Jazz /
Roundtrip
First CD edition. Remastered from the original master tapes. OBI Strip, Twelve pages booklet with exclusive pictures and liner notes. After more than 45 years forgotten in the personal archives of Jean Schwarz, Transversales Disques is very happy to release this previously unpublished recording which brings together the great Don Cherry and his friend, composer Jean Schwarz, pioneer in electro-acoustic music and member of G.R.M. This concert was recorded in 1977 at the Paris MIX festival (Théatr…
The Night Of Power (Laylatu'l Qadri)
Recorded in one mystical night during Ramadan in 1982, The Night of Power (Laylatu'l Qadri) is a prophetic tapestry of politically and spiritually conscious poetry and revelatory home-studio electronic jazz.
Spiritual Progressions
*2023 repress* Following on from his recent string of exceptional all-solo albums, Mysticism of Sound, Ancient Africa and Afro Trane, Nat Birchall releases his first new studio recording, Spiritual Progressions, with his current working group, Unity Ensemble. This group consists of long time musical partner Adam Fairhall on piano, plus the bassist in Nat’s group for several years and albums, Michael Bardon, and a welcome return on drums by Paul Hession who recorded on the legendary Live In Laris…
Mysticism Of Sound
*2023 repress* Sun Ra inspired Space Jazz. Nat Birchall plays all the instruments - Tenor & soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, Korg Minilogue synth, bass, drums, hand drums, bells, shaker.
Creation
*2023 repress* Eighth album from Gilles Peterson favourite Nat Birchall. Deep, soulful spiritual jazz of the most honest kind and probably Nat's best album to date. The band features two drummers who, along with the rest of the 5 piece group, create enough kinetic energy for interstellar travel, which is exactly where the music takes the listener!
Akhenaten
*2023 repress* Akhenaten was the first album Nat released on the fledgling Gondwana label back in 2009, it was the second release on the label and has remained a hugely popular and much sought after album ever since. Jazzman Records issued a vinyl version in 2016 (which quickly sold out and is now a collector’s item) and Nat reissued a CD version a few years later, but this is a much needed and long awaited new vinyl pressing. Featuring four original compositions the album is a deeply meditative…
Live At Lovely
Japanese master drummer Takeo Moriyama returns to BBE Music’s J Jazz Masterclass Series in a majestic live set showcasing his exemplary musicianship and stature as one of the leading names in Japanese modern jazz. Recorded in December 1990 at the jazz club Lovely in Nagoya, this set sees Moriyama’s quartet deliver an exemplary session of the finest modal, post-bop and spiritual jazz. Moriyama is backed by long-time colleague Fumio Itabashi on piano and the group perform a stunning rendition of I…
Tachibana
The desire to discover and delve into new and unexplored areas of music has turned attention on the Japanese jazz scene of the 1970s, often regarded as its gilded age. The recent ground-breaking sell-out BBE compilation J Jazz: Deep Modern Jazz from Japan 1969-1984 threw much needed light on this fascinating era and presented a range of artists and music that surprised and delighted all who heard it. A key track on the compilation was one of the rarest and least known: Dead Letter by the Tohru A…
Earthly Delights
Earthly Delights is a forgotten 1978 free-jazz masterpiece by bass player, composer and improviser David Wertman, alongside his Sun Ensemble. Born in 1952 and raised in Queens NY, Wertman’s distinctive upright playing style was entirely self-taught. He cut his teeth in the notorious New York Jazz lofts, jamming for hours and hours with the likes of Billy Bang, Arthur Blythe, Marion Brown, Steve Reid, Dave Pike, William Parker, Brandon Ross and Charles Tyler to name but a few. Earthly Delights is…
Blue Notes for Mongezi
"Blue Notes for Mongezi", one of the most passionate celebrations of a life in music ever laid to tape. Recorded in late 1975 by Blue Notes, then reduced to a quartet - Dudu Pukwana on alto sax, whistle, percussion, and vocals; Johnny Dyani on bass, bells, and vocals; Louis Moholo-Moholo on drums, percussion, and vocals; and Chris McGregor on piano, and percussion - and issued the following year by Ogun, the album is a kairos; the first commercial release by one of free jazz’s seminal ensembles…
Orbita
The live performance recorded in the ancient Church of S. Giuliano, in Vercelli, encompasses some of the music conceived and written over the last few years, which Francesco Aroni Vigone spent in Valle d’Aosta. The recording location was chosen for its particular acoustics, perfect for a saxophone ‘solo’ and its aptitude for meditation. The performance took place during worship hours to have an unusual ‘audience’ in an unusual ‘liturgy’. The pieces are monodic songs that can be traced back mainl…
Bush Brothers & Space Rangers
Bush Brothers & Space Rangers sees Oneness Of Juju at the peak of their powers in 1977. Oneness had enjoyed two fruitful years with Black Fire prior to these recordings, breaking through with the African Rhythms and Space Jungle Luv albums. “When we recorded African Rhythms we didn’t use a guitar,” explains bandleader Plunky Branch. “So, when vocalist Jackie Eka-Ete and guitarist Ras Mel Glover came in around ‘75, that moved our sound into a more soulful direction. The drummer on this album, Ton…
Turbulence And Pulse
Limited edition One Drop color vinyl Cape Town, South Africa-based drummer Asher Gamedze explores relationships of time between music and history on his new album Turbulence and Pulse, out May 5th 2023. Gamedze’s critically-acclaimed debut album Dialectic Soul was released at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in July 2020. Around the release of that record, with friend and writer Teju Adeleye he organized and participated in a joint online discussion “Poesis,” with historian Robin D.G. Kelley …
The Quintet
** CD Edition ** This previously unreleased album by the Horace Tapscott Quintet was unearthed from master tapes in the Flying Dutchman archives. Recorded in 1969 and was intended to be a follow-up album to the classic "The Giant Is Awakened" which was released that year.The iconic pianist and composer Horace Tapscott was one of the most unique and important figures in LA’s jazz world. This lost recording was produced by one of the pivotal figures in jazz, Bob Thiele, a leading behind-the-scenes…
Meditation / Resurrection
*2023 repress* "Meditation / Resurrection is a double-album presenting a bounty of beautiful new William Parker compositions performed by two of his flagship ensembles, the Quartet -&- In Order To Survive. It was recorded & mixed live during a one-day studio session in late 2016. With the tone of the pieces & performances reflecting our current moment, this is Parker & the groups' follow-up to 2013's epic Wood Flute Songs box (2013). At the core of both groups is Parker's foundational bass toget…
Happiness Is... Takin' Care Of Natural Business... Dig?
First released back in 1967 on the Touche label and impossible to find on vinyl ever since, Happiness Is Taking Care of Business, Dig was the sole album from the short-lived Al Tanner Quintet. Yet as this much-needed Jazzman reissue proves, it remains an inspired selection of spiritually enriching modal workouts that makes the most of its talented ensemble. While pianist and bandleader Al Tanner naturally makes his presence felt throughout, flautist/trumpeter George Alexander and tenor saxophoni…
Brand New Feeling
400 copies, black vinyl. The Awakening were one of the greatest bands in early '70s jazz blending Spiritual and soul. They combined veterans of Chicago’s R&B sessions and jazz players affiliated with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and were the only "group" on the legendary Black Jazz Records roster. This album includes the most representative tunes from their only two albums released in 1972/1973.
Singing Icons
*First pressing of 150 copies* "Singing Icons brings together – though remotely – two highly exceptional and innovative, and, obviously, in-demand drummers-percussionists – Spanish, Barcelona-based Vasco Trilla, known for his bands Phicus, Fish Wool, Nobject and his duo with Portuguese trumpeter Luís Vicente, and his hero, American poet-dancer-nature mystic Ra Kalam Bob Moses, known for his collaborations with such legends as Charles Mingus, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Keith Jarrett, Pat Metheny and Pa…
A Sublime Madness
Psychic Ills keyboardist, Brent Cordero and Sunwatchers bassist, Peter Kerlin’s, first full length collab A Sublime Madness is the culmination of decades of circling each other's creative orbits. After years of casual jamming, numerous fledgling one offs, and touring sideman gigs (ibrighden addition to Sunwatchers, Kerlin was also Chris Forsyth’s long time bass player and in the John Dwyer helmed improv project, Bent Arcana. Cordero worked for years with Psychic Ills and Mike Wexler among others…
Forest Standards Vol. 3
What is a standard to a forest? What makes that different to what’s a standard, in that jazz classic compositional sense, to a desert? To a city? To a suburb? To a plain? A wetland? A grove? The only thing standard in a forest, like any other environment, is the search for balance. Nature seeks an equilibrium and, given enough time, it finds it. It’s the only way to ensure survival and growth. For three albums, David Lord has been exploring this idea, seeking out some sense of the ethereal, with…