Jazz /
Journey Into Nigritia
Journey Into Nigritia, released in 1983 on Tom Albach's Nimbus West, was a declaration of arrival. Morgan assembled a quartet built for spiritual exploration: firebreathing reedsman Dadisi Komolafe on alto saxophone, Jeff Littleton on bass, Fritz Wise on drums. The rhythm section would become Morgan's anchor - Littleton and Wise appear on all three of his Nimbus recordings.
Six compositions. The album opens with "Mrafu," John Coltrane's influence immediately apparent - Komolafe gets right to wor…
Retribution, Reparation
One year after his debut Journey Into Nigritia, Nate Morgan returned to Tom Albach's Nimbus West studio with a statement so direct it left no room for ambiguity. The album's title alone - Retribution, Reparation - announced its politics. Where the first record had been a declaration of arrival, channeling Cecil Taylor's angularity and John Coltrane's spiritual seeking, this 1984 session was something else: a confident distillation of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra's communal fire into a surgin…
One Step Out
2412 South Western Avenue, Los Angeles. A mansion the Arkestra members had taken over for communal living. They called it the Great House. In the late 1970s, Michael Session - the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra's tenorist - brought a young pianist named Kaeef Ruzadun Ali through the front door. "When I walked in there," Kaeef recalled, "it was like this whole rush came over me, just from going in the front door. It was like a very, very warm feeling of love. I went and I came out with 'Flashback o…
I Want Some Water
Twenty years in a vault. That's how long I Want Some Water waited before anyone outside of a Los Angeles studio could hear it. Recorded on April 29 and May 3, 1980, at United Western in Hollywood, it wasn't released until 1999 - a small CD run that most collectors never saw. The vinyl pressing came forty years after the tapes were made.
Billie Harris was born in Laurel, Mississippi, on February 15, 1937. He picked up the saxophone at fourteen, served four years in the Air Force, and landed in Lo…
Lullaby For Linda
She kept notebooks. Spiral-bound, lined, 8x10 inches. In her beautiful flowing cursive, Linda Hill documented every rehearsal, every concert, every recording session of the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra. The names of three hundred musicians passed through those pages. When she died, the notebooks vanished - a treasure of information, lost. But the music survives. Lullaby For Linda, recorded on April 25, 1980 and released the following year on Nimbus West, is the only album Hill made as a leader. …
Flight 17
Seventeen years. That's how long it took the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra to make their first record. Founded in 1961 by Horace Tapscott as the Underground Musicians Association, the orchestra had weathered the Watts uprising, the ferment of the Black Arts Movement, a decade-long residency at the Immanuel United Church of Christ - all without committing a single note to vinyl. Not for lack of industry interest, but by choice: Tapscott wanted to build a community, not a recording career.
It was T…
The Call
For nearly two decades, Horace Tapscott and his Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra made music without making records. They played in parks, on street corners, at fundraisers, churches, community centers - anywhere the people needed them. While the rest of the jazz world chased contracts and critics, Tapscott was building something else entirely: an ark for the Black arts in the heart of Los Angeles.
The story of The Call is inseparable from this larger project. When long-time jazz devotee Tom Albach f…
Desert Fairy Princess
There's a particular light in the music of Los Angeles's spiritual jazz community of the late 1970s - something warm, searching, unpretentious. Adele Sebastian's sole album as a leader catches that light perfectly. Recorded in 1981 and released on the legendary Nimbus West imprint, Desert Fairy Princess stands among the finest documents of West Coast creative music from the period.
Sebastian was born in Riverside, California in 1956 into a musical family - her mother played piano with the Albert…
Let the Spirit Out/Live at 'Mu' London
Big tip! This is it! Chicago spiritual jazz master Kahil El'Zabar delivers one of the most powerful live recordings in recent memory! Captured over two unforgettable nights at "mu" in London - July 15th & 16th, 2024 - this is music as ancient ritual, as communion, as healing force. El'Zabar created new material specifically for these performances, alongside reimagined arrangements of classics like Wayne Shorter's "Footprints", Gershwin's "Summertime", and Duke Ellington & Juan Tizol's "Caravan".…
Everything Is Space
The legacy of Afro-Futurist jazz pioneer Sun Ra continues with a first ever vinyl issue of fan favourite "Everything Is Space," on limited 7” vinyl.
Path of Enlightenment
Nat Birchall, saxophonist and composer, one of the most authentic voices in contemporary spiritual jazz, presents Path of Enlightenment, a sonic journey through rarely explored scales and modes, from Ethiopia to Byzantium, from ancient Egypt to South Africa.
For this new recording, Birchall deliberately chose the quartet format - tenor sax, piano, double bass and drums - seeking a cohesion and intimacy that allows the music to breathe and tell its story. Joining him are his trusted collaborators…
My Kind Of Music
Our latest Holy Grail reissue is this private press spiritual jazz gem out of California from Rickey Kelly and his vibes & marimba. Features Diane Reeves (vocals) & Adele Sebastian (flute)!
The Storyteller - A Musical Tribute to Yusef Lateef
With 20 years passing since his first foray into recorded jazz, Nat Birchall now ranks as one of the premier saxophonists of his generation. With several highly acclaimed albums in the locker, he now returns with his most ambitious project yet: a tribute to the legend that is Yusef Lateef titled, The Storyteller - A Musical Tribute to Yusef Lateef.
Nat Birchall on the project: "When Jazzman Gerald first mentioned to me the idea of doing an album as a tribute to the jazz giant Dr Yusef A. Lateef,…
A Love Supreme
*2026 repress* "One of the most important records ever made, John Coltrane's A Love Supreme was his pinnacle studio outing, that at once compiled all of the innovations from his past, spoke to the current of deep spirituality that liberated him from addictions to drugs and alcohol, and glimpsed at the future innovations of his final two and a half years. Recorded over two days in December 1964, Trane's classic quartet-- Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, and Jimmy Garrison -- stepped into the studio and …
Rushin'
"An album that puts jazz at the center. Emanuele Cisi records his first release for Mono Jazz (Right Tempo) returning to those elements from which everything begins and in which everything is fulfilled. With melody and swing, a deep sense of blues—not just as a style but as a fundamental state of music—and spirituality, the improvisation here becomes a space where the pieces reveal themselves as springboards for self-expression.
Rushin’ is not merely a collection of references and tributes, alth…
Muriel Grossmann Plays The Music Of McCoy Tyner And Grateful Dead
At first glance, the idea that McCoy Tyner and the Grateful Dead might share musical DNA seems like a stretch. One built frameworks to support Coltrane’s spiritual flights—rewriting the jazz harmony playbook while turning chords into flexible architecture. The others were a San Francisco circus of psychedelic chaos and Americana grooves, an improvising rock band whose mythology often overshadowed their musicianship. On the surface, Tyner and the Dead appear to come from different galaxies. But l…
Infinity Zero
From the same producer who brought you Brahja, Kadef, EEG Coherence, Watermelancholia and Nebulizer, Infinity Zero offers yet another journey through shimmering soundscapes, soulful expression and rhythmical trance. “Modern jazz multi-instrumentalist, Devin Brahja Waldman, is an underrated force to be reckoned with, within the international alternative jazz scene. Brahja (the band) is an exemplary collective of musicians, all who fall in-line with modern jazz philosophy and have reflected it wit…
A Portal to Here
One of the best kept secrets in contemporary British Jazz, Leeds based collective Work Money Death returns to ATA Records with a towering gesture of free improvisation. Born from the loss of guitarist Chris Earl Dawkins, A Portal to Here draws on a deep well of Spiritual Jazz to soar toward new heights of sonic transcendence. Music as testament, tribute, healing and remembrance.
Miss America
Talk Show is a new duo collaboration featuring Steph Richards on trumpets and resonating surfaces and Qasim Naqvi on drums, almglocken bells and modular synthesizer. Having worked together on other projects for almost two decades, Miss America, to be released by We Jazz Records on 21st November, marks their first, pure duo collaboration – a space to engage with a sonic language they’ve been cultivating together for years. The album was recorded live, with Qasim crafting real-time electronics and…
Efuru
Sixty years after Horace Tapscott founded the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra in Los Angeles, the flame burns bright in Berlin. Efuru is the first album by the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arktet, led by saxophonist and composer Fuasi Abdul-Khaliq - former assistant conductor, arranger and longtime member of Tapscott's legendary UGMAA collective. This is not nostalgia. This is continuation. This is the real deal.
Recorded live at the Schlot Jazz Club in Berlin on May 20, 2024, Efuru brings together the larg…