Dusk Fire Records has afforded music lovers fresh opportunity to peer into one of the genre’s most ground-breaking works in the late Neil Ardley’s ‘Kaleidoscope of Rainbows’: re-mastered from the original tapes, with a 16-page booklet featuring previously unreleased sessions and publicity photography and notes by Ardley and an appreciation of his work by Barbara Thompson. This seminal 1976 release, produced by Paul Buckmaster and engineered by Martin Levan at Morgan Studios, London, featured contributions from some of the genre’s best-known musicians including Barbara Thompson, Tony Coe, Geoff Castle, Dave Macrae and Ian Carr.  Tackling a central theme, based here on a Balinese-scale, via a series of suites (‘Rainbows’ as Ardley defined them) likened the work (favourably) to Mike Oldfield’s ‘Tubular Bells’, which was still enjoying huge sales after its 1973 release.

This landmark reissue not only reaffirms Neil Ardley as one of the most important innovators of British modern jazz but is in itself measures one of the major releases in modern British jazz.

“… a classic.” Brian Case, New Musical Express