Виниловые новинки и релизы Pop & Rock - Новости

Strings and swinging traps pulse beneath radiant brass painting a daring dynamic East Coast evolution of Chicago style avant-garde. Fly or Die received “Best of 2017” honors from The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, NPR Music, WIRE Magazine, Aquarium Drunkard, Stereogum, The Quietus, Bandcamp, and more.

Shrink-wrapped 7" in retro USA Atlantic 45rpm sleeve (die-cut card).

On vinyl in the U.S. for the first time since 1977, this 1975 release includes African, Indian, Arabic and 70's era Miles Davis style electric rock fusions. Featuring contributions from former Ornette Coleman bandmates Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins, and liner notes from Stanley Crouch.

Frank Hatchett was a legendary dance instructor and originator of VOP. VOP is not an abbreviation but, as he himself puts it: "VOP is a style". It's used to flavour the choreography and to communicate and translate emotions to the audience. The record produced by Don Alan Tipton is a wonderful complement of said VOP style. It features 11 tracks made for dancing that are produced and arranged in a moving and funky fashion.

‘Visions’ is a new collaborative album from BADBADNOTGOOD co-founders, Matthew Tavares and Leland Whitty. The Grammy Award winning, multi-platinum producers have been performing and writing music together for 10 years. They have achieved international acclaim with BADBADNOTGOOD and Tavares’ recent solo single ’Self-Portrait’ has been championed by tastemakers such as Gilles Peterson and Benji B. ‘Visions’ is the latest upshot of their incredibly fruitful partnership.

Recorded in Toronto, it was produced by Tavares and Whitty - with Tavares also mixing the album and arranging strings. After a three-week writing period it was played in its entirety in one continuous studio session; almost all the tracks on the album are the first take. Tavares is on piano and guitar, Whitty on saxophone and flute. The rhythm section of Julian Anderson-Bowes on bass and Matthew Chalmers on drums completes the players. They make an impressive collective and are performing at the peak of their powers.

Conceptually the album is a canvas for a combination of composition and group free-form improvisation. Tavares and Whitty are the sole composers, but with some tracks collectively improvised, there is also a group dynamic running through the album. The outcome is a sublime melting pot of modern jazz, impressionist classical music and Arthur Verocai-esque arrangements. It is a sound that is hard to date; it is certainly of the now but is also reminiscent of a lost classic. Similar to the process of its creation, the optimal listening experience for ‘Visions’ is in its entirety. As a coherent body of work it draws the listener in with waves of intensity and crescendos that release back into tranquility - there is both darkness and light in the album’s narrative arc. There is also rawness and honesty to the music, which makes it feel like an intensely personal and intimate offering.

Sam Gendel’s Nonesuch Records debut, Satin Doll, was recorded in Gendel’s native California, and is a futuristic homage to historical jazz. The album features three musicians — Gendel on saxophone, Gabe Noel on electric bass, and Philippe Melanson on electronic percussion — engaging in simultaneous synchronized sonic construction/deconstruction of jazz standards, including Miles Davis’ ‘Freddie Freeloader’, Charles Mingus’ ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’, and Duke Ellington’s ‘Satin Doll’.

Sam Gendel is a musician and producer living in Los Angeles, CA. He is most known for his work with the saxophone, though he is proficient on multiple instruments. His work is diverse and includes significant collaborations with a wide range of artists including Ry Cooder, Blake Mills, Sam Amidon, Perfume Genius, Moses Sumney, Knower, Vampire Weekend, and inc. no world. Gendel’s previous discography includes the critically praised Music for Saxofone & Bass Guitar with bassist Sam Wilkes and 4444.

Hailing from the coastal Swedish city of Malmö, Sune steps forward to provide a fourth EP for Lorca and Liam Curran's Live Ones. With his Mimosa Kuriosa EP he serves up 5 masterful disco and soul inflected rhythms that'll hit all the right spots.

Having previously provided his signature sunshine grooves for Better Listen, Kyoku and his own Honey Butter imprint, Sune is fast building a reputation as a prolific purveyor of funk. The EP shows off Emil Sunesson's ear for playful samples and infectious grooves. Dusty, heady drum programming features heavily across all five tracks, employed subtly on the laid back 'Bring Some Tea' while unleashed to devastating effect on the upbeat 'The Way U Make Me Feel'.

There's something for everyone on this versatile, enigmatic EP from a talented young producer that we're sure you'll be seeing plenty more of in time to come.

After a long hiatus the noisy and most telepathic Montreal impro trio Jane & The Magik Bananas, led by Sam Shalabi (Land Of Kush, Karkhana, Dwarfs Of East Agouza) returned with a shifted focus exploring rhythm in a global sense. Live compositional practise with rhythm and polyrhythm as the structuring principle led them to different kinds of western / non-western tuning and micro tonality. In a certain way they play in the Western tradition of Ornette Coleman’s Prime Time Band, Harry Partch and Captain Beefheart. Various world music traditions boiled together in the groovy crucible of improvisation. An album that will certainly delight friends of the Dwarfs Of East Agouza. Very small limited edition on 140g black vinyl.

Michel F Cote: drums, amplified percussion, feedback
Alexandre St-Onge: electric bass, electronics, voice
Sam Shalabi: electric guitar

International press campaign including mail shots to key-international tastemakers and industry insiders *Focus on environmental message and quotes from key writers and thinkers Tour dates expected 2020 21/3/2020 Gateshead Jazz Festival, Gateshead, UK * Media: - 6 Music Playlists and presenters including Gilles Peterson - Jazzwise Magazine - UK’s key jazz Mag: Feature TBC, Review confirmed - BBC Radio 2 Jamie Cullum - UK’s biggest radio listenership/internatioanlly known star - airplay tbc - The Guardian - key UK broadsheet jazz CD of the month tbc - London Evening Standard - key London newspaper poss interview - The Financial Times - key UK broadsheet review TBC - BBC Music Magazine - Key classical music magazine - Jazz CD of the month TBC - MOJO Magazine - Specialist jazz column review TBC - Record Collector Magazine - specialist jazz column review TBC

Mais Alors !!?... c’est à l’envers is the first release of new French Label ICI BIENTÔT (Here Soon ...), launched by Paris Fleamarket’s Record Shop, Geminicricket. On the Menu... Suspended Time,
Unsung Heroes, Hidden Records and Next Door Marvels.
In 1983, NEF released their first and only album, Mais Alors !!?... c’est à l’envers. At that point, the band already had a long history, interwoven with that of various musical trends and alternative
movements from the late sixties to the early eighties. That’s certainly what makes this record so special and able to conciliate such different worlds as Electronic Prog, Film Score, New Wave …
The band’s destiny was most certainly tied to their native region, the South of France, an idyllic environment that attracted a number of musicians during the 1970s, allowing the group to attend many
concerts or share the bill with several groups that have gone on to become well known: Can, Ash Ra Tempel, Magma, Catherine Ribeiro, Zao, Chêne Noir, Art Zoyd …
Founded in 1975 by Richard Lorenzi, NEF started as a kind of Free Rock band with multiple influences, going from Prog to Musique Concrete, in which any method of making sound, any way of
bringing out sounds was good … 2 musicians and a photographer, full member of the band who was projecting slides over the music and influenced their dreamlike universe. In 1978, Vincent Tronc came on board with his keyboards and synths. While the group had been influenced by electroacoustic techniques until then, Vincent broadened NEF’s horizons, bringing in a host of new influences: Ash Ra Tempel, Kraftwerk, Klaus Schulze … the beginnings of electronic music. When the album is recorded in 1983, new directions were taken and changed NEF’s usual sound.
First, the idea of playing the accordion, clearly not a common thing and a new Drum Machine, the Roland CJ-5000. Pressed the day a figure of French Chanson died, NEF’s pressing is botched up, a
good part of the records were unusable since the records came out totally warped. Then, at the end of the eighties the small stock of remaining records is lost in the sadly famous flood of Nîmes. 2000
records had been pressed, but very few survived! All the more reason to reissue Mais Alors !!?... c’est à l’envers, an unsung record, free and multifaceted, a quirky and daring musical ovni, transcending eras and genres, between synthetic
Krautrock and Film Score, reminiscent of NEU! (with a red nose), François de Roubaix and Pascal Comelade.

Portico Quartet announce We Welcome Tomorrow a strictly limited edition three-track vinyl EP.

The EP follows on from Memory Streams, their fifth studio album and second for Gondwana Records which was released in October 2019. Sonically it explores a similar world to the full-length album, but where Memory Streams focused on a punchier live sound, WWT explores modern classical and ambient textures.

We Welcome Tomorrow features, the duo Fran and Flora (Francesca Ter-Berg cello & Flora Curzon) on strings, but also builds looped saxophones, drums and synths parts into a rich tapestry of sound. Odd time signatures underpin a surprisingly emotional build that resolves in richly layered strings.

Mirage explores a different side of the band's writing. Moving away from their usual instrumentation and enlisting the beautiful string playing of 'Fran and flora' . It draws influence from the emotional, spiritual minimalism of composers such as Arvo Part and John Adams.

Winding Snake again takes influence from American minimalism but places it against strong, modern drum rhythms and organs. And its energy and instrumentation propel the music into trademark Portico Quartet territory.





[a] 1 We Welcome Tomorrow [clip]
[b] 2 Mirage [clip]
[c] 3 Winding Snake [clip]

Charismatic guitar savant Sibusile Xaba reframes maskandi and the avant garde into his own humanist manifesto. With a vocal style that is part dreamscaping and part ancestral invocation, Xaba divines as opposed to plainly singing. Combined with a guitar style that is rooted in expressive picking, Xaba's music shatters the confines of genre, taking only the fundamentals from mentors such as Madala Kunene and Dr Philip Tabane and imbuing these with a mythology and improvisational intensity all of his own. The song Tribute to Bafo that features on this new record is an homage to Madala "Bafo" Kunene.
Maskandi, malombo, the desert blues and jazz all figure in Sibusile Xaba's expansive vocabulary, albeit through a magnetic individual filter. After the acclaimed release of ‘Open Letter to Adoniah’ in 2017, Sibusile’s second album NGIWU SHWABADA was recorded in one continuous take at Studio Pigalle in Paris, France, in May 2019. It features his long-time musical companion Naftali on additional vocals.
Sibusile explains the philosophy behind this new opus ( the title means ‘I am of SHWABADA’ – a spiritual lineage) : ‘The record is a dedication to my ancestors for all the love, blessings and guidance they continue to share. These songs are conversations I have had with my ancestors, transmitted into song to be shared with mankind. The elements of the record are waters & the great feminine spirit.’
To close the album, London saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings joins Sibusile for a purely improvised 18 minute musical trip recorded that same day. ‘Phefumula is a journey of still minds, with a focus on the importance and simplicity of breathing. After a practical breathing session Shabaka & I were granted time to explore worlds and receive messages to be shared - we were gracefully granted to be vessels who receive.’

The Splinta Experience was made entirely by hand. And a foot. The record is the result of Splinta's turntable tricks and layering. It's simply drumming and scratching arranged on the fly with a loop pedal, with added effects from a basic, pocket-size bass module. Low in fidelity and high in humming, buzzing and hissing. No SP-404 effects needed.

This is scratch music that takes us to the Electric ScratchHappyLand. It might as well be a tribute record celebrating 50 years of Jimmy Hendrix Experience's last album. And 22 years of Kid Koala's greatest mix-tape of all time.

Splinta's a Slovenian. He's been deejaying & juggling for more than a while. This is his debut on plastic.

Sleeve illustration, design and print all also hand-made by Splinta. Really wholesome hiphop shit.

Kenny Dorham’s 1964 album Trompeta Toccata would be the final album that the great underrated trumpeter and composer would record as a leader, and it stands as a fitting testament to his prodigious talent. The album featured a stellar quintet with Dorham and his frequent collaborator Joe Henderson on tenor saxophone along with pianist Tommy Flanagan, bassist Richard Davis, and drummer Albert “Tootie” Heath. The brilliant album cover design by Reid Miles featured the bold typography that made his style so influential. This Blue Note 80 Vinyl Edition is all-analog, mastered by Kevin Gray from the original master tapes, and pressed on 180g vinyl at Optimal.

On 1964’s Into Somethin’—his first album for Blue Note—Larry Young made it abundantly clear that he had his own unique approach to the Hammond B-3 organ. Rather than the tried-and-true soul jazz sound so strongly identified with the instrument, Young explored more modal territory over the course of his six Blue Note albums including this tremendous session featuring tenor saxophonist Sam Rivers, guitarist Grant Green, and drummer Elvin Jones. The remarkable album cover design by Reid Miles made excellent use of a memorable photograph by Francis Wolff. This Blue Note 80 Vinyl Edition is all-analog, mastered by Kevin Gray from the original master tapes, and pressed on 180g vinyl at Optimal.

Official reissue of highly sought after Dutch Boogie cover from Indeep’s classic hit ‘Last night, the D.J. saved my life’: Northy
Davies – De D.J. redde mij vannacht. Poko poko edit on the flip side!

"I'm Always Right“ by Imagination is an unreleased jazz rock LP recorded in 1977, 3 years before their sought after “Shake It” debut from 1980. Comprised of five tracks with a playtime of roughly 30 minutes, you will hear one of the finest German late-70s rock-tinged electric jazz albums of the era. The recording is a delightful stand-out with unique compositions, aspiring solo work, and a soulful spirit throughout. Additionally, the album veritably glows with exceptional sound quality, as it has been remastered from original tapes that were cut more than four decades ago at the WDR Funkhaus, Cologne.

Acclaimed London-based sonic explorer Seb Rochford unleashes a startling new band and debut album. The frontier where doom rhythms rub against haunted saxophone atmospherics. A 4-time Mercury Prize nominee (Polar Bear, Sons of Kemet, Basquiat Strings)
Pulled by Magnets is Seb’s most sublime and provocative musical statement to date. There’s the glittering list of collaborations that includes Patti Smith, Brian Eno and David Byrne, the trailblazing (post-) jazz strangeness of Polar Bear, the drumming and producing for Sons of Kemet, of which he was a founding member, the film soundtrack work (on Chris Morris’s latest, among others) and, as we move into the new decade, there’s ... well, what is this exactly? How many Seb Rochford's are there? From the off, it sounds unlike anything the Scots-born, London-based, desert-loving drummer of Anglo-Indian and English/Irish heritage has done before. Gone are the quizzical, music-hall-at-the-end-of-the-world stylings of Polar Bear, to be replaced by a soundtrack of the mind that is, by turns, sublime, stately and provocative.
Forget type, genre or influence: this is the start of a brand-new trip by one of the most questing musicians at work anywhere. But let’s take refuge in facts for a moment: Rose Golden Doorwayswas recorded in The Old Church in Stoke Newington, London and features, in addition to Rochford, Polar Bear comrade Pete Wareham on saxophone and Neil Charles (Zed-U, Empirical)on bass guitar. Even with the help of the church, you’ll wonder how the three of them managed to make the sound they do, especially when you learn that the album is a series of live takes, with no added studio woo.

‘Timoka’ is an all instrumental album from Ross Goldstein featuring 11 compositions created using a Mellotron exclusively. It is a companion piece (volume 2) to ‘The 8th House’ and like that album it is inspired by cinema and film soundtracks While plenty of homage has been paid to the anxiety-heavy synthy soundtracks of 70’s b-movie horror flicks or the acid rock freak outs that soundtracked movies from the early days hippie subculture, The Eighth House goes in a very different direction. More than those popular entry points, the music here is subdued and slow-moving, curiously inspecting ideas as the album moves through various fantastical passages. Even when cartoonish sound effects meet with tense swells of strings or dramatic orchestral flourishes (early Chamberlin models recorded their sounds using players of the Lawrence Welk Orchestra, no less!), the result is never garish but always patient and communicative. Bells ring in the distance, memories and possibilities are implied but left open to interpretation and strange but friendly sounds linger for just a moment before melting into something else. The result is a muted and wintery paradise that envisions Smile-era Brian Wilson scoring the softer moments of a Jodorowsky film.

Presenting Shirley Scott’s deeply personal album, ‘One for Me’ - a defiant tribute to the music she always desired to create but was shrouded by the demands of her vibrant career. Thoughtful curation of the band, tracks, and completely self-funded, this project set off on an innovative trajectory supported by Harold Vick on tenor saxophone and Billy Higgins on drums. Originally released on the revolutionary artist-owned label, Strata-East Records, in January 1975, this unique project will be available to enjoy again on Arc Records from 15th May 2020.

The impetus for this record was a real desire for Shirley to express herself more freely and create something for herself, taking back the power she’d seemingly relinquished throughout her career. Maxine Gordon, Scott’s close friend, and executive producer on the original record, expresses thatthey often had intimate discussions about how Scott was being told what to play, what to wear, how to look and how to speak in public for many years. Having had enough of these restrictions, she created this record to please no one but herself.

As Scott expresses on the back of the original LP sleeve:

“All of the music recorded in this album is both personal and very purposeful to me, because it is the first step toward honesty about what and how I want to play. I’ve done a lot of other albums, a lot of different ways for a lot ofdifferent people and now, with the help of the Creator, in whom all things are possible, I have done one for me too.”

Having self-raised funds to make the record, with complete control over the masters, and with her dream band together, Scott recorded at Blue Rock Studio in November 1974. Harold Vick, often referred to as one of the “unsung tenor saxophonists” of his time, was cherry picked to bring Scott’s vision to life. Throughout his career, he released records on Blue Note, RCA as well as performing and recording with a string of legendary artists such as Ray Charles, and Aretha Franklin. Completing the dream trio was highly sought out drummer Billy Higgins, who is the most recorded drummer in the history of Blue Note Records, having played on 45 Blue Note albums. The key to their success was that Higgins tuned his drums to fit with the organ’s bass sound which, of course, Scott played with her feet.

Scott was also known as “Little Miss Half-Steps,” a name given to her by tenor saxophonist George Coleman, (who wrote a composition by that name in her honor) - she regularly played with both George & Harold. Coleman is known to have admired Scott’s half-steps (when you play two adjacent keys on the organ or piano) and their close bond and mutual respect is solidified on this record through a track titled ‘Big George’ - specifically written for Coleman.

“Queen of the Organ”, Shirley Scott was born in Philadelphia in 1934 and lived there most of her life until her early death in March 2002 at the age of 67. Having mastered the piano at an early age, Scott switched from piano to organ at the tender age of 21. Scott had a legendary recording career as a leaderwith 45 albums mainly released on Impulse and Prestige and is often remembered for her work with Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis and Stanley Turrentine.Boasting a thriving career as a musician and composer, Scott progressed to a professor at Cheyney University in her later years. She was a treasured mother and grandmother, and a cherished friend of music scholar, Maxine Gordon, who’s honour it is to collaborate with Arc Records on shining a new bright light on this monumental body of work.

Andreas Schaerer’s recent projects have established him at the forefront of the creative jazz scene in Europe. The Berne-based artist’s debut on the label, the revolutionary orchestral work ‘The Big Wig’, a commission from the Lucerne Festival, was followed by a quartet formation with Michael Wollny, Vincent Peirani and Emile Parisien, ‘Out of Land’ and most recently by an album with another quartet, ‘A Novel of Anomaly’. This succession of highly contrasting releases has shown that Schaerer is not a jazz singer in any conventional sense: he is a vocal artist capable of imitating almost every instrument or sound with his voice. He covers all kinds of vocal styles from crooning to operatic tenor and he is able to juxtapose them all in a completely individual way. Now, having lain dormant while Schaerer pursued these other endeavours, the band that first put him on the map, Hildegard Lernt Fliegen (Hildegard learns to fly) is back in business. Hildegard Lernt Fliegen made a mark outside Switzerland with an appearance at Jazzahead in Bremen in 2012 followed shortly afterwards by winning the BMW World Jazz Award in Munich. Audiences responded enthusiastically to the band’s complex compositions which were always full of surprises and had a way of completely transcending style and genre and also left plenty of room for improvisation. There was always plenty of irony and humour, plus the opportunity to marvel at Schaerer’s solo escapades. Fans of the old ‘Hildegard’ are faced with a very different prospect with the new album ‘The Waves Are Rising, Dear!’. As the title of the album suggests, it is a more serious work, a concept album, on which Schaerer has taken the band's characteristic sense of instrumental playfulness, combined it with his own, almost classically clear vocal timbre, produced without any trickery. And he has put both of these elements to the service of poetry and to the task of thinking about things more deeply.

The one and only Lady Day together with tenor saxophone giant Lester Young represent one of the greatest musical relationships in Jazz history. The way Lester Young used to interact with Holiday's deep melodies was outstanding and after almost a century the whole atmosphere of their music is still totally unique. These sessions held in New York between 1937 and 1938 and featuring heavyweights such as Benny Goodman, Teddy Wilson and the Count Basie rhythm section, Freddie Green, Walter Page, and Papa Jo Jones, are one of the greatest treasures in American music, period.

Italian film composer Piero Umiliani began working with the trumpeter and actor Chet Baker during the late 1950s. Of part Norwegian and Anglo-Saxon origins, Chesney Henry Baker Jr was born into a musical family in the small town of Yale, Oaklahoma, in 1929. After singing in the local church choir, he began playing trombone but soon switched to the smaller and more manageable trumpet. He joined the US Army just after the end of World War II and played in the 298 th Army Band while stationed in Berlin and began studying music theory at El Camino College in Los Angeles, following his discharge, but re-enlisted to play in the Sixth Army Band while stationed at the Presidio in San Francisco. Out of the Army for good in 1951, he played with saxophonists Vido Musso and Stan Getz before joining Charlie Parker for a series of West Coast live dates. He then joined the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, becoming a mainstay of the Los Angeles jazz scene, until Mulligan’s drug bust forced Baker to form a quartet of his own. Chet Baker And Strings was issued by Columbia in 1954 and he began recording for Pacific Jazz the following year; cast in the film Hell’s Horizon, Baker turned down a Hollywood studio contact to travel to Europe, touring the continent for eight months, which resulted in the album Chet Baker In Europe. Heroin became a significant part of the picture in this era and when he began working with the arranger and conductor Ezio Leoni (aka Len Mercer) in Milan in 1959, Baker was arrested for drugs and jailed in Pisa, temporarily disrupting the proceedings. Baker and Umiliani first joined forces in 1958 for the crime film I Soliti Ignoti (AKA Big Deal on Madonna Street, Persons Unknown or Le Pigeon), reportedly the first instance of jazz being used for an Italian comedy film; Il Paradiso dell’Uomo and Smog followed. Italian Movies draws from the best of Baker and Umiliani’s cinematic collaborations, the atmospheric compositions backed by a group of session players centred on drummer Ralf Ferraro, acoustic bassist Berto Pisano, guitarist Enzo Grillini, tenor saxophonist Livio Cervellieri and Franco Ciari on vibraphone, along with Baker’s expressive trumpet leads and composer Umiliani on piano.

It was 1970 when Curtis Mayfield left R&B group The Impressions, to set off on his own solo path. What followed was a rich and highly celebrated career, during which Mayfield produced some of the most influential R&B, soul, funk, and gospel recordings of all time. Along with Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder, Mayfield is credited with helping to ring in a new era of socially-aware funk and soul music, all while raking in numerous Billboard-charting hits both as a performer and a songwriter. Though he died in 1999, he left behind a vast legacy of innovation and long-lasting music, and has been ranked by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the 100 Greatest Artists of all-time. Coming hot on the heels of his powerhouse hit soundtrack for the film Superfly was 1973's Back To The World. Mayfield's music always had a socially-conscious and political bent to it, but the tracks on Back To The World cranked this conceit up to an even higher degree, largely inspired the increasingly industrial world around him, and the social and environmental concerns that followed it. (The album's lead single "Future Shock" was named for an Alvin Toffler book on the subject.) Though not the smash commercial success of his previous efforts, Back To The World still landed in the Billboard Top 20, and is considered an underrated, and overlooked entry in the soul innovator's catalog.

A musical portrait of a great singer. 16 tracks, over one hour of music, six previously unreleased tracks. Cæcilie Norby is one of the leading singers in Scandinavia. Her music moves between the worlds of jazz, blues, soul, pop, rock and classical music. Norby masters everything and always in a way that makes her instantly recognizable. She was the first Danish artist to be signed by Blue Note and has worked with a panoply of international stars. With close to half a million album sales, Cæcilie Norby is one of the most successful jazz artists in Europe and one of the most important figures at the intersection of pop and jazz. ‘Portraying’ shows the many different facets of her vocal craft, with recordings dating from the early stages of her career right up to six new and previously unreleased tracks. She is accompanied by pre-eminent musicians such as Lars Danielsson, Curtis Stigers, Leszek Możdżer, Bugge Wesseltoft, Marius Neset, Randy Brecker, Rita Marcotulli and many more. Also included are two pieces from her recent appearances as featured artist on ‘Toppen af Poppen’ (The Great Singers) on Danish television.

New split 7” by Endless Boogie and Weak Signal. The masters of minimal blues repetition, Endless Boogie are in condensed charging form on ‘Jerome’. A treasure trove of interlocking riffs and searing lead lines from Matt Sweeney, Jesper Eklow and the one and only Stephen Malkmus, the A-side sounds like a lost proto-punk classic. Paul Major’s racing vocals tell a story of urban debauchery (nods to the Velvets included) while Mark O and Harry Druzd lock into that unmatched groove the fans of this band have been missing. This track
atches any underground chestnut from ‘Urban Guerilla’ to ‘Teenage Head’-era Flamin’ Groovies and has what Matt Sweeney calls a “thugassed jacked-up Saturday-night vibe.” On the flip side’s “Rolex,” Weak Signal show us the morning after the party, through the lens of a con artist so smooth he knows how to hit his mark “without knowing.” From the first person perspective Mike Bones walks us through every detail of the scam with the detachment of a practiced criminal who revels coolly in his skill. Weak Signal ply a different strain of minimalism from Endless Boogie, one in which every note, word and drum hit are there for a reason and nothing is wasted. Fans of their debut album and recent EP will find this track threading the needle between them - another great new track from one of New York’s best new bands.

The third release from Night Dreamer’s essential “Direct-to-Disc” sessions sees an incredible meeting between legendary US saxophonist Gary Bartz and leading UK spiritual jazz ensemble, Maisha, featuring two Bartz classics and three brand new joint songs written by both Bartz & Maisha in close collaboration. Having cut his teeth playing with the likes of Charles Mingus, Max Roach, Art Blakey and finally in 1970, Miles Davis at the peak of his electric period, Gary Bartz became a leading figure of the early-to-mid 70s spiritual jazz movement, releasing a string of ground-breaking albums on legendary NYC jazz label Prestige Records with his NTU Troop, featuring classics such as “Celestial Blues”, “Uhuru Dance” and “I’ve Known Rivers”, before collaborating on Blue Note Records with the Mizell Brothers on the anthemic jazz funk of “Music Is My Sanctuary”. An oeuvre much loved by soul jazzers and hip hop fans alike. Led by drummer Jake Long, Maisha have been central to the UK’s jazz explosion, and have fast become the UK’s most exciting and in-demand young spiritual jazz ensemble, from steller shows at Jazz re:freshed, Total Refreshment Centre & Church of Sound and supporting the Sun Ra Arkestra, to releasing their critically acclaimed debut LP, “There Is A Place” on Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood Recordings in 2018. Theirs is an organic & explosive sound that blends influences from afrobeat and broken beat to Persian music, with a deep love and understanding of jazz, particularly the heritage of spiritual jazz led by titans such as Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane and of course, Gary Bartz. Which makes this collaboration even more special. Bartz was first invited to share a stage with Maisha by Gilles Peterson to headline the inaugural We Out Here festival. Their chemistry was rich and instantaneous, certainly a two-way street, with the young musicians reinvigorating the legend’s performance and wowing the intergenerational festival audience. A European tour followed, including a London Jazz Festival highlight at the Royal Festival Hall, celebrating the 50th anniversary of his album “Another Earth”, originally featuring fellow legends, Pharoah Sanders, Charles Tolliver, Stanley Cowell, and John Coltrane’s own bassist, Reggie Workman. Now the relationship has evolved into a special straight-to-disc recording for Night Dreamer Records, that captures the vitality of their collaboration. Whilst Bartz and Maisha reinvent classic Bartz compositions “Uhuru Sasa” and “Dr Follows Dance”, extending the pieces into long piece improvised grooves, their recording session gave birth to three brand new joint compositions, written the very same day. These include the propulsive “Leta’s Dance” that magically combines the Bartz’ soulful musical lyricism with Maisha’s African-jazz influences, and the organic jazz funk of “Harlem to Haarlem”, featuring a hot solo from guest trumpeter Axel Kaner-Lidstrom of Cykada & Levitation Orchestra fame. Like previous Night Dreamer efforts from afrobeat star Seun Kuti & Egypt 80, and the beautiful
collaboration between Brazilian stars Seu Jorge & Rogê, the album was recorded in Haarlem’s Artone Studio, a stones throw from Amsterdam, in just one-take, straight-to-disc, avoiding postproduction embellishments and retaining the purity of the performance lost in modern recording techniques. This record really is an event, in and of itself, a meeting of talents, minds, generations and zeitgeist moments, captured in a unique and pure manner. The music does not disappoint, as Maisha have been inspired to reach new heights whilst we find Bartz truly reinvigorated, and both artists in tune to the spirit of the other.