Pheon is the new label started by Jonny Trunk with James Pianta from Votary / Roundtable. Both have a love of obscure library music, film music and jazz. Using those musical fields as a starting point, the label will be issuing very limited, vinyl only short runs of desirable and obscure LPs, compilations and new old discoveries. The third Pheon Records LP release is the 1969 debut by Indian jazz guitar legend Amancio D’Silva. A perfect storm of amazing, accessible British jazz and incredible scarcity, an original would cost you well in excess of £1000 today.

This album represents a high point in 1960s British jazz, a time of experimentation, integration and joy. This is effortless, unique and very beautiful jazz, exotically tinged with elements from Indian musical tradition.

Now I could go on and on about how amazing and beautiful this LP is but please, just trust me, I’ve been a collector of British jazz since the early 1990s, this was one of the first LPs I found, originally from “The Diskery” in Birmingham. It was £30, which was my lunch money for a week back then. I loved it, I marveled at the grace and skillful, flowing simplicity of the music. I loved the fact this was an Indian man inspiring the great British jazz masters with the rhythms, ideas and influences of his home country. I still love this album today and have watched as prices for originals have soared from £200 to £1200 in the last few years, making it impossible for more record collectors to appreciate it. Criminally overlooked when it first came out (hence its rarity today), hopefully this first ever repress will allow more collectors to appreciate just how harmonious and beautiful music made by supreme, international but impoverished jazz artists can be.