Jazz /
Lolito's Theme / Beloved Gift
Dynamite cuts gives you a wonderful hard to find Jazz 45, from the Canadian P.M label. Bernie Senensky, a superb piano player, set the pace with this Hard Piano driven jazz groove. With a little treasure on the flips with Beloved Gift, a superb interlude that ends with Heavy bass hip hop vibes
The Gow-Dow Experience
"Following my recent phone call with Prof. Benson, I left him to continue his 92nd birthday celebrations with his family. We’d talked about his life, his music, his achievements. Throughout our conversation it struck me what a kind, humble and pleasant man he was. I felt that I was in the presence of greatness – not the egotistical greatness that emanates so often from high achievers, but that of someone who had simply won at life.“I was a music teacher. I wasn’t trying to make a record to compe…
The Gow-Dow Experience
"Following my recent phone call with Prof. Benson, I left him to continue his 92nd birthday celebrations with his family. We’d talked about his life, his music, his achievements. Throughout our conversation it struck me what a kind, humble and pleasant man he was. I felt that I was in the presence of greatness – not the egotistical greatness that emanates so often from high achievers, but that of someone who had simply won at life.“I was a music teacher. I wasn’t trying to make a record to compe…
Children of the Forest
Black Editions Archive is ecstatic to announce the next chapter in the Milford Graves Archive series, the double LP Children of the Forest, previously unreleased 1976 sessions with Hugh Glover and Arthur Doyle that re-write the book on Milford Graves' ensemble music of the 1970s. Graves recorded these sessions himself in his legendary Queens basement laboratory and workshop in the months immediately leading up to the March 1976 session that produced what many consider his most iconic album, Bäbi…
Nana Vasconcelos Nelson Angelo - Novelli
Cult album of Brazilian music finally reissued. Official reissue of this real tour de force of Brazilian creativity, where the mighty Naná Vasconcelos is joined by his friends Nelson Angelo and Novelli (both members of the legendary Clube da Esquina) to create one of the greatest Brazilian albums ever recorded outside of Brazil. The three musicians grasp here for the kind of musical freedom that could then only be achieved outside of their country. A boundary-pushing experimentation that makes y…
Africadeus
Bomb! Spiritual, intimate and revolutionary, yet firmly rooted in Brazil's folklore. Africadeus was the breakthrough album of the mighty Naná Vasconcelos, in which he discovered the berimbau to the world and took the instrument to a universal level. Having played in the shadows for other artists such as Milton Nascimento, Gato Barbieri or Som Imaginario, Naná is here finally in the spotlight. Recorded in 1973 in France for Pierre Barouh's Saravah label, this is the album that definitely imprinte…
Reaction
*2023 stock* "That this is the first release by the courageous pianist Mario Rusca, born in Turin in 1937, and thus not that young anymore, can only be explained (and not justified) by circumstances such as described above. But there’s more to it. Though I really strive to support Italian jazz and to discover new talents, often by going against the tide, I hadn’t yet heard the name of Mario Rusca three years ago. It was Joe Venuti who introduced me to him in the spring of 1971, while he was stay…
Lähtö Matkalle
*2023 stock* "This band has a certain Finnish (and forestral?) nature, like e.g. Pekka Pohjola's music too. The composer is the guitarist Pekka Tegelman (who later wrote and played for singer Liisa Tavi among others, by the way). The sound is rather mellow, besides electric guitar the keyboards are in the key role. Lähtö Matkalle is progressive with longer compositions, the keyboardist had changed and some other new players arrived for this album - another reason for sounding a bit different. If…
Jazz Liisa 14
*200 copies limited edition. 2023 stock* "A great performance by the Nordjazz Quintet -- a cool mixed electric/acoustic combo that features sax and flute from Pekka Poyry, guitar from Nils Petter Nyren, keyboards from Ole Kock Nahsen, bass from Kjell Jansson, and drums from Petur Ostlund -- a combo who work on long tracks that are a nice extrapolation of some of the fusion modes explored by the Love Records label during the same time! The tunes here get especially soulful in the longer stretches…
Vesku Suomesta
*300 copies limited edition. 2023 stock* Actor/singer/flautist Vesa-Matti Loiri's debut album 4+20 was a largely instrumental piece of psychedelic jazz. The follow-up, Vesku Suomesta, from 1972, is more vocal-oriented but no less psychedelic. With guitar hero Hasse Walli, keyboard experimentalist Esa Helasvuo and free jazz guru Edward Vesala in the lineup and with the material consisting of Finnish folk traditionals, the outcome is an oddly captivating and unique set of vocal jazz caught between…
Jewels of Thought
The compositional minimalism of Jewels of Thought is a major thread through Sanders albums of this period, setting up a sparse canvas for colorful tenor saxophone meditations. In one instance Sanders' playing may be soft, beckoning and glad, while elsewhere his saxophone becomes a crazed, outraged beast unleashing its fury on the world. Regardless of which way these compositions lead, listeners are made to feel more like sonic travelers than mere consumers.
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…
Blasé
Florida-born saxophonist, composer, poet, actor and playwright Archie Shepp was one of the most articulate exponents of politicized black culture in the late ‘60s, a time of enormous upheaval and radical thought. Relocating to Paris he made a number of highly influential albums, such as Blasé, that broached the essential themes of freedom and racial equality, and tapped into the bedrock of African-American music. Gospel and blues were a major part of the work, which also had a strong avant-garde…
Bakishinba: Memories Of Africa
“An ambitious, brand new album has reached the Japanese jazz scene. It is ‘Bakimba – Memories of Africa.’” This is how Akira Ishikawa Count Buffalo Jazz And Rock Band’s album was advertised by the Japanese press in 1970.
The Japanese jazz artists were bravely approaching the rock scene, and their choice became an inspiration to jazz-rock groups like Takeshi Inomata & Sound Limited, Jiro Inagaki and Soul Media, and more. The blending between jazz and rock was born in the United States, thanks to …
Healing Force
*2023 stock* Healing Force is an album by American jazz pianist Don Pullen recorded in 1976 for the Italian Black Saint label.
Black and White
Tip! Existing somewhere between the post-psychedelic period of Soft Machine and the electric funk of Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters, Black And White, the 1976 album from Norway’s Vanessa is without question a formidable beast of a jazz-rock record. A potent brew of sonic experimentation and pulsating off-kilter groove. Taking their name from the genus of Nymphalidae butterfly, Vanessa was founded in 1971 by saxophonist Svend Undseth and pianist Frode Holm, the founder of the Oslo record store turn…
Aïré
*Rare original* French project combining flamenco and jazz. The music is reminiscent of recent bands around Ultra High Flamenco, recorded in 1985 at the Centre Autonome D'experimentation Sociale in Ris-Oragis, a suburb south of Paris on the Seine River. It sounds like an extension of sextet, innovatively brought bass, cajón and saxophone to flamenco. It's strange that neither the other works nor this project have attracted much attention, but they are unusually accomplished: the level of perform…
Time Capsule
The impact of Weldon Irvine’s music across a wealth of genres cannot be overstated with his jazzy piano playing and compositions regularly passed down to newer generations. Artists like Q-Tip and Mos Def are noted admirers of the jazz-funk artist, and the distinct sounds of Irvine echo across the ages in samples etched into hip-hop history. The album version of Time Capsule was originally released in 1973, and this is a brand new 10 inch EP edit aimed at DJs looking to incorporate its album trac…
Indo Jazz Fusions
"This is one of those occasions when we 'labellers of music' get stuck in our own glue. Consider the complication: A group called Indo Jazz Fusions containing Indian and British musicians, an American-born guest, and the result, a uniquely beautiful music which is patently not quite Indian, not quite jazz, not quite contemporary-American. I think the most accurate thing you can say is that it can only be played the way it is by men in contact with the jazz tradition.
The group is led, and all th…