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Salute to the Sun: Live at Halleì St Peter's documents a very special concert recorded at the iconic Manchester venue during lockdown.

Released in November 2020, Matthew's Halsall's Salute to the Sun was the trumpeter's first album since 2015's Into Forever, and marked the debut of his new band. A hand-picked ensemble featuring some of Manchester's finest young musicians. The album drew it's energy from the band's weekly sessions and was inspired by Halsall's love of nature. Lush and spiritual it received universal praise, but Halsall and his band were frustrated that they were unable to share their beautiful new sound live with an audience.



On November 25th 2020, Halsall took his band into the iconic Manchester venue, Hallé St Peter's, for a concert recording in aid of the charity Mind, that was streamed on January 21st 2021 to a global audience in the thousands. The concert was also recorded for posterity.



"When we recorded Salute to the Sun, I wanted to create something playful but also quite earthy and organic that connected to the sounds in nature. It seemed to strike a chord with people and I was blown away by the response to the album. Our concert film, recorded at the height of last winter's lockdown was a special moment for us all and I feel that the concert recording captured something beautiful that we wanted to share".



Salute to the Sun: Live at Halleì St Peter's features Matthew Halsall– trumpet, Matt Cliffe- flute & saxophone, Maddie Herbert– harp, Gavin Barras– bass, Liviu Gheorghe– piano, Alan Taylor– drums and Jack McCarthy- percussion



The recording has been mixed by Matthew Halsall and George Atkins at 80 Hertz and is mastered by Peter Beckmann at Technology Works. The vinyl was cut at Calyx in Berlin and the album is pressed at Optimal in Germany. It is presented in the form of a limited edition 2LP set with artwork by legendary designer Ian Anderson of The Designers Republic.



Spread over three sides of the vinyl LP for maximum fidelity the fourth side of the LP (side D) features an etching of Daniel Halsall's now iconic artwork for the album Salute to the Sun and copies are strictly limited with just 3000 available in total. The album will also be available for download and on streaming platforms.

Soul Jazz Records’ new Holy Church of the Ecstatic Soul: Gospel, Funk and Soul at the Crossroads 1971-83 is a one-off limited-edition heavyweight special-edition coloured vinyl pressing + download code exclusively for Record Store Day 2023.

he album draws upon the extensive links between black American gospel music and soul music, showing how the sensibilities of gospel artists such as Shirley Caesar, Dorothy Norwood, Andraé Crouch and others crossed over into secular soul music during this period.

Holy Church of the Ecstatic Soul shows how sacred gospel music was at home with Stevie Wonder, Blaxploitation-style funk and produced music celebrated both in New York’s underground discos (The Paradise Garage, Studio 54, etc) and later sampled by the likes of Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg and Mary J Blige

In addition to his day job transforming pop music with his own records, as well as those of Gastr del Sol, Loose Fur and Sonic Youth over the past few decades, Jim O"Rourke has been contracted for several dozen film scores over the years as well. It makes sense - his abilities as an improviser, composer and producer allow him to interpret cinematic moments with a unique understanding for their construction and how they work. It doesn"t hurt that Jim"s a well-versed cineaste, a complete and total fan of watching films, which has given him a preternatural understanding of the role of music in movies. What doesn"t make sense is how Hands That Bind is the first film soundtrack of Jim"s to ever receive worldwide release! He"s worked with filmmakers of international repute, like Olivier Assayas, Allison Anders, Werner Herzog and Kôji Wakamatsu! He served as music consultant on Richard Linklater"s 2003 laff-fest, School of Rock! He"s played in ensembles of award-winning documentaries and films alike! Throw the guy an internationally-promoted soundtrack LP every more often, why doncha? It was left to the "suits" of Drag City Records to innovate, once again, by taking a leap on an O"Rourke work. Made for an indie film that"s been seen by festival audiences and not enough others, the soundtrack for Hands That Bind is a moody, atmospheric delight. Jim"s roots in composition via tape-editing have evolved into a sophisticated assembly of found-and-processed sounds that achieve highly musical, near-orchestral majesty as they hang in the very air of the drama that unfolds in Kyle Armstrong"s Hands That Bind. Described as a "slow-burn prairie gothic drama" set in the farmland of Canada"s Alberta province, and starring Paul Sparks, Susan Kent, Landon Liboiron, Nicholas Campbell, Will Oldham, and Bruce Dern, Hands That Bind is a spellbinding trip to the existential bone of rural working life in North America. As conflict rises over the hard-worked patches of land that provide a mere and mean existence, a desperate air settles in, as a series of mysterious, often supernatural occurrences rock the small community. O"Rourke"s vaporous, serpentine musical backdrops and atmospheres reflect the obsessions and distractions of the film"s principles; moods of all sorts seen or otherwise implied. Additionally, the music highlights cinematographer Mike McLaughlin"s closely observed accounting of the farmers" environment, as well as the striking widescreen images of the big sky country with unnerving flair. For fans of Jim"s ongoing steamroom series as well as collectors of soundtracks, Hands That Bind will provide hours of engrossing listening. And if you get a chance, see the movie projected in a movie house, please - farmers aren"t the only ones struggling these days!

On their sophomore effort Tusky, surrealist duet Robbie & Mona ascend beyond the lo-fi scrawlings of their debut album to something altogether more grandiose. Between the lights down drama of sprawling opener ‘Sensation’, to the ‘roll credits’ coda of closer ‘Always Gonna Be A Dead Man’, Tusky exists as a glitzy, lucid journey playing out before the listener.
While debut album EW captured William Carkeet and Ellie Gray as they were finding their feet with one another, creating Tusky was a wholly symbiotic process from day one. “We got better at knowing what each other wanted,” William offers. “This was the album that we were trying to make from the beginning.”

Simultaneously evoking multiple eras of music, the album drifts through worlds of synth pop, jazz, trap, drill, ballroom waltz and leftfield electronica, with the scatterbrain sound palette melded by a peppering of instrumental motifs and William’s addiction to sampling sounds across multiple tracks. “I wanted there to be this weird dimensional thing going on,” William explains, “where songs from the album are playing in multiple places.”

The record sees an expansive cast of musicians assembled, with a much heavier focus on live instrumentation than previous outings. Alongside the expected fare of crackly synths, samplers and drum machines, Tusky gets its glossy sheen from a rich tapestry of jazz drums, double bass, grand piano and saxophone.

Most of the tracks are laden with improvised saxophone from Campbell Baum (Sorry, Broadside Hacks) and Ben Vince (Housewives, Joy Orbison), much of which was scrambled by William in post-production, lifting scraps from one song and layering them atop an entirely different track. Elsewhere, session musicians were cherry picked, including Bingo Fury, his drummer Henry Terrett, and a string ensemble led by Caelia Lunniss and Jo Silverston (Spindle Ensemble).

Most surprising is a rap feature from Monika (of South-East London collective Nukuluk), who brings album centrepiece ‘Mildred’ to new heights with a fiery verse on pain. Aside from being the most unlikely addendum to a sombre piano ballad, it demonstrates Robbie & Mona’s natural state of playfulness, forever following emotions and sensuality over any notion of traditional compositional boundaries.
Many of Tusky's tracks owe their inception to cinema, be it the soundtrack to Betty Blue, the glowing films of Wim Wenders, or the surprising parallels between La Belle Et La Bete and Bad Boys. Equally, much of Robbie & Mona's new-found sense of tension and spectacle comes from William’s recent work soundtracking independent filmmakers, while Ellie gave greater priority to threading a narrative through her stream of consciousness writing style.

In all its majesty, Tusky celebrates creativity with creation. “If you begin to see fiction as real, you can reincarnate and become different things. You can grow,” Ellie implores. “Nothing stays the same. You can shed old characters in yourself. There’s great joy in that.”

One of Japan’s most riveting artists follows that KAKUHAN mindmelt from last year (our number 5 album, 2022) with an engrossing suite of wild field recordings and polymetric percussion featuring a whole raft of additional players weaving drums, wind and brass instruments, cello and electronics into a bewildering Acousmatic matrix. Highly recommended listening if you’re into Marginal Consort, Beatrice Dillon, Will Guthrie, Mark Fell, François Bayle.

Having made his mark on these pages over the last few years with appearances as part of Japan’s cult entities Goat and YPY, Koshiro Hino’s turn last year as KAKUHAN took things to a whole other level with an album that felt like some alchemical mix of elements borrowed from Autechre, Photek, Arthur Russell and Mica Levi - a complete stylistic futureshock that worked as well in the club as it did fuelling extended flights of the imagination.

For 2023, Hino takes us into a completely different headspace, assembling a cast of 11 players - the mighty Joe Talia and KAKUHAN’s other half Yuki Nakagawa among them - for a suite of untamed field recordings, clanging percussion, brass and synthesis that are about as far removed from the diaristic ambient de jour as you could possibly imagine. Instead, the ensemble conjure vibrant sound ecologies teeming with detail, mirroring the natural world and communal traditions to form shapeshifting, organismic soundworlds.

‘Geist II’ was written for 20 speakers, referencing François Bayle’s acousmatic music and David Tudor’s electro-acoustic environments. It paints a richly detailed scene of a nocturnal rainforest, replete with avian hoots and a skin-crawling patina of insectoid chatter that moves around the soundfield, stealthily growing in density with a more “musical” presence of super low end drone and drums converging form the peripheries to a ritualistic climax. In the second part, focus shifts to remarkably pure percussion-like tropical rain, invaded by swarms of scuttling and winged invertebrates that give way to a water music-like polymetric slosh, resolving to ringing tones and more mellifluous gestures that hark back to GRM’s most poetic, romantic urges.

It's a deeply psychedelic experience that harmonises tiny electronic fluctuations with bird calls and scraped, resonant drones that phase in-and-out of the mix. It's sound you can practically chew, and another crucial despatch from the contemporary Japanese avant-garde.

From Alehouse to Playhouse Bjarte Eike and his barnstorming Barokksolistene capture the vital spark of Restoration London’s entertainment scene with a captivating new recording for Rubicon Classics! The Playhouse Sessions will be released on 23 September 2022 to coincide with Barokksolistene’s concert double-bill at London’s Southbank Centre.

‘A smattering of Purcell, dances from Playford’s Dancing Master, shanties, reels and ballads succumb to a nine-piece ensemble drawing on Baroque, jazz and folk styles for a no holds barred hooley of riotous improvisatory give and take,’ (BBC Music Magazine review of The Alehouse Sessions, August 2019)

London’s musicians, pushed in the 1650s, to the margins of society by order of Oliver Cromwell, found room for new forms of entertainment in city-centre taverns and alehouses. They remained there long after the restoration of the monarchy, performing sets of dances, theatre songs and bawdy ballads to audiences glad to be free from Puritan constraints on pleasure.

Norwegian violinist Bjarte Eike and his Barokksolistene have restored the spirit and substance of those long-forgotten performances with their Alehouse Sessions, hailed by The Times as ‘irresistible’ and ‘fabulously unrestrained’ by The Guardian. Five years ago the Norwegian violinist and his band scored a best-selling album with The Alehouse Sessions on Rubicon Classics. They return to the label with another compelling collection of music and words of the kind on offer more than three centuries ago at Henry Purcell’s favourite Westminster watering holes. The Playhouse Sessions, set for release on Rubicon Classics on 23 September 2022, reflects the uplifting energy and engaging emotional contrasts of Barokksolistene’s Alehouse performances.

“The album contains a sort of inner narrative that runs through the recording,” says Bjarte Eike. “It has become like a play in its own right, with each track being a small tale within a larger story.” The recording’s tracklist includes Eike’s beguiling arrangements of music from Purcell’s semi-opera The Fairy Queen and his own original compositions on words from the play on which it is based, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream; popular songs and ballads such as ‘The Irish Washerwoman’, ‘I often for my Jenny strove’ and ‘The Three Ravens’; tunes from Purcell’s welcome odes and stage shows, Come ye sons of art and Dido and Aeneas among them; the ‘Willow Song’ from Shakespeare’s Othello; Eike’s own voice in Puck’s monologue from Act 5 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream; and John Dowland’s sublime air ‘Can she excuse my wrongs’.

London’s theatres were closed at the start of the English Civil War in 1642 and remained shut until the Restoration. Alehouses offered redundant musicians, actors and dancers a place to scrape a precarious living and soon became their creative refuge. “Although a few surviving theatres reopened in 1660 with the return of Charles II, there was little money around to rebuild those that had been demolished,” observes Bjarte Eike. “And a generation of musicians had already found an audience in places like the Black Horse in Aldersgate Street. So popular were their alehouse sessions that Cromwell tried to abolish them! But they outlived him and became part of Restoration musical life.” The form of a Barokksolistene Alehouse, he adds, is like a creative room. “Within its framework I can frequently refurbish the show with new contents. The Playhouse project is likewise an extension of the ever-evolving Alehouse Sessions. Together they tell the story of music and theatre in London during Cromwell’s time and after the Restoration. Of course there’s an historical context to what we do. But there’s also the practical context – which is even more important to me – of connecting with a contemporary twenty-first century audience. An Alehouse / Playhouse performance is not something for the museum; it's about music made in the present moment, just as it was in the London alehouses of Purcell’s day -- with their playhouses annexed to the rear of the beer-drinking saloons. The encounter of musicians onstage and the audience in the hall is the real magic of it. We have to fuse the audience into the action of our performance!”

The Playhouse Sessions will be launched on Friday 23 September with a late-night concert at the Purcell Room and a post-concert Alehouse Session in the foyer of the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Soprano Mary Bevan is set to join Eike and his Alehouse Boys for the first half of their Southbank Centre double-bill, offering unique interpretations of songs from Purcell shows and other hits from the late seventeenth-century London stage. “The Southbank Centre is a direct descendant of concerts given in the 1650s in the alehouses of London,” notes Eike. “These alehouses after all staged some of the world’s first public concerts. Later, after the Restoration, it became common for promoters to advertise alehouse concerts in the press and offer subscription tickets. Purcell and his fellow musicians were thus just as at home performing there as they were in the chambers of the royal court or in London’s new theatres.”

Bjarte Eike launched his Alehouse Sessions in company with like-minded musicians 15 years ago. The ensemble comprises a core of regular performers, all of whom have committed to memory a huge setlist of up to four hours of music. Typically they meet a day or so before a concert tour to share a meal and make music together; then next day, re-grouping thirty minutes before the show, they discover Eike’s select-menu for the evening. “That ensures that every show is fresh,” he notes. “I make sure we never repeat the same programme twice. It’s therefore essential to work with people who share my outlook and dare to adventure. We’re into a high-risk sport, with lots of traps and places where the unexpected appears - for good or for ill. And so the audience knows we’re vulnerable. But our skill is seen in how we re-act on the hoof to the unpredictable. That’s authenticity and honesty - and above all it’s a performance that’s genuine.”

Armed with a classical training and a background in folk music and improvisation, Bjarte Eike was drawn naturally to Early Music in all its stylistic variety. “I never really felt at home with only one genre,” he recalls. “Early Music allowed me to study profound, complicated compositions, but performing it has also opened up the chance of rebellion and uproar! Early music offers wide, multi-faceted areas of musical exploration for me. You find, for instance, links to different types of music wherever you look in seventeenth-century English repertoire. And I am fascinated by all these connections. They offer a foundation for the Alehouse Sessions and for all Barokksolistene performance more generally. Every member of the group plays, sings, dances and improvises without limitation. We’re all interested in the many different fields of being a stage performer and pushing hard at the ‘normal’ boundaries of what it means to be a classical musician.”

Das Tingvall Trio feiert 2023 sein zwanzigjähriges Bandjubiläum. Besonders bemerkenswert ist, dass das Trio seit der Gründung bis zum vorliegenden neunten Album, BIRDS, immer in der gleichen Besetzung agiert. Neben dem Pianisten und Namensgeber Martin Tingvall am Piano sind dies Omar Rodriguez Calvo am Kontrabass und Jürgen Spiegel, der für Drums und Percussion verantwortlich zeichnet. Und die Drei in Hamburg ansässigen Musiker haben es geschafft, in diesen vielen Jahren eine Erfolgsgeschichte zu schreiben, die ihresgleichen sucht: mehrere ECHO JAZZ Preise als Ensemble und Live-Act des Jahres, insgesamt sechs JAZZ Awards in Gold, zwei Impala Awards für internationale Verkäufe, eine ganze Serie von No.1 Jazz Chart Alben und viermalige hohe Platzierungen in den Deutschen Top 100 Album Charts - im deutschen Jazz durchaus als herausragend zu bezeichnen. Mit BIRDS erreicht diese Entwicklung nun ihren vorläufigen Höhepunkt.
Wie immer ist Martin Tingvall für alle Kompositionen verantwortlich, die Stücke wurden aber vom Trio gemeinsam in Proben und Konzerten zur Aufnahmereife in Arrangement und Spiel erarbeitet. Und natürlich findet man auf dem Album wieder Titel mit Ohrwurmcharakter, wie etwa 'Woodpecker', 'Hummingbird' oder 'Air Guitar'. Wunderbare Balladen wie 'The Day After' mit einem gestrichenen Kontrabass von Omar Rodriguez Calvo, wechseln sich ab mit Stücken wie 'Africa', das sich in seiner Leichtigkeit sofort in die Gehörgänge schraubt. 'SOS', der Hilferuf, unserer Erde endlich eine Überlebensperspektive zu geben, bietet virtuosen Tingvall Trio Sound und eine berührende Komposition. Mit seinem Solo - Stück 'Call For Peace' steuert Martin Tingvall abschließend einen besonders introvertierten Moment bei.

In the mid-'60s, Albert Ayler found himself at the center of major transformations within jazz. On his albums for ESP-Disk', his delivery was radically aggressive and his tone blistering – aiming for something beyond the New Thing. His music would be further energized when (at the behest of John Coltrane) Bob Thiele signed him to Impulse! As Ayler told The Plain Dealer at the time, "It's not about notes anymore. It's a sound – a feeling. The approach we're taking will discontinue the use of the word 'jazz.'"

In Greenwich Village, Ayler's first LP on Impulse!, perfectly captures the Cleveland-born saxophonist's radiant intensity. Sourced from a pair of live engagements – February '67 at the Village Theatre on New York's Lower East Side and December '66 at the Village Vanguard – these recordings show an improved clarity in production and performance.

Both sets feature two basses (including Alan Silva and Henry Grimes) which allowed the ensemble to go in different harmonic directions while maintaining an organic unity. Of particular interest are "For John Coltrane," a tribute to Ayler's mentor who would pass later that year, and "Truth Is Marching In" where trumpeter Donald Ayler joins his brother to celebrate and ultimately deconstruct several jazz traditions to stunning effect.

Vibrant in sound and vision, Albert Ayler's In Greenwich Village is a landmark statement in free jazz and a career high-point for this truly original artist. Superior Viaduct is honored to present this classic album on vinyl for the first time domestically in 30 years.

When Belgian Adolphe Sax invented the saxophone in the mid-19th century, he could not have imagined what he had set in motion with his invention. Neither in classical music nor in military music did his new woodwind instrument find much appreciation. It was only long after his death that it became the most important instrument in jazz music via swinging big bands. It would probably have amazed Mr. Sax if he had been able to witness a young trio from Germany playing loudly against climate change and the lack of political consequences with two noisy saxophones and a drum set on a stage in front of the Reichstag in Berlin in front of more than 50,000 people jumping up and down during the climate strike in September 2021: BRASS RIOT.

The trio around Constantin von Estorff (Sax), Simon Sasse (Drums) and Carl Weiß (Sax) have been a band since their school days in Lüneburg. What started there as street music became a permanent and sought-after formation through the proximity to political initiatives, above all the Fridays-For-Future movement, and appearances at countless demonstrations. The band's name is slightly misleading, as "brass" in music refers to brass instruments such as the trumpet or tuba, even though most brass bands always include a saxophone. Moreover, the word "brass" means something in the German language, which in turn fits perfectly with this young, energetic trio: Fury.

On the heels of their debut album "Matschsafari" (2018), their second studio album "The Never Acting Story" is now released on Fun In The Church. The album title, in critical allusion to the world-famous fantasy book by Michael Ende, sums up well what the music of BRASS RIOT is about at its core: the possibility to get a noisy outlet for all the fury about the failed politics of the last decades and the frustrations and fears that go with it, and to free oneself from it for a moment. That this path has produced the wildest live music on this crisis-ridden planet is an irony of history - and certainly not the first time it has happened. It's no different in the jazz of Charlie Parker than in the songs of Patti Smith, the raps of Little Simz or the Afro-beat of Fela Kuti.

Musically, BRASS RIOT move more in the area of the melodic ska-pop of Madness, the fake jazz of the Lounge Lizards and contemporary rave brass ensembles like MEUTE between house music and electro beats. The fact that they have managed to politicize their sound so strongly over the years, despite all the party that goes with it, and without any song lyrics at all, is truly phenomenal.

Hi Scores is beyond excited to present SSR Records: In Retrospect. This 2LP compilation album presented in a beautiful gatefold sleeve and through all digital platforms, wishes to highlight the immense and hard to grasp legacy of the Brussels based label. SSR Records was founded in 1988 by Marc Hollander as a sub label of his Crammed Discs and spanned the nascent years of house, acid, rave, trance, new beat, hip-hop, future jazz and broken beat, collaborating internationally and racking up close to 200 releases until it was put to sleep in 2002. Far ahead of their time, SSR Records released music of both European and North American artists that hadn’t broken through yet, such as those collected on this compilation: Move D, Nu Era, Gemini, Bjørn Torske, Glenn Underground or Matthew Herbert.

SSR Records was run by Crammed Discs chief Marc Hollander and Minimal Compact singer Samy Birnbach aka DJ Morpheus. SSR Records: In Retrospect comes with extended liner notes, exploring the pivotal milestones in the history of the adventurous label and zooming in on the origins of all records featured on the compilation.

All nine tracks on SSR Records: In Retrospect were selected by Hi Scores’s head honcho Kong DJ and have been remastered. Created between 1990 and 1996 and in the at the time pioneering spheres of house, breakbeat, electro and trance music, these treasures from the vast SSR catalog today stand as a stunning testimony to a truly remarkable and timeless musical legacy. Kong DJ: ‘While collaborating with Crammed Discs on the releases of Aksak Maboul in 2016 and Zazou / Bikaye in 2018 on Ensemble, I began to grasp the impressive catalog of the label and its sub labels, including SSR. Surprised by the tiny footprint SSR had left on the world wide web - often the case for labels ceased before the internet revolution - I wrote an article for British website The Vinyl Factory.

This would later prove to be the first step towards this compilation album, collecting favorites from the label as a kid in a giant candy store.’

If you are a death metal fan, GRACELESS shouldn’t need an introduction. Three full lengths and two split EPs have granted the Dutch ensemble a respectable reputation across the globe. Closer to home, the four piece has played countless live shows since their 2016 inception. The rock solid line up -unchanged since day one- has delivered ferocious, high energy live performances at Eindhoven Metal Meeting, Into the Grave, Party San Metal Open Air, Ruhrpott Metal Meeting, Stonehenge, SDF2021 and many more festivals and clubs. Joining forces with LISTENABLE RECORDS in 2023 is the next thundering milestone for GRACELESS. Tirelessly working on their fourth full-length, the next chapter for GRACELESS will be another step deeper into the abyss that started with Shadowlands (2018), via Where Vultures Know Your Name (2020), to Chants from Purgatory (2022). For fans of DEATH, ASPHYX, GORGUTS, BOLT THROWER, AMON AMARTH, BLOODBATH.

1000 Die-cut leather structure gatefold with eight artist photo cards & insert.

"Welcome to the America Dream Reserve, home to husband & wife duos, pub legends, one-man-bands, preachers’ sons, and country-lounge entertainers..."

About: America Dream Reserve is a home for kindred souls. An hour-long journey into the world of lo-fi drumcomputer folk, disco-pop-lounge, haunting ballads, obscure vanity pressings, and synthesized string ensembles. A collaborative compilation between Charles Bals, creator of the inimitable Club Meduse, and Smiling C.

Sleeve: This is a premium edition of ADR housed in a die-cut leather structure gatefold. It comes with eight loose double-sided swappable photo cards with artist photos on both sides, and an insert with write-up about the project. Limited run.

Compiled by: Charles Bals & Henry Jones.

Debut vinyl by Cruz Perro Maldito, a Tenerife based trio forever imbued in the collective imagination and folklore myths of the magical and misty mountain of Agua García, located in Tacoronte district at the foot of Teide Volcano (Tenerife/Canary Islands). Their music is an explosion of free jazz improv where sophisticated sound textures emerg-ing from modular synths and processed guitar create abstract and random rhythmic patterns with complex saxophone lines guiding the ensemble from quiet to menacing passages of sudden bursts of noise and frenzy.


Entitled Truquetin Resorte, the album takes inspiration from the rich history of mechanical automata, such as Talos, the bronze giant who defended the island of Crete and was eventually defeated by Jason and his Argonauts. Or Apega de Nabis, a replica of King Nabis’ wife whom crossed unsuspecting victims with its iron spikes hidden in the device's lower arms, hands and breasts.

Or even René Descartes and his infamous daughter- like Automaton replica, an eerie creation from the renown philosopher to evoke his dead daughter
These myths and more serve as reminder of a mechanical world’s past, a world of complex automata stories with me-chanic ‘imitating’ beings as its problematic protagonists. An eerie counterpoint to our current uber modern digital world and its rapid advancing A.I.s.

Freestyle Records are proud to reissue Ambiance II Fusion's mid-80s fusion rarity "Come Touch Tomorrow" - originally recorded in Hollywood CA October/November 1984 and released in 1985.

Following a yearly run of 4 albums self-released between 1979 and 1982, Nigerian-born saxophonist, flutist, and clarinettist Daoud Abubakar Balewa then took a few years off before returning with 1985's "Come Touch Tomorrow", the first of two albums issued under the updated name of Ambiance II Fusion. Combining the afro-spiritual jazz & be-bop inflected fusion of his earlier work as Ambiance, this record took the project into more modern & distinctly cosmic planes with the introduction of spacey pads and drum machines working alongside somewhat tighter arrangements and solid rhythm sectons. Of particular note here is the B1 track "Boy What a Joy" on which a sublimely funky synth & drum machine throwdown is presented in prophetically lo-fi fashion - recalling recent stylistic approaches from the likes of Dâm-Funk among others.

Participating Musicians:

"AMBIANCE II FUSION"

Stanley Dominguez - Guitars

Dr. Isacc Ford - Drums/Electric Drums

Ralph Rodriguez - Percussion

Juliian Breeton - Bass

Jardin Wilson - Bass

Lee Williams - Keyboards/Syntheziers

Daoud Abubakar Balewa - Alto & Tenor Saxophone/Percussion

Larry Dominguez - Alto Saxophone

Suzanne Daniels - Vocal Sounds

"AMBIANCE II FUSION ENSEMBLE"

James "Kino" Cornwell - Keyboards

Randy Landis - Basses

Rick Smith - Percussion

Jim Lum - Guitars

Arnold Ramsey - Drums

Daoud Abubakar Balewa - Soprano Saxophone/Percussion

Recorded at Sound Images Recording Studios - Sound Images Entertainment Complex - North Hollywood, CA & Classic Sound Studios - Hollywood, CA. October/November 1984.

Black Truffle is pleased to announce Symphony No. 107 –The Bard, a previously unheard archival recording of the legendary improvising ensemble MEV (Musica Elettronica Viva), captured in concert at Bard College, New York in 2012. Formed by a group of American expat composers in Rome in 1966, the MEV ensemble played an important role in the development of free improvisation, bridging the live electronics tradition begun by Cage and Tudor and the high-energy squall of free jazz. Early recordings like Spacecraft or The Sound Pool unleash volleys of metal and glass amplified with contact microphones, howling winds, primitive synthesizer bleep and raucous audience participation, the intensity of which puts much later ‘noise’ to shame. In later decades, the ensemble would go through many iterations, often including legendary free players like Steve Lacy and George Lewis. In its final years, MEV settled into the core trio of founding members heard here: Alvin Curran, Frederic Rzewski, and Richard Teitelbaum, using piano, electronics, and small instruments.

Curran, Rzewski, and Teitelbaum were life-long friends blessed, as Curran says, with ‘incompatible personalities’: major figures in the post-Cagean experimental tradition, they explored countless divergent and even contradictory paths as composers and performers, from agitprop songs to brainwave-controlled synthesis. MEV is the sound of these three personalities coming together, their contributions radically individual yet attaining a state of ‘fundamental unity’ that Rzewski, in a text written in the collective’s earliest years, defined as the ‘final goal of improvisation’. Of course, listeners familiar with aspect of the trio’s individual works might hazard some guesses about who is doing what: the crisp piano figures are probably Rzewski’s, the cut-up hip-hop samples most likely Curran’s, the sliding, squelching synth possibly Teitelbaum’s. But often these identities are dissolved in a constantly shifting hall of mirrors, the listener unable to tell which of these pianos is live and which is a sample of a past virtuoso, or whether a horn blast derives from ethnographic documentation or Curran cutting loose on Shofar. The two side-long sets here occupy a similar terrain of constantly shifting texture and instrumentation, unexpected interruptions, and moments of sudden beauty. The first set is sparser, at times almost ominous, as a bell repeatedly sounds across wheezing harmonica, seasick orchestral textures, and creaking wood, making room for episodes of yodelling and delicate prepared piano before exploding into a storm of buzzing synth and piano fragments. The second set is more frenetic, moving rapidly across centuries and continents: cars crash into post-serial piano pointillism, wailing voices collide with chopped and screwed hip-hop samples, Hollywood strings are buried under layers of electronic gurgles. The performance slows in its final moments, making way for a sampled voice repeating the phrase ‘protest and the good of the world’, reminding us that MEV’s idea of freedom was always more than musical. Symphony No. 107 –The Bard is a beautifully recorded example of the endlessly multi-layered later MEV sound, accompanied by new liner notes by Alvin Curran (now the only surviving member of the group) and a selection of previously unseen photographs from across the many decades of the group’s activity. Arriving in an elegant sleeve bearing a beautiful photograph by Francis Zhou of the Olin Hall at Bard College where the concert was recorded, this is an essential document from a major group in the history of experimental music. As Rzewski wrote, this music is ‘like life, unpredictable, sometimes making sense, mostly not’.

In 1990, Eric Clapton performed 18 nights at one of his favorite venues - the famous Royal Albert Hall in London. During the 18 run of shows Clapton performed with three different line-ups: a rock band, a blues band, and an orchestra. Eric returned to the same venue in 1991 with the same three line -ups and played a further 24 shows. The huge undertaking of rehearsing for performances of three distinctly different genres was made even more challenging by the line-up for the rock shows varying from 4, 9 or 13 band members.

Clapton has always played with superlative musicians, and these shows were no exception. The bands included Johnnie Johnson, Jimmie Vaughan, Chuck Leavell, Nathan East, Greg Phillinganes, Steve Ferrone, Ray Cooper, and Jerry Portnoy. Additionally, legendary special guests joined Clapton on stage: Phil Collins in the rock ensemble; Robert Cray, Buddy Guy and Albert Collins for the blues shows.

The Orchestral performances were arranged and conducted by Michael Kamen the highly regarded and successful composer who had worked with Clapton previously (Lethal Weapon, Edge Of Darkness). The set list included the epic 30 minute ‘Concerto For Guitar’ that Kamen composed especially for Clapton - released now for the first time.

Many of the performances in both years were filmed and recorded. The huge volume of audio and film material from the archive has been painstakingly restored and upgraded by Clapton’s team of Simon Climie (audio production and mixing), producer Peter Worsley (Slowhand at 70 and The Lady In The Balcony), and director David Barnard (The Lady In The Balcony).

This remarkable series of shows will finally be given the release that they deserve. A full concert of each genre (Rock, Blues, Orchestral) has been assembled from the hours of material available and will be released on audio (CD, LP, digital) and with an accompanying film on Blu-ray and DVD.

Orchestral show features a stunning version of ‘ Layla’, plus stand-out highlights of ‘Bell Bottom Blues’, ‘Edge Of Darkness’ and ‘Sunshine of Your Love’. Great covers of ‘Cocaine’, ‘I Shot the Sheriff’ and ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’ also feature.

In 1990, Eric Clapton performed 18 nights at one of his favorite venues - the famous Royal Albert Hall in London. During the 18 run of shows Clapton performed with three different line-ups: a rock band, a blues band, and an orchestra. Eric returned to the same venue in 1991 with the same three line -ups and played a further 24 shows. The huge undertaking of rehearsing for performances of three distinctly different genres was made even more challenging by the line-up for the rock shows varying from 4, 9 or 13 band members.

Clapton has always played with superlative musicians, and these shows were no exception. The bands included Johnnie Johnson, Jimmie Vaughan, Chuck Leavell, Nathan East, Greg Phillinganes, Steve Ferrone, Ray Cooper, and Jerry Portnoy. Additionally, legendary special guests joined Clapton on stage: Phil Collins in the rock ensemble; Robert Cray, Buddy Guy and Albert Collins for the blues shows.

Many of the performances in both years were filmed and recorded. The huge volume of audio and film material from the archive has been painstakingly restored and upgraded by Clapton’s team of Simon Climie (audio production and mixing), producer Peter Worsley (Slowhand at 70 and The Lady In The Balcony), and director David Barnard (The Lady In The Balcony).

This remarkable series of shows will finally be given the release that they deserve. A full concert of each genre (Rock, Blues, Orchestral) has been assembled from the hours of material available and will be released on audio (CD, LP, digital) and with an accompanying film on Blu-ray and DVD.

The Clapton classics performed with the rock band include ‘White Room’, ‘Lay Down Sally’, ‘Wonderful Tonight’, ‘Pretending’ and ‘Layla’

In 1990, Eric Clapton performed 18 nights at one of his favorite venues - the famous Royal Albert Hall in London. During the 18 run of shows Clapton performed with three different line-ups: a rock band, a blues band, and an orchestra. Eric returned to the same venue in 1991 with the same three line -ups and played a further 24 shows. The huge undertaking of rehearsing for performances of three distinctly different genres was made even more challenging by the line-up for the rock shows varying from 4, 9 or 13 band members.

Clapton has always played with superlative musicians, and these shows were no exception. The bands included Johnnie Johnson, Jimmie Vaughan, Chuck Leavell, Nathan East, Greg Phillinganes, Steve Ferrone, Ray Cooper, and Jerry Portnoy. Additionally, legendary special guests joined Clapton on stage: Phil Collins in the rock ensemble; Robert Cray, Buddy Guy and Albert Collins for the blues shows.

The Orchestral performances were arranged and conducted by Michael Kamen the highly regarded and successful composer who had worked with Clapton previously (Lethal Weapon, Edge Of Darkness). The set list included the epic 30 minute ‘Concerto For Guitar’ that Kamen composed especially for Clapton - released now for the first time.

Many of the performances in both years were filmed and recorded. The huge volume of audio and film material from the archive has been painstakingly restored and upgraded by Clapton’s team of Simon Climie (audio production and mixing), producer Peter Worsley (Slowhand at 70 and The Lady In The Balcony), and director David Barnard (The Lady In The Balcony).

This remarkable series of shows will finally be given the release that they deserve. A full concert of each genre (Rock, Blues, Orchestral) has been assembled from the hours of material available and will be released on audio (CD, LP, digital) and with an accompanying film on Blu-ray and DVD.

The Clapton classics performed with the rock band include ‘White Room’, ‘Lay Down Sally’, ‘Wonderful Tonight’, ‘Pretending’ and ‘Layla’. The Orchestral show features a stunning version of ‘ Layla’, plus stand-out highlights of ‘Bell Bottom Blues’, ‘Edge Of Darkness’ and ‘Sunshine of Your Love’. Great covers of ‘Cocaine’, ‘I Shot the Sheriff’ and ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’ also feature. The 14-song Blues set includes standards such as ‘Sweet Home Chicago, ‘Have You Ever Loved A Woman’, and ‘Key To The Highway’.

The limited-edition ‘Definitive 24 Nights’ deluxe box sets include 47 songs and almost 6 hours of music on 6 CDs or 8 LPs and 3 Blu-ray’s.

Twoonky, the brothers duo from Brescia (Italy) formed by Michele and Simone Bornati, is back on Macadam Mambo for a second album. After their brillantissimo ‘Dezzo’ from 2019, which was well noticed by the underground scene, the new opus ‘Ottico’ won’t leave you static. This is the kind of masterpiece that the more you listen, the more you love.

At the opposite of grandiloquent music that would have immediate effect, ‘Ottico’ is much more subtile, surfing on a cool wave of styles, a collage of vibes going from 70’s Kraut to 90’s Trip-Hop, where the analog sounds of guitars, synths, distorded voices, saxo, samples and electronics FX match so well, creating an ensemble in the unique mutant flow of the Twoonky’s that makes it so intemporal and so modern in the meanwile. It’s not about being curious, it’s about being open on crossing boundaries, like they are used to do with their unique place called Spettro in Brescia, where all the avant-garde of the electronic scene is coming to perform.

‘Ottico’ could be a kind of representation of the spirit of Spettro, and possibly one of the most interesting release of 2023. We don’t know why, but it’s true, Italians do it better 

The great jazz-fusion band Weather Report released their self-titled debut album in 1971. Featuring Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter amongst others, the young musicians created an original and fluid record, which would define the state of the jazz rock by that time. Shorter’s (1960s Miles Davis ensemble) soprano sax shines and reveals with full force the extraordinary rapport the members of the group established from the start. The music consists of subtle melody lines and is mostly an atmospheric adventurous journey. Influences from Miles Davis’ In A Silent Way / Bitches Brew sessions can be heard throughout this record. Altogether they’re performing this historical document.