Reissues
Mirrors
*2022 stock* There is a school of thought which maintains that it is something of a tragedy that Benny has had to earn his living and play his trade as an American emigre in Europe, far from the centre of major jazz activities in his native United States. His contribution, they argue, would have been so much larger and much more widely appreciated. He may have won more polls, true. But the personal contentment which life in the more relaxed atmosphere of Western Europe has supplied probably more…
Reincarnation of a Lovebird
*2022 stock* The opinion of jazz musicians concerning Charles Mingus’ compositions and his protean musical world is that for a long time they represented an area that should be avoided or, at most, dealt with care. Just a few years after his death, of which his thirtieth anniversary occurs this year, they started to look deeper into his repertory, except for a part of which had been proposed in the past (Goodbye Pork Pie Hat was the most largely used).
Just like Duke Ellington various projects w…
Jazz In Studio
*2022 stock* 2008 Release. This record is the fruit of five months of hard work in the recording studio, rehearsals and even sacrifices as told by Enrico Intra and I am obviously satisfied with it. But I sure don't want to consider it a goal. I feel like I'm going toward the right direction and I hope my next work is further confirmation of the effort, seriousness and true passion I've put into my music. Those who know Enrico Intra remember his face like a baby always living in cloud-cuckoo-land…
Swing, Waltz, Swing
*2022 stock* Three – instead of – four this figure can mean a whole different world, when it comes to beats. Whereas the even number lets you march straight, turns right-angled, divides itself symmetrically, the odd rhythm goes around in circles and whirls. One heavy step, followed by two light ones, that can not go straight, that has to turn and turn and turn. The old Vienna and its young people was once ruled by “Waltz speeding” as today the beat shakes up even country dancefloors. Yet, that c…
Lady Heavy Bottom's Waltz
*2022 stock* They called him the “Little Giant” long ago in Chicago – they still call him so. In order to understand why “Little” you have to see him – it’s enough to hear him to understand why “Giant”. But just to listen to him means missing out on so much. “I just look at Johnny and feel the power of positive swinging”, the “producer” says.
Like most small people (let’s not exaggerate the “small” – he’s not exactly a dwarf) Johnny appears to have been blessed with an extra portion of energy. H…
Music For Small Hours
*2022 stock* Had it not been for the post-war migration of many top American jazz musicians to Europe, it is quite likely that the legendary Clarke-Boland Big Band might never have come into existence. As it happened, when Gigi Campi set up the first big band record date in Cologne on December 13, 1961, (Jazz Is Universal for the Atlantic label), he was able to call upon such distinguished self-exiled jazz stars as Benny Bailey (originally from Cleveland, Ohio), Sahib Shihab (Savannah, Georgia),…
Companionship
*2022 stock* Jazz music has more than its fair share of overshadowed figures that whilst contributing much to the music have little presence in its collective conscious. One such musician is the talented multi-reedist, Sahib Shihab.
Born Edmond Gregory, as he was known before he adopted the Muslim faith in 1946, Sahib Shihab’s music background shows a deep and significant evolution, influenced by Thelonious Monk, Dizzie Gillespie (his experience in Dizzie’s band marked Sahib’s switch to Baritone…
Off Limits
*2022 stock* Myths take a long time dying, especially in jazz where the ability to confuse fact and fantasy has marked several generations of both critics and listeners. Perhaps the great Buddy Bolden could be heard for 14 miles on a clear night, but those who still believe that old one deserves to be interned in the same kind of institutions that housed Buddy in his latter days.
The European jazz musicians, despite years of recorded evidence stretching right back to the wonderful Django Reinhar…
November Girl
*2022 stock* One of consolations of the electronic age is that those great moments in music which once were ephemeral and irretrievable can be faithfully captured, preserved for all time and savoured over and over again. Thus, some of the great musical peaks in the ten-year lifespan of the great Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band are stored for posterity on more than a score of albums. Despite writer Bob Houston’s urgent appeal for a conservation order to be put on this improbable aggregation o…
Zamboni 22
*2022 stock* Climate- atmosphere is what we say. Soul with beautiful expression, is what they say in the modern jazz scene in the US. It’s a necessary component for good jazz, as well as for swing. But to achieve an organic atmosphere which is therefore vital and alive, a relationship of intentions and views, and a congeniality of thoughts are needed. When Tommasi was in Rome for a few days and had Santucci and Scoppa listen to the latest pieces he had composed, the three musicians ideas, …
What's happening?
*2022 stock* Giorgio Azzolini was never a front man bt played with the best Italian musicians of the day, as well as American Expats going through like Chet Baker or Bobby Jaspar. Here he has a trio which is amazing for 1966 in that it combines fuild renditions of standards like "When I Fall In Love" or Bill Evan's "Interplay" or Bird's "Moose The Mooche" but here with the along with Franco D'Andrea (who was pianist in the famous Basso Valdambrini Quintet and along with Renato Sellani the godfat…
Crucial Moment
*2022 stock* «Crucial moment» the title assigned by Giorgio Azzolini. And as a fact, jazz in the past years has been going through a crucial, decisive period. On one side the conservation of traditional values of the language and its well-known inspiring of the cause; on the other side the intentions, sometimes only foolish aspirations, of subversion and reorganization, on quite different bases, of jazz expression. The transformed historical – environmental conditions in which the American jazzm…
Night In Fonorama
*2022 stock* Night in Fonorama. And it was a night in the real meaning of the word, that the five jazzmen spent at the Fonorama, one of the most important studios in Milano. It was the night of May the 31st 1964. They met at nine o’ clock in the evening, and they saw the day-break on a working Milano while they still were trying to perfectionate the last tune.
We said they «met»: and no word is more significative to indicate the meeting of the five musicians at the studio. There was nothing deci…
Jazz (Now) in Italy
*2022 stock* At the Jazz Festival which took place in Sanremo in March ’66, out of the seven bands present only one was Italian; that is of course if you exclude Guido Manusardi, an Italian pianist that has been living in Sweden for years. What I’m talking about is Franco D’Andrea’s piano trio with Giorgio Azzolini and Franco Tonani: an excellent trio that I think would have been able to obtain a bigger interest if Eraldo Volontè and Dino Piana had been added to these three excellent musicians. …
The Doctrine of Maybeness
**3xCD Deluxe 8-sided Digipak** "The Doctrine of Maybeness" by Aural Rage is an anthology of the works of Danny Hyde’s Aural rage project, an engineer, Programmer, producer, collaborator, remixer, and co-conspirator of Coil, Nine Inch Nails, Psychic TV, Depeche Mode, and many others. A 15 year anniversary of musical adventure on 3xCDs with all works together - "A Nature Of Nonsense", "Sinsemilla Dreams" and "Svay Pak" with unreleased bonus tracks.
One of the early sampling Pioneers, producing 80…
Swanyard
**2CD in a 6-panel Digipak, second pressing in white color** 150 minutes of previously unreleased material from Coil, strewn with parts that would eventually metastasise into Backwards, and ultimately Black Light District and Musick To Play In the Dark.We hardly need to stress that Swanyard is a bounty for Coil nuts out there, but equally a fascinating listen for anyone attempting to get to grips with their unfathomable catalogue - especially DJs and listeners currently digging into the underbel…
Zero Kama
**3xCD in Deluxe 8-sided Digipak, 500 copies** Zero Kama was an experimental music project founded by Zoe DeWitt in 1983. The first release of Zero Kama was the title V.V.V.V.V., recorded for the Nekrophile Rekords cassette compilation The Beast 666. In 1984 followed the cassette release of the album The Secret Eye of L.A.Y.L.A.H., which is commonly regarded as one of the key albums of the industrial-subgenre 'ritual'. The fact that all instruments used for this recording were exclusively made f…
The Sound of Indifference
**300 copies** Minimal Wave is proud to present The Sound of Indifference, a rare cassette released in 1981 by Aural Indifference. Aural Indifference was a post-punk studio collective from Sydney, Australia. The two principal members were Brian Spencer Hall (the M Squared in house producer) and Kevin Purdy. The cassette album, The Sound of Indifference, was released in 1981, featuring tracks such as “Theme”, “Park, and “Man Am I Progressive”. Their sound ranges from minimal synth, to post-punk t…
Standing in the Rain ("12)
**180 gram vinyl** Minimal Wave is proud to present an LP of 6 songs by cult U.K. project Scenes de la Bohème, entitled ‘Standing in the Rain’. Scenes de la Bohème was formed by Anthony Waites in London, in 1981 with an innate desire to create poetic, subversive pop music. Without any intention of ever signing to a record label, he self-released one untitled 7” single in 1982, an edition of 150 copies, with money funded to him by his parents for his 21st birthday. He often used borrowed synthesi…
The Bedroom Tapes
*In process of stocking* A Compilation of Minimal Wave From Around The World (1980-1991), The Bedroom Tapes features rare, unreleased, and licensed tracks all the way from Belgium to Australia to Japan. The Bedroom Tapes excitedly marks Minimal Wave’s 66th release and is a follow up in the series to The Lost Tapes, The Found Tapes, The Hidden Tapes and of course The Minimal Wave Tapes. The twelve artists on this compilation mostly recorded their music onto 4-track tape in their bedroom studios. …