Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

The Tommy Tedesco case is singular in California jazz history. A session guitarist among the most sought-after in Hollywood - thousands of recordings, film scores, pop records - chooses for his most personal statement the company of Bobby Bradford on…

Curtis Clark's Nimbus debut - and he brings the whole Los Angeles underground with him. Miranda and Theus: the rhythm section that powered Horace Tapscott's Arkestra, that held the floor at UGMAA meetings, that knew how to make a piano trio sound lik…

Just two people. Piano. Voice. Nothing else. No bass, no drums, no safety net. This is where Clark strips everything away - no Amsterdam quintet, no Dutch improvisers, just 88 keys and one voice diving deep. "Rainbow Over Harlem" opens and closes the…

Bomb! Drop the needle. Thirteen minutes and twenty seconds. "Daniel/Amsterdam Sunshine" - dedicated to Daniel Halifee - opens this record like a prayer. Not a quick prayer, not a polite prayer. The kind that takes its time, builds in waves, lets the …

* Limited Edition of 300 Clear Vinyl * One of the major statements in the history of Jazz and African American liberation movements. Originally released in 1960 on Candid Records, Max Roach’s Freedom Now Suite consists of five original compositions a…

Among the fiercest and greatest documents of Free Jazz is a lone LP - Al-Fatihah - self-released in Ohio by Black Unity Trio in 1969, the official reissue of which stands before us now. A hard cut diamond of pure fire and artistry, it’s a good as imp…

Stanley Turrentine with Blue Mitchell, James Spaulding, Pepper Adams, McCoy Tyner, Grant Green, Bob Cranshaw and Mickey Roker, arranged by Duke Pearson, recorded on 1 July 1966 and released by Blue Note that year. Tone Poet 180g LP reissue.

Atavistic presents live recordings circa 1970 Berlin from the legendary free music duo of German free jazz saxophonist Peter Brotzmann and Dutch jazz drummer and percussionist Han Bennink and pianist Fred Van Hove. Instrumentation: Peter Brozmann (te…

Classic Cool/Bop session from 76, and regarded as one of the finest Norwegian jazz live recordings of the seventies featuring an impeccable performance by alto sax player Carl Neumann, playing mostly original songs by pianist Christian Reim, Bjørn Kj…

The International Nothing is the Berlin-based duo of clarinet players Kai Fagaschinski and Michael Thieke. The two have been working together since 2000, refining a highly personal language focused on introspective, microtonal textures through st…

The dramatic act of this performance draws a deamhulatory line colouring each phase in the sound of the required instrument; large discursive logic intensity in the atmosphere appropriate to each segment. After his entry "City of Lyon"which sets the …

Vinyl edition of this joyous improvised music drawing on South African roots and European free jazz from Chris McGregor and a group including Evan Parker, Louis Moholo, Barre Philllips, &c.  This album only had a few test pressings at the time of rec…

Trumpeter Don Cherry, an Ornette Coleman soulmate and a world musician decades ago, became one of jazz’s many early losses 10 years back. But saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, who joins him on this fizzing 1966 set, has since ascended to cult status, and …

This is the sixth album by Dorothy Ashby, a Detroit born jazz harpist who passed away in her early 50s in 1986 way before her time. She left us a rich legacy of music with this 1965 release being one of her milestones. The music is pure bright and sw…

Our first issue of 2020 celebrates interstellar icon and generative force of nature: Sun Ra. Contributors on the topic include Taylor Ho Bynum, John Corbett, Naima Lowe, Luke Stewart, Thomas Stanley, and Ken Vandermark. The issue also features supple…

It's hardly surprising that Mike Westbrook reigned supreme in the latter quarter of the 1960s and early 70s. His big band was voted top of that category in the late-lamented Melody Maker British jazz polls for 1970 (and the two years either side of t…

It's hardly surprising that Mike Westbrook reigned supreme in the latter quarter of the 1960s and early 70s. His big band was voted top of that category in the late-lamented Melody Maker British jazz polls for 1970 (and the two years either side of t…

In compiling a modern album of Elizabethan music, London Jazz Four were faced with both technical and interpretive problems. Musically they had to decide how far we could alter the original notation in order to allow ourselves a more modern basis for…

In 1974, a brash young designer called Augustus Kerry Taylor had an idea. He'd gather together the hottest musicians in Ghana and record an album of the heaviest and funkiest sounds coming out of America. And this time, he wouldn't just design the co…

Groove the Funk is a essential and influencal early Afro-Funk LPs from 1975. The album was released in Nigeria and the whole LP is really something excitingly special, carrying a unique style of fuzz guitar and keyboard with ecstasy rhythms that can …

Segun Bucknor was one of the most important figures in the Nigerian music scene of the 70s, despite having only a brief career with his afrobeat unit which in 1972 released this superb album of which originals usually not turn up at any price. A reis…

“I’ve Been Loving You” sees Manford Best finally laying the ghosts of The Wings to rest and emerge as a serious player in the glittering new world of Afro boogie. Recorded in London, with Nigerian super producer, Jake Sollo, at the desk, it is a high…

In the mid eighties FM radio stations took over the airwaves in Nigeria. They wanted fresh new styles to play andin creasingly radio personalities like Bisi Olatilo, Ruime Effetie and Shea Martins were turning to reggae. Nigeria’s Freak Father Number…

She Is My Woman is Murphy William’s loose, funky and spontaneous call to the dance floor. It’s an infectious collection of good-time tunes that the band seem to be enjoying as much as the listener. Williams was a stalwart of the Nigerian music scene,…

William Onyeabor wasn’t the only Nigerian experimenting with synthesizers in the 70s and 80s. Goldfinger Doe was twiddling knobs too, no more so than on Let’s Dance Together – a prime slab of cosmic Afro boogie funk, recorded with legendary percussio…

After years of gigging around the east Nigerian music scene, Foundars 15 finally hit the jackpot when they recruited legendary bass player, Marshall Udo. Charismatic and confident, Udo immediately energised the band, bringing a new funky and psychede…

A bona-fide Nigerian prince and probably the only musician to have ever played with Fela Kuti, Miles Davis and Bob Marley, Eji Oyewole combined African Highlife with western jazz to create a hybrid so that was as smooth as it was funky. His first alb…

With the Super Wings in mutiny and a trail for the manslaughter of his former bandmate, Spuds Nathan, still hanging over his head, Manford Best came out swinging with Come Go With Me. It’s a chirpy, calypso-influenced insight into the state of his mi…

It’s hard to get a handle on Nigerian musicians Nash Dodoo, Charlie Cuul and Jonas Caulley. In 1980 they released an album of face-melting gospel boogie as the BML chapels. And in the same year, calling themselves the Beta Yama Group, they put out Fr…

The Guelewar Band of Banjul are a band quite unlike any other – an explosive mix of soul and funk with local rhythms like Boogaraboo and Ndaga combined with a defiant insistence on singing in their local language, Wolof. They certainly blew a young Y…

In the mid-seventies Nigeria, everybody loved the Black Children Sledge Funk Co. Band. Blasting out of the bustling river port of Onitsha, their infectious, feel-good grooves were the perfect antidote to the dark economic clouds gathering over the co…

In 1979, long-time Highlife veteran Aigbe Lebarty decided to try his hand at high-energy disco funk. Checking the Lebartone Aces at the door, he borrowed the Sex Bombers from Prince Omo Lawal-Osula and created Unity, a sure-fire dance floor stomper t…

S. Job Organization (also known as SJOB Movement) was a rarity in the Nigerian music scene – a collective of equals in a world where band ‘leaders’ ruled the roost and ‘band boys’ had to make do with the crumbs. The name was an acronym representing e…

Based in the Havana Nightclub, in the central plateau town of Jos, the Sahara All Stars of Jos weren't part of the Lagos scene or the one in the east. Their leader, Dan Satch Ayo, had played with Dr Sir Warrior in the Orientals. He'd jammed with Moha…

By the 1979 release of Whatever You Need, the Elcados were ready to party. “We got rhythm, we got sound,” they declare on ‘Funky Music’. “You’re going to dig it!' Starting out as the Moonrakers in Kanu in 1968, Steve Black, Rocky Mustapha, Tony Nosik…

After spending much of the ‘70s humping his congos around New York as a session musician, Nigerian Aleke Kanonu pulled in some favours to record an album of his own. The result was Aleke, a criminally obscure Afrobeat/Funk/Jazz masterpiece featuring …

Considered an acid boogie classic, Jungle Magic is a cosmic transmission from the early days of Nigerian disco. The bass lines are lethal. The synths are fat and squelchy. And the groove is non-stop and primal. Channeling the jungle gods of funk and …

Mary Afi Usuah trained as an a opera singer at the prestigious St Cecilia Academy in Rome and spent 13 years touring Europe with artists like Duke Ellington and Deep Purple. She matched vocal chops with Robert Plant performing with Led Zeppelin and b…

Nation Building is a real forgotten gem from the late '70s and is among the very best Afro-Beat Disco Lps ever. Berkely Ike Jones is one of the icons of the Nigerian scene being the guitarist and founder of BLO. BLO were one of the very best progress…

Nigeria had a unique music scene which began spreading rapidly in the 1970s. The era was based on unspoiled use of fuzz pedal, keyboards and indisputable influences of the Psychedelic Blues bands of the West. In 1980 Effi Duke & The Love Family came …