Sabu Martinez, Sahib Shihab

Winds & Skins transpired to be the very last set of recordings made by Afro-Cuban percussionist Sabu Martinez, who sadly passed away precisely one month after this December 1978 session was committed to tape. The album draws a line under a career that saw the illustrious musician performing alongside Dizzy Gillespie and Art Blakey as well as releasing a string of out-and-out classic Latin jazz records. Here the noted conguero teams up with the lauded saxophonist/flautist Sahib Shihab, who himself played with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Art Blakey and Quincy Jones among others. Shihab makes great use of electrified sax on pieces such as 'The Distorted Sioux Indian', a strange combination of incredibly organic, multi-layered percussion (beautifully mixed too, it should be said) and jarringly robotic staccato phrasing from the reeds. Elsewhere 'Ghandi's Candies' taps into a surreal kind of Easternised harmony with an off-kilter rhythmic complexity, only for the main set to be closed by an arrangement of traditional tune 'Arroz Con Leche', returning Martinez to his Latin roots. The finale to the disc is a bonus track, capturing Martinez's first ever recording in Sweden, described as a 'jingle' (it's actually around four minutes long) for radio, committed to tape in 1967. Wonderful stuff all round.