Reissues
Japanese Jazz Spectacle Vol.II
Tip! "It is my great pleasure to introduce you to the second volume of the "Japanese Jazz Spectacle" series. Following the first compilation which focused on recordings from the Nippon Columbia catalog, this time we are digging into the King Records archives. It is almost impossible to capture the whole picture of Wa-Jazz in a couple of compilation albums since it is such a broad and deep genre, however, by extracting tracks from the Nippon Columbia and King Records collections - both labels hav…
Selected Self-releases 2006-2007
The years 2006-2007 were an exceptionally prolific creative period for Will Long and Danielle Baquet-Long. A quick peek on Discogs tells us they self-released an astounding seventeen albums during that time. Those original discs are like gold dust and difficult/expensive to obtain. Thankfully we can now get ten of those, beautifully remastered by Stephan Mathieu for this collection. Celer's music is timeless and seems to dissolve time itself. A veritable feast of lush gently unravelling ambient …
Pelo De Rata
"Hey, there's this new guy around that plays like Herbie Hancock!!". When Chilean pianist Matías Pizarro arrived in Argentina fleeing Pinochet's dictatorship, word spread like wildfire in the local jazz scene. In the two short years that Pizarro spent in Buenos Aires, he became one third of the Viejas Raíces project alongside local jazz heroes Jorge López Ruiz and Pocho Lapouble, recorded with famed Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava and released his own solo album, Pelo de Rata ("Rat's hair"). Pizar…
Bronca Buenos Aires
Essential jazz from Argentina, originally released in 1971. Bronca Buenos Aires is one of the highlights in the career of Jorge López Ruiz, alongside El Grito and the much-acclaimed Viejas Raíces project. The album is jazz poem by López Ruiz to the city he loved, not just for its virtues but also its faults, and the recording was an ambitious project that gathered many of the prominent jazz musicians of Buenos Aires.
However, due to the repressive political context of the time, Bronca Buenos Air…
Non Ce N'È Per Nessuno
* 180 gr. Red Vinyl. Digitally remastered * Originally released in 1977. "Rocchi's second album for Cramps simplifies the songwriting of his earlier A Fuoco, lining eight tracks of remarkable depth and complexity. The sound, compared to the beginning, becomes more full-bodied, the songs expand and the structures benefit from valuable musicians such as Ricky Belloni on guitars, Eugenio Pezza on piano, organ and Mellotron, Paolo Tofani from Area on guitar and synthesizer.
Challenge!
All in all the debut album by cultish japanese freak-rockers Flower Travellin’ Band, then called Yuya Uchida & The Flowers. Released in 1969 it features mainly cover songs of influential Western bands such as Cream, Big Brother and the Holding Company, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Jefferson Airplane. It was named number 34 on Bounce's 2009 list of 54 Standard Japanese Rock Albums.
The Advancement
After collaborating with Gabor Szabo on such influential ‘rare groove’ albums as ‘More Sorcery’ and ‘Dreams’, bassist Louis Kabok and drummer Hal Gordon further embraced jazz-rock fusion under The Advancement monicker. Their self title album from 1969 opens with the moody expressiveness of "Juliet" moving on "Moorish Mode" on more interesting drums break. Their heady melting pot of jazz, hard rock and psychedelia is anyhow well described on closing number "Fall Out"
Assagai
South-african jazz-rock worshippers alert ! Assagai was an Afro-rock band, active in the early 1970s in London, whose relatively short career produced two albums recorded in 1971. It has been described as "the second best-known African group of the late 60s/early 70s in Britain" after Osibisa. The original band consisted of five members, three from South Africa and two from Nigeria: drummer Louis Moholo, trumpeter/flautist Mongezi Feza, alto saxophonist Dudu Pukwana, tenor saxophonist Bizo Mngqi…
Rade
*Now available on vinyl! In process of stocking* "... Rade is arrivals and departures in sheltered coves, faces marked by sea salt and dried by the sun. It's waiting, caulking whenever needed, small repairs on deck, quick encounters, transistor radios. And then again, it's badly folded, coffee-stained nautical charts, imaginary routes in a Mediterranean Sea sailed from cove to cove, finding protection from storms in harbors, bays and inlets..."
Rade is an unexpected arrival, like a beam of sunli…
Soft Winds: The Swinging Harp of Dorothy Ashby
Dorothy Ashby album from 1961 that also features female vibes player Terry Pollard. Comes with a version of The Skatalites 'Guns of Navarone' which is a pretty surreal listening experience. From the original liner notes: "Dorothy Ashby may not be the first jazz harpist (Caspar Reardon) or the first female jazz harpist (Adele Girard), but her good feeling for time and ability to construct melodic, guitar-like lines, mark her as the most accomplished modern jazz harpist (...) Accompanying her was …
Waltz For Debby
The inventive jazz pianist and noted Miles Davis collaborator Bill Evans made lasting impact from the mid-1950s. After a New Jersey childhood disrupted by his father’s alcoholism, Evans obtained a scholarship to study composition in Louisiana. Arrivinging in New York in the '50s, he began working with composer and multi-instrumentalist George Russell, releasing his debut solo album, New Jazz Conceptions, in 1956. Evans' true breakthrough came through his membership of Miles Davis' sextet, where …
The Odysseus Suite
Those already familiar with the classic 1970 Lansdowne Recordings album Greek Variations & Other Aegean Exercises by Neil Ardley, Don Rendell and Ian Carr will immediately recognise the four compositions on this EP from the closing segment of that collection. The versions included here however, are taken from a separate session recorded around the same time and reveal that Rendell had a grander vision for them than simply to round off a collaborative album.
Not only are the tracks here nearly 20…
Idrissa's Dream
Strut continues their work from the archives of Idris Ackamoor and The Pyramids with a first ever vinyl release of Ackamoor’s debut avant-garde / Afro-jazz recordings from 1971 with The Collective, based out of Yellow Springs, Ohio. The group was formed after Ackamoor had returned to Antioch from a spell in L.A. under the wing of influential saxophonist Charles Tyler. Pianist Lester Knibbs had been appointed to the Antioch college music department as an assistant professor and had followed a sim…
Dedicato A Frazz
**LP reissue, on red coloured vinyl!** it's an established fact that in Italy during the period between 1971-1974, a music movement existed where bands would challenge each other to see who could be the most imaginative, who could create the album for the ages. They were all painters and sculptors, just as in Renaissance Italy. Dedicato A Frazz is Michaelangelo's 'David'. At one point in time, utter genius struck five men and the masterpiece has been laid down for future generations to discover…
L'uomo
**Clear green vinyl. LP in the original triple-gatefold** Osanna ( from Naples) are generally regarded as one of the best and most innovative bands to come out of the entire Italian '70s progressive scene. Their groudbreaking debut, L'Uomo the debut of one of the greatest bands in the Italian prog field, Osanna. Formed in 1971 by the members of I Volti di Pietra and Città Frontale their debut was L'uomo, released in a memorable triple gatefold cover, already containing their distinctive elements…
Palepoli
* Deluxe LP reissue on 180 gr. Clear Red vinyl * Third album, and Osanna best one, "Palepoli", from 1973 sees the band at their peak. The album only contains three long tracks and is housed in a nice gatefold whose inner picture is based on the band live stage background. 18 minutes of sheer heavy progdom is 'Oro Caldo', a raw jambalaya of moody atmosphere, experimental samplings, greasy garage dirt, and some flat out classic symphonic prog with a great-sounding mellotron - and other unique and…
Qualcosa Ca Nu' Mmore
* Remastered edition, Blue vinyl * Napoli Centrale were formed in Naples in 1974 on the initiative of James Senese (sax, vocals) and Franco Del Prete (drums) after their experience in another band called the Showmen 2. They joined forces with American keyboardist Mark Harris and British bassist Tony Walmsley and in 1975 released an eponymous debut album blending in an original way Mediterranean roots and jazz rock. James Senese’s father was an American soldier who had been working in the base of…
Selected Improvisations From Golha, Pt. II
The second part in a collection of stunning Persian-tuned piano pieces, cut from Iranian national radio broadcasts made for the Golha programmes between 1956 & 1965.
Alkaline Hydrolysis
*75 copies limited edition* Fricke's music as Bestattungsinstitut and on "Alkaline Hydrolysis" centers around dark ambient and clinical industrial compositions. Biodegraded tape loops and foreign field recordings, musique-concrète-amalgams and organic textures recorded on magnetophone. In addition to sonics, the Bestattungsinstitut alias was also active as a distributor and label in the early 1990s, releasing an eclectic range of artists such as The Grey Wolves, Maeror Tri, and David Prescott. …
Canaxis 5
A few months after the foundation of Can, Holger Czukay recorded his first solo album ‘Canaxis’, in conjunction with producer/engineer Rolf Dammers, this album was assembled from thousands of snippets recorded from short wave radio, a long standing obsession of Czukay's which he also incorporated into some of Can's later albums. A refugee during the Second World War, Holger Czukay famously studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen in the early ‘60s. That direct exposure to the challenging and experimen…