Jazz /
Alice Clark
Following the success of Wewantsounds' Alice Clark RSD edition featuring an extra 20-page booklet, the label reissues the standard version of Alice Clark's highly sought-after soul jazz classic produced by Mainstream Records' Bob Shad in 1972. Featuring original artwork, remastered sound making this reissue is the first official reissue of Alice Clark's original album for decades, a long overdue release of one of the best Soul albums ever recorded. When it comes to legendary albums, very few can…
Adams Apple
Originally released in 1974, Doug Carn's final album for the Black Jazz label, and a set that pushes even farther than his previous efforts! Jean Carn isn't in the group this time around, but the set does feature a totally great twin-vocal approach – with singing by Joyce Green and John Conner, blending their voices together in a style that's right up there with the most righteous 70s jazz experiments by Horace Silver or Billy Gault! This vocal balance really brings a new sort of power to Carn's…
Infant Eyes
Doug Carn created a personalized strain of jazz music that expressed a loving hopefulness. He found a home at the Black Jazz label, where African-Americans called the shots and, of course, racial tension was nonexistent. Who was this 22-year-old whose first album, Infant Eyes, sold very well away from the machinations of the music industry? Once a child prodigy on piano and alto saxophone, Carn had attended Jacksonville University on a full music scholarship and afterwards performed on the Flori…
Vwayajé
“Stop here!” exclaimed Robert Oumaou as we passed a mango tree on the side of the road just outside of Point-a-Pitre, the balmy capital of Guadeloupe. He filled a plastic bag with ripe fruit, and we set off on our journey across the small Caribbean island in search of musicians he hadn’t seen in years. On the way, we shared stories in broken French and English, stopping at truck stops to eat delicious fried fish. Robert took me to his hometown, and placed a mango and a flower on the grave of his…
Black Christ of the Andes
Pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams played with nearly every major jazz performer during her long, illustrious and varied career, in addition to recording many solo works. Born Mary Winn in Atlanta in 1910 and raised in a 'shotgun shack', where local musicians gathered to jam, she played by ear from a tender age and learned the boogie-woogie style upon moving to Pittsburgh with her older sister Mamie. While still in high school, Williams toured with the Theatre Owners’ Booking Association, br…
Step!
Le Très Jazz Club present the first reissue of Naosuke Miyamoto Sextet's Step!, originally released in 1973. A fantastic modal jazz LP, led by Naosuke Myamoto on bass, with Masayoshi Yoneda on the piano and Takashi Goto on saxophone. On One For Trane, the group delivers a strong and amazing moment of spiritual jazz. Also features Kunji Shigi (trumpet), Takashi Furuya and Shoji Nakayama (drums). Produced by Takeshi Jujii. Recorded on August 25, 1973. Le Très Jazz Club keeps on exploring the Three…
Earthly Delights
Earthly Delights is a forgotten 1978 free-jazz masterpiece by bass player, composer and improviser David Wertman, alongside his Sun Ensemble. Born in 1952 and raised in Queens NY, Wertman’s distinctive upright playing style was entirely self-taught. He cut his teeth in the notorious New York Jazz lofts, jamming for hours and hours with the likes of Billy Bang, Arthur Blythe, Marion Brown, Steve Reid, Dave Pike, William Parker, Brandon Ross and Charles Tyler to name but a few. Earthly Delights is…
Eastern Standard Time
Following hard on the heels of BBE delving into the archives of Detroit’s Strata Records and delivering their widely acclaimed and hugely in-demand exploration of J Jazz, comes another crate digger’s delight - Ralph Thomas' Eastern Standard Time, which dropped in the USA back in 1980, on the obscure Zebra Jazz imprint. LA based DJ, producer and music supervisor Mathieu Schreyer discovered this gem for BBE. This is the is the kind of “spiritual’ jazz gem that appears on YouTube and upon checking …
Hassan's Walk
Don’t let the date fool you, released back in 1983 this modal to slightly free jazz outfit from California takes you on a journey back to the late 60s and very early 70s, into the spiritual realms of greats like John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, John McLaughlin and Miles Davis among others. A soul jazz treasure from the LA scene of the early 80s – a fantastic record that I rank with the best Strata East sides of the time! The group's led by alto saxophonist Dadisi Komolafe, and features vibes by R…
Glass Bead Games
**180 gram LP x 2 gatefold sleeve Hi Res remastring** Fifth part of the Strata-East Dolphy Series, Glass Bead Games is arguably the crown jewel of the Strata East movement, an amorphous genre that treads an unusual path between post-bop, 70’s avant-garde and spiritual jazz, with a groove. Glass Bead Games is full of revelations at many levels. First, the decade of the 1970s did produce genuinely creative, "human" new music flowing from the jazz mainstream; second, Bill Lee was more than Spike's…
Love from the Sun
This jazz recording is considered as the 'magnum opus' of master "drummer extraordinaire'', composer, arranger, producer, and leader Norman Connor's in a career that has spanned 4 decades. This recording is what many will consider the debut of the legendary vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater who has since gone on to a brilliant career. Connor's put together an all-star group with Herbie Hancock and Onaje Allan Gumbs on piano and Fender Rhodes, Dr. Eddie Henderson on trumpet/flugelhorn, Carlos Garnett …
Peace In The World / Creator Spaces
**Triple CD edition** "The latest release in Now-Again's Reserve series is Michael Cosmic's Peace In The World and Phill Musra Group's Creator Spaces, packaged as a triple CD featuring unreleased music by The Phill Musra Group and World's Experience Orchestra. Also includes extensive liner notes featuring rare photos and much more. Free improvisation, first touched on by messengers like John Coltrane, Sun Ra and Albert Ayler, gives us an exuberant maelstrom that rejoices in life while it sh…
African Songbird
Matsuli Music is proud is announce the re-issue of African Songbird, the masterpiece from South Africa's greatest jazz singer, Sathima Bea Benjamin. Originally released in 1976, African Songbird was a debut long overdue. The splendid vinyl reissue of African Songbird opens with a cavernous, spacious, enormous sound, Bea Benjamin’s voice is introduced by Dollar Brand’s plangent, lingering electric keyboards before the ensemble joins in like rolling thunder. The vibrant plucked bass (provided by L…
Divine Music
History can be a motherfucker - its authors vindictive and deeply unfair. Though Jazz - long heralded as the great American art form, got its due, buried within its canon are the legacies of systemic neglect. Its narrative is a mere shadow of the truth. Robert Northern is a lost giant - a name that almost no one has heard - a prodigy once recruited by Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Roland Kirk, Donald Byrd, Charlie Haden, Don Cherry, Freddie Hubbard, Eric Dolphy, and Sun Ra, who ve…
Turiya Sings
CD version. “Divine music is a curative virtue; it is a gift from God that brings healing and comfort to the soul. This music can uplift one’s spirit up to a higher dimension of being that is filled with peace and joy. Divine music is the sound of true life, wisdom, and bliss. This music transcends geographical boundaries, language barriers, age factors; and whether educated or uneducated, it reaches deep into the heart and soul, sacred and holy, like an Infinite sound of glory entering the Lord…
Monism
Finally reissued, this mega rare spiritual jazz by reed player Milton Marsh – one of the harder-to-find albums on Strata East – and one of just a couple incredible records to Marsh's name! Obscurity aside, this is prime Strata East. In 1975, Milton Marsh released his first album Monism for the Strata-East label. Marsh, a composer, arranger, saxophonist and flautist, recorded the album in New York City from 1973-1974. The musicians on Monism represent some of the finest living in NYC at t…
Key To Nowhere
CD Edition. Cosmic righteousness from Brother Ahh – aka Robert Northern – best known for his work with Sun Ra, but a force behind some wonderfully soulful records of his own! This album's one of Ahh's later works – self-released in 1983, with a conception that's fuller than his earlier works – almost in an Alice Coltrane spiritual mode, with tracks that emphasize consciousness, healing, well being, and awareness. Ahh plays flute and French horn on the album – and other instrumentation includes p…
Let The Sun Shine In
Long out of print, few copies available. Beautiful material from this legendary Bay Area soul jazz combo! The Sons & Daughters of Lite have an incredibly spiritual sound – one that sounds sort of like the best groups on the Strata East label, with touches of Roy Ayers or James Mason-esque soulfulness, but with a little less polish. Many of the cuts have sweet female vocals in the lead – with backing that includes vibe, electric piano, tenor, alto, and percussion by Babatunde. The record's a grea…
The Naked Truth
Every once in a while, a record presents itself so defiant in its refusal of categorization that it becomes the bane of those poor vinyl archaeologists whose business it is to file and classify. The aptly-named The Naked Truth (1975) is one such artifact; a wayfaring stray of an album that weaves its insouciant magic through the edgelands of sound. The musical provenance is palpable -- an electric blend of spiritual jazz, rhythmic black psychedelia and far-out exotica -- but where it's he…
Archi
Issued for an art event recently presented at the Galleria Milano in the first week of April 2012, the recordings on this LP edition represent a very specific and intimate moment in the creative sound production of Davide Mosconi with NADMA associates Inez Klok and Gustavo Bonora.For Davide Mosconi and for all the artists and musicians involved in the groups he founded (the legendary NADMA, Organic Archestra, Il Quartetto, Alea), improvising sessions were a daily practice that founded their very…