Jazz /
Bosporus Bridges - A Wide Selection Of Turkish Jazz And Funk 196
Pioneering, magisterial compilation, which turned many of us here onto Mustafa Ozkent, Fikret Kizilok, Erkin Koray, Temiz and co, a decade ago. Still dazzling, fresh, essential.
Big Fun
** 2023 Repress of this classic. 180 gram audiophile vinyl, gatefold sleeve ** Originally released in 1974, Big Fun presents music from three different phases of Miles Davis's early-seventies "electric" period. Sides one and four ("Great Expectations" and "Lonely Fire") were recorded three months after the Bitches Brew sessions and incorporate sitar, tambura, tabla, and other Indian instruments. "Ife" was recorded after the 1972 On the Corner sessions, and the framework is similar to tracks fro…
Radha-Krsna Nama Sankirtana
Radha-Krsna Nama Sankirtana was the first of two albums Alice Coltrane released in 1977 (the other being Transcendence). Coltrane's music during this period grew out of an epiphany in which she would renounce secular life and don the orange robes of a swamini (spiritual teacher in the Hindu tradition). Musically, this meant leaving jazz behind (at least partially) and embracing the chants and rhythms of devotional music. The first half of Radha-Krsna is mostly filled with simple arrangements of …
Transfiguration
** Much-needed 2023 Repress **By the late '70s, Alice Coltrane had largely gravitated away from jazz, incorporating Hindu chants and hymns into her music to reflect a newfound sense of creative omnipotence. However, in April 1978, she would return to her roots, performing at University of California, Los Angeles to make her first and only live album. Transfiguration, featuring drummer Roy Haynes and bassist Reggie Workman, showcases Alice's many compositional talents and fierce improvisatory abi…
Mwandishi
After releasing their Warner Bros. debut, the Herbie Hancock Sextet underwent a major transformation in the early '70s. Over the course of a year, every member was replaced (except Herbie Hancock himself and bassist Buster Williams) and each adopted Swahili names. (Williams even led the group in occasional sessions of Buddhist chanting.) Hancock chose the moniker Mwandishi (meaning 'composer'), and the Sextet became unofficially known as the Mwandishi Band. The lineup's first album -- simply tit…
Crossings
Crossings is the second album in the experimental sextet trilogy Herbie Hancock released early 1970s. His electronic movements are further explored and the whole sound comes alive in the three long tracks this album consists about. The album opens with some African drums before moving on to some of the unearthed sounds the sextet created for this album. Centerpiece "Sleeping Giant" is nearly 25 minutes long and is divided into five funky and groovy parts. A transcendent experience that has grown…
Indo Jazz Fusions
"This is one of those occasions when we 'labellers of music' get stuck in our own glue. Consider the complication: A group called Indo Jazz Fusions containing Indian and British musicians, an American-born guest, and the result, a uniquely beautiful music which is patently not quite Indian, not quite jazz, not quite contemporary-American. I think the most accurate thing you can say is that it can only be played the way it is by men in contact with the jazz tradition.
The group is led, and all th…
Birth / Speed / Merging
Tip! Birth/Speed/Merging was recorded in 1976 after the band's move to San Francisco. The album closes The Pyramids' 70s trilogy and makes more use of studio technology: adding overdubs and other effects, a marked departure from the previous two releases, though at no cost to the urgent message and energy of their earlier works.
King Of Kings
Tip! King Of Kings was recorded in 1974 and features a wider array of instruments including Ugandan Harp and Balafon. Perhaps best known for the expansive "Nsorama (The Stars)" a seminal work of Spiritual Jazz.
Lalibela
Tip! The debut album by The Pyramids was inspired by the group's visit to the Lalibela monastery in Egypt, and was recorded in Yellow Springs Ohio in early 1973. Drawing on the teachings of Cecil Taylor and the influence of John Coltrane, combined with a barrage of intense percussion, the album evolves over several long-form pieces.
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…
Aomawa: The 1970s Recordings (4LP Box)
4x CD Box set in printed fold-over CD case release from Strut Records. With a 32-page b&W info booklet featuring extended interviews with The Pyramids by Francis Gooding and a host of unseen photos. A brand new 4CD box set bringing together the incredible 1970s recordings of Afrofuturism pioneers The Pyramids, led by saxophonist Idris Ackamoor. The set features the remastered LPs Lalibela, King Of Kings and Birth / Speed / Merging alongside the first ever vinyl issue of their live session for K…
Magrebh Blues
When internally the plan came up to release a bunch of vinyl singles for Unrock's 30th anniversary as an entity, Richard just like his brother Alan, the other keyholder of Sun City Girls legacy was among the first to take a deep look into his archives. Out came two shining pearls from different periods of his long career. "Taqasim For Omar (acoustic)" was recorded in Seattle in 2008. It was recorded before the Sir changed his mind and recorded the track with an all-electric band again for his Th…
Karaoke (7")
If you ever witnessed an Alvarius B. show you are probably aware that there are a few things only in underground music matching this level. If you haven't, don't miss him when he's coming close next. Karaoke shows one of the many characters you could explore during his shows. As his brother Richard, the other keyholder of Sun City Girls legacy, Alan Bishop played a lot of shows not only under the Alvarius B. moniker on various Unrock stages through the years. "Solo Nostalgia" (E. Morricone) and …
The Eastern Moods Of Ahmed Abdul-Malik
Limited Clear Vinyl edition, 500 copies! Besides playing with the likes of T. Monk, J.Coltrane, A. Blakey and R. Weston, bassist and oud player Abdul Malik is mostly remembered as one of the first to explore how elements of Middle Eastern and North African music can integrate with Jazz idioms. Originally released in 1962 on Prestige Records, this is his fifth studio effort featuring - Ahmed on bass and oud, Bilal Abdurrahman on alto, Korean reed flute, and percussion, and William Henry Allen o…
Dolunay
An absolute burner, the first ever vinyl pressing of “Dolunay” by the seminal Turkish ensemble Konstrukt's debut album with the legendary German free jazz saxophonist Peter Brötzmann
Golden Hearts Remembrance
Tip! *2022 stock* 'Recorded in 1997, Wadada Leo Smith's N'da Kulture has created a music that transcends all forms by integrating many of them into an amorphous yet deeply moving whole. This sextet, which uses Eastern and Western instruments, authors into being a kind of folk music for the emerging century, one that relies deeply on poetry, improvisation, subtleties in tone, timbre, and rhythm. The six pieces here reflect Smith's ongoing concern with marrying the vanguard jazz tradition he comes…
Moontribe
*2022 repress* A mysterious psychedelic masterpiece: incredible Middle Eastern music of Moontribe is restored from tapes by Fortuna Records, that return with a mysterious album by the anonymous artist known only as Moontribe. A deep-space journey between tribal percussion, hypnotizing organs and long echo ripples, all joining in for a snake-charming voodoo ritual of which Moontribe is the Shaman. Expect African drums, hints of cumbia, and distant galaxy exploration in unmeasured doses. An absolu…
In Egypt
Strut present the final instalment in their series of reissues of Sun Ra’s historic recordings in Egypt with The Sun Ra Arkestra meets Salah Ragab in Egypt plus the Cairo Jazz Band, originally released on Greek label Praxis in 1983. Salah Ragab first encountered the Arkestra at a concert at the house of Goethe Institut ex-pat Hartmut Geerken during the Arkestra’s first visit to Cairo and Heliopolis in December 1971 and, although Ra and Ragab did not meet in person on that occasion, they did mee…
Elephantine
*2022 repress. 400 copies limited orange vinyl + insert* On Elephantine, his new album released exclusively on Sub Rosa as vinyl LP, Cairo-based Maurice Louca guides a 12-piece ensemble through a 38-minute masterwork that might best be described as panoramic. Elements of free improvisation, Sun Ra's cosmic jazz, gorgeous Arabic melody, trancelike African and Yemeni music and minimalism meet in his wholly unique compositional vision. Louca also makes vital contributions on guitar and piano, and i…