporaries, the session was concocted by members of an exciting new South African rock group called Rabbit, who formed a backing group consisting of guit…
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 think. The second half is how we untangle and get made whole. Some of the recordings were done live at Half Moon Studios in Toronto, while others were done remotely and shared, then crafted carefully to find their ways together. The album brings togeth…
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 inspiration. Tengger’s interest in cosmology reflects in their outlook and lyrical approach. In their words “the sound starts from the breaking dawn and circulates around until the night sky and the milky way.”Opening single "Panaptu" offers a reverent …
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 in 1985 as an interactive and playable MIDI sequencer for the 68k era of Macintosh computers. Curious, he bid on the item and ended up winning it for a few dollars. Upon investigation, the simple and intuitive nature of its interface appealed to him, …
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 sought after electronic instruments. Gaining access to the collections of Calgary’s National Music Centre and LA’s Vintage Synthesizer Museum, Aucoin ran amok on machines to create four albums of thrilling, transporting instrumental music. Each song on…
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 America is letting its roots be felt. Elegua is a part of this happening. It originated in Boston as a result of the collective efforts of musicians concerned about the direction to be taken by the Latin American musical forms. Elegua essentially deal…
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 …
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…
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, Alberta in March 2020, houses one of the world’s most extensive collection of rare and historic synthesizers. There, Aucoin was doing the Artist In Residence program and recorded 51 synthesizers to begin the project. The project was paused with the start …
De Repente
In 1970, the Virgilio Armas Trio released De Repente on the tiny Discos A&B label, very likely a one-off, self-financed project. Virgilio Armas recalls: “The nightlife in Caracas of the 1950’s and 1960’s inspired me to record an album in 1970, with songs influenced by the Jazz, Bossa and Latin genres. De Repente was created with my beloved Piano, and my long-time musical partners Rodolfo Buenaño (bass) and Guillermo Tariba (drums).”
The style is very much influenced by the harder post-Bossa Nova…
Espejismo
We Are Busy Bodies announces the reissue of the rare and sought-after 1973 Venezuelan jazz album Espejismo ('Mirage') by Virgilio Armas Y Su Grupo, offering a fascinating snapshot of the thriving music scene in early 1970's Caracas, until now largely undocumented because of the musical dominance of Venezuela’s far larger southern neighbour, Brazil. Pianist and bandleader Virgilio Armas skilfully combined Latin Jazz, post-bossa swing (Balanço), with home-grown variants of Son Cubano, Montuno, Mer…
Like A Child
We Are Busy Bodies reissues Sadayasu Fujii Trio's 1977 album, Like A Child. Led by pianist, Sadayasu Fujii, the album includes jazz standards "A Sleepin' Bee" and "If I Should Lose You", along with original compositions.
Music For Listening
*In process of stocking* Music For Listening, the sophomore album by Michael Scott Dawson. The album is comprised of twelve ambient works for guitar. It follows his 2020 debut Nowhere, Middle Of which was built around generative synths. Not wanting to repeat himself, Dawson entirely abandoned the synthesizer, his primary instrument, on Music For Listening. The resulting guitar pieces lean heavily on tape loops and manipulations, and are accompanied by field recordings and spare piano elements. T…
Ubok Aka Inua
*In process of stocking* Originally released in 1976, Ubok Aka Inua is the fifth album by legendary Nigerian saxophonist and band leader, Etubom Rex Williams. The album features Psychedelic Shoes and One Woman Is Enough Trouble, both heard on countless funk and soul compilations. The album was restored from the original tapes by Noah Mintz and artwork restored and recreated by Steve Lewin.
"Etubom Rex Williams occupies the genuine space of legend of Nigerian Highlife. His incredible professional…