Jazz /
Fenix
*2024 stock* The Flying Dutchman's second album, which shifted from the free jazz of the 60s to the passionate jazz sound of the 70s. As the title suggests, this is a popular work that combines hot brooding and melancholy with burning Latin blood. A Japanese version was also released at the time and is one of the most popular.
The Third World
*2024 stock* Gato Barbieri is an Argentine jazz musician who won a Grammy Award as musical director for the film Last Tango in Paris. The Flying Dutchman's debut album, produced by Bob Seale, boldly incorporates elements of South American music.
Poder Del Alma
Psychedelic Latin-funk holy grail from Nicaragua, 1974!! First ever reissue!! Poder del Alma (“Soul Power”) was a supergroup formed by some of the best musicians from the Nica scene. This all-star band of nine members was assembled to play at the famous free concert of Santana in Managua in benefit for the 1972 earthquake. After that successful gig supporting the Latin-Rock superstar, what was to be a one-night stand became the seed of the most loved Nicaraguan act from the 70s. All the members …
Poder Del Alma II
Impossible to find second album by this band from Nicaragua, 1975. A cool mix of Latin funk, jazz, salsa and psychedelic grooves. Including some of their most sought after tracks like “Bacanal’ 76”, “Mimo” or the antiracist statement “La Conga de las Dos Razas”. After recording their first LP in Guatemala, Nica supergroup Poder del Alma travelled to Costa Rica to register their second album. This time the recording studio and equipment (including Mini-Moog) were better and the band featured a ne…
Samba Blim
This is the second incredible album which the Brazilian bossa combo did in the US for A&M Records, during the brief time when they were expanded to a quartet from the original Tamba Trio lineup. This album can be considered a masterpiece that combines their original style with American sophistication. The set is completely sublime. A wonderful mix of the group's trademark harmony vocals and crackling bossa rhythms, with the warmly flowing CTI production style of the time – not funky like the CTI…
Azimüth
2024 repress. Azimuth was the blueprint for the band's own 'samba doido'/ 'crazy samba' sound. Released in the summer of 1975, the album was a minor commercial success selling around 200,000 copies, but it's now recognised as an essential piece of Brazilian music history. Surely the rawest and funkiest of Azymuth's albums, every track exudes the brimming energy of three exceptionally creative young men from Rio, with incendiary results. Opener ‘Linha do Horizonte’ – a sublime piece of melancholi…
Viagem
Light and breezy, pure and easy, that’s how I spent most of last week, and this album was a great soundtrack for it. Osmar Milito is an interesting figure in Brazilian jazz, having a hand in the famous Canecão club in Rio and playing with the likes of Sylvia Telles, Leny Andrade, and Flora Purim early in his career, and later on doing lots of soundtrack work for those venerable Brazilian exports, telenovelas. His post-bossa nova records are collectible for a reason: they’re damn good listening…
Tribal Dance
Los Angeles bass titan Henry Franklin is bestknown for the two Skipper LPs issued by Black Jazz in 1972-74; 1977’s Tribal Dance is more obscure and arguably the best of the bunch, the spiritual jazz given an extra propulsive dimension via the excesses of Sonship, banging complex rhythms on his elaborate self-made drums, as heard on the opening title track and the extended ‘Cosmos Dwellers.’ Elsewhere, ‘Eric’s Tune’ has flamenco undercurrents, ‘Spring Song’ is a slow piano meditation, and ‘Prime …
Ritual
Black Vinyl edition. Reproduced in original style packaging and pressed on black vinyl. Mastered from original tape. Belgium, not the first place you’d think of when it comes to Latin or Afro funk. Yet one of the greatest records to blend both styles came from the small northern European country, masterminded by Nico Gomez and his Afro Percussion Inc. Ritual was originally released in 1971 on the Dutch label Omega International (Gomez was born in Holland before moving to Belgium in the late 40s)…
Teatro Amadeo Roldan Recital
For the third release in our Mr Bongo Cuban Classics series, we reissue the iconic 1974 debut album by the mighty Grupo Irakere. Led by Chucho Valdés, son of Cuban pianist and bandleader Bebo Valdés, the band would go on to become of the most influential and successful groups emanating from Cuba in this period. Their debut ‘Teatro Amadeo Roldan Recital’ is an in-demand and incredible Afro-Cuban, jazz-funk masterpiece originally landing on Cuba’s state-owned imprint, Areito. One of the jewels of …
Maracaibo
*Limited Edition* Japanese drummer George Ohtsuka reunites with the Maracaibo group, creating a fusion of Latin influences on extended tracks that diverge from the smoother sounds of the contemporaneous scene. The ensemble includes Mabumi Yamaguchi on tenor and soprano sax, Tsunehide Matsuki on guitar, and Toshiyuki Sekine on Fender Rhodes. Special guest appearances by Miroslav Vitous on bass and Nana Vasconcelos on percussion and vocals add depth to the musical landscape. In contrast to other J…
Wave
By the time this album was released, Antonio Carlos Jobim was already an international superstar. Having recently won a Grammy (1965) for "The Girl From Ipanema", by 1967 all the big name stars from up north were breaking down his door to work with the new "Gershwin of Brazil." In fact, Jobim had just finished working on an album with Frank Sinatra when he went into the studio to record this album. Recorded in 1967, Wave is actually one of the lesser known masterpieces of Brazilian music, and un…
Electric Byrd
Considered by some to be trumpeter Donald Byrd's last worthwhile jazz recording, Electric Byrd is a high-flying relic from 1970. This album can be understood as Byrd's formidable response to the musical challenges set down by trumpet-rival Miles Davis with his epic Bitches Brew recordings from a year earlier. Clearly Miles is the ghost presence here, with distinct echoes of his sound permeating the vibe of this exploratory set. Byrd demonstrates on his three originals that he, too, was a force t…
Spirits
New Zealand’s jazz luminaries have assembled to form an all-star cluster: The Circling Sun.
Elegua
Latin music, with all its spirit, all its intensity, and all its magic, expresses itself in the decade of the seventies as a cultural revelation. Europe recognizes, listens, and dances to our music, the United States jumps to the sound of it. Latin America is letting its roots be felt. Elegua is a part of this happening. It originated in Boston as a result of the collective efforts of musicians concerned about the direction to be taken by the Latin American musical forms. Elegua essentially deal…
Little Sunflower
*2023 stock* From Wales, the home of the harp, Amanda has taken her classical roots and forged them in the path of jazz harpist Dorothy Ashby.
She has toured extensively with Matthew Halsall and the Gondwana Orchestra performing at Jazz festivals around the world. More recent collaborations have included recording with DJ Yoda and Chip Wickham and touring Wickham's latest album including upcoming appearances at Ronnie Scotts and Le Petit Halle, Paris.
Whiting's first album was recorded as a trio…
Excavated Shellac: An Alternate History Of The World's Music
100 recordings on 4 CDs; 184-page hardcover book printed on artbook-quality paper; Packaged in a deluxe gloss-laminated box. It begins with a South African choir from 1930 and a song about police brutality; it ends in Cuba with dreamy innuendo. This collection is about music that is often invisible in today's world, the incredible world of global recordings that aren't jazz, blues, country, rock n' roll, R&B, or "classical." This physical edition of the box set, eight years in the making, conta…
City Of Mirrors
Songs of resistance and gratitude in a Latin pop mode from Chicago’s Dos Santos, one of the longest running groups on International Anthem Recording Company. Vintage-sounding, but polished to modern tastes, ‘City Of Mirrors’ feature the septet playing to their latin heritage in a style that will appeal to all members of the extended family. It’s rich with melody and impassioned vocals, driven by coolly urgent tresillo rhythms and equally given to elegiac ballads that wouldn’t sound out of place…
One For The Soul
By the time poet, singer-songwriter, and artist Lizzy Mercier Descloux recorded 1984’s Zulu Rock, she’d marked herself out as both a globe trotter with more passport stamps than Tintin and a musical innovator whose loose, arty spirit could be applied to styles as varied as no wave, Bavarian oompa and Soweto jive. She’d also established a tight-knit threesome with muse/former lover Michel Esteban and producer/on-off lover Adam Kidron, who all reunited to follow Zulu Rock – a surprise hit in her n…
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…