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16 early vocal & jazzy tunes from the Golden Age of Jive & Kwela in South Africa. Released originally on fragile shellac discs only. Shellac is a very delicate material but the music survived thanks to the archives of ILAM. A truly great source of South African music is being preserved here for new generations, to inspire young and hopeful musicians and singers from all over the world. 180gram vinyl.These pearls of musical genius were recorded in the glory years of jive and kwela, the years 1940-1965 . On side A it is not difficult to recognise the similarities to American popular music like R&B and small combo close harmony singing.
But most of all notice that typical South African swing, that jive, that incredible smooth form of African jazz on side B; Kwela!
The rarest and most treasured finds are collected here, some with the original spoken intro's, 'sketches' as these were called. Characteristic conversations between the musicians, often in a humoristic slang, always extremely funny.
Now available as the fourth issue in the series 'Township Jive & Kwela Jazz'.

2 track Single from David Isaacs released by Dub Store Records

Child of Somebody is the new album from multi-award winning composer, producer and bass player Ross McHenry. Known for his work as bandleader of The Shaolin Afronauts as well as his 2013 First Word release 'Distant Oceans', Ross has been described as "The Future of Australian Jazz" (PBS FM) The album was recorded at Red Bull Studios in New York in mid-2015 alongside regular collaborators Mark de Clive Lowe, Myele Manzanza and Dylan Marshall as well as seasoned NYC players Marcus Strickland, Corey King, Tivon Pennicott and Duane Eubanks. The resulting album represents the arrival of a unique antipodean voice in modern jazz, one that sits comfortably alongside artists like Kamasi Washington and The Robert Glasper Experiment at the vanguard of contemporary improvised music. Child of Somebody is more than just a collection of compositions, it is an album in the truest sense. Thematically inspired by the world events that have dominated our headlines over the last 12 months this new body of work clearly represents an artistic and compositional progression since the release of Distant Oceans in 2013. "I wanted to create an album that drew on sonically on the template of Distant Oceans but that was harmonically and melodically more ambitious. The album captures my thoughts and feelings at a time where our world is rapidly transitioning towards a future that we are unable to fully envisage but that we are a part of whether we like it or not. It's an album about the choices we make as individuals and as communities and the intensely personal way we experience the world around us. I feel that as artists we have a responsibility to reflect honestly on the way we see the world." Having recently completed an Australian national tour that included supporting Robert Glasper at the Melbourne International Jazz Festival, Ross will be touring the world in the second half of 2016 in support of this album release - look out for dates in the coming weeks.

Yet another chapter in the long and fruitful collaboration between Piero Umiliani and the director Luigi Scattini, who films here a Mondo Movie between fiction and documentary, settled in the world of pornography. Umiliani returned to his jazz roots and composed fifteen tracks, recorded with some of the best Italian musicians of the time: Cicci Santucci, Sam Genovese, Roberto Scoppa, Enrico Pieranunzi, Franco D'Andrea, Bruno Tommaso, Gegè Munari, Carlo Coppotelli and Antonello Vannucchi.

Few would challenge the claim that the 1960s and 70s have been the most fertile two decades in the history of popular music ever - a period which, regardless of genre, laid the foundations for everything that has followed. What is more, this period was so fertile that the speed with which tastes changed left a colossal amount of incredible music to gather dust - perhaps most famously a profusion of funk, soul and jazz. It was a musical legacy that lay mouldering until the rise of sampling in late 80s hip-hop precipitated a mad scramble for lost crates and suddenly, the music that became known as 'rare groove' - for obvious reasons (it was rare and very groovy) - experienced a phoenix-like rebirth.

A quarter of a century on and a million funk, soul, jazz-funk and 'rare groove' compilations, re-presses and re-releases later, you'd think that cupboard was bare and yet, even now, there are gems to be found. PT is re-releasing the rarest of cuts that often were originally only limited runs or private pressings and new compilation Down & Wired is just such a collection.

Always soulful, this features everything from mod groovers and northern stompers, to funky bumps and latin heaters. Yet while the quality of all cuts is immediately apparent, only one of the seventeen has ever been previously been compiled because when PT 'do' rare, they don't mess around. In fact, if these tracks were steaks - they'd still be walking around eating grass.

Few would challenge the claim that the 1960s and 70s have been the most fertile two decades in the history of popular music ever - a period which, regardless of genre, laid the foundations for everything that has followed. What is more, this period was so fertile that the speed with which tastes changed left a colossal amount of incredible music to gather dust - perhaps most famously a profusion of funk, soul and jazz. It was a musical legacy that lay mouldering until the rise of sampling in late 80s hip-hop precipitated a mad scramble for lost crates and suddenly, the music that became known as 'rare groove' - for obvious reasons (it was rare and very groovy) - experienced a phoenix-like rebirth.

A quarter of a century on and a million funk, soul, jazz-funk and 'rare groove' compilations, re-presses and re-releases later, you'd think that cupboard was bare and yet, even now, there are gems to be found. PT is re-releasing the rarest of cuts that often were originally only limited runs or private pressings and new compilation Down & Wired is just such a collection.

Always soulful, this features everything from mod groovers and northern stompers, to funky bumps and latin heaters. Yet while the quality of all cuts is immediately apparent, only one of the eleven has ever been previously been compiled because when PT 'do' rare, they don't mess around. In fact, if these tracks were steaks - they'd still be walking around eating grass.

Reissue of an Library Music gem from 1972. Massimo Catalano was a jazz trumpet player. For him, the step from jazz to library music was short and easy (even if he wasn't so prolific) and he started working his friend Remigio Ducros - composer and piano player. The joint efforts of Catalano and Ducros produced two albums only: "Idee 1" (also featuring Casa in a track) and the beautiful "La Fatica" - a weird, hard to file item, mixing avant-garde, proggy moods, electro rhythms, jazz and musique concrète

Limited high quality pressing with handmade silk screen company sleeve. 500 copies only.

Nobody will dance the boogaloo like you do! Certainly not once you have these two steaming dance floor fillers in your record box. Grab your copy while you can.

Barrett Strong certainly found himself in the right place at the right time in 1946, when his family re-located to Detroit. The city
already had an active music scene, and Barrett became part of it when his three sisters included him in their gospel group, The
Strong Singers. During the fifties they befriended the local star Jackie Wilson. It was through Wilson that the eighteen year-old
Barrett was introduced to Berry Gordy, whose local record label, Tamla, was trying to find its feet. Gordy recognised Barrett's piano
and singing skills and took him on... and the rest became musical history.
With its raw enthusiasm and songwriting, this album is a great example of the earliest development of Berry Gordy's
Motown empire. Barrett Strong had bags of talent and helped bolster the company finances with his hits. He was the first major
Motown star, and this fine album celebrates his earliest work.

Back in the 1960s, some of the best songs emerged from a New York building located at 1619 Broadway called The Brill
Building . It was where the cream of young songwriters, paid by music publishers, would sit and churn out hits for the
booming teenage market. One of the first and most successful songwriters was Carole King, a teenage girl from Brooklyn and a
piano-playing prodigy. Carole's demo for "It Might As Well Rain Until September", originally intended for Bobby Vee, was so
good that it was issued as a single and reached No.3 on the UK charts in September 1962. Enjoy this superb LP with songs from
the early years of her career including "Queen of the Beach", "School Bells Are Ringing" and "Oh Neil", her answer to Neil
Sedaka's "Oh, Carol".

The legendary Don Cherry with his great 1966 quintet featuring Gato Barbieri (tenor sax) Karl Berger (piano) Bo Stief (bass) Aldo Romano (drums) which can also be heard on three fine releases on ESP-Disk, and with the New York Total Music Company in 1968. Taken from an excellent radio broadcast for the first time in a glorious vinyl release.

Recorded live by KPFA Radio in the halls of the sculpture court of the San Francisco Museum of Art on January 16, 1965, the day of 39th birthday of fellow pianist and longtime associate David Tudor, this historic concert with John Cage opens with a duet for Cymbal with contact microphones agitated by a wide gamut of objects and concludes with Variations IV in which loudspeakers outside the performance space interacted with speakers next to the audience. First release on vinyl for a very important piece in the history of minimalist music.

Originally released in 1974, Big Fun presents music from three different phases of Miles Davis's early-seventies 'electric' period.

Sides one and four ('Great Expectations' and 'Lonely Fire') were recorded three months after the Bitches Brew sessions and incorporate sitar, tambura, tabla, and other Indian instruments. They also mark the first time since the beginning of Miles Davis's electric period that he played his trumpet with the Harmon mute which had been one of his hallmarks, making it sound much like the sitar. This contributed to creating a very clear and lean sound, highlighting both the high and low registers, as opposed to the busier sound of Bitches Brew which placed more emphasis on the middle and low registers.

'Ife' was recorded after the 1972 On the Corner sessions, and the framework is similar to tracks from that record. It has a drum and electric bass groove and a plethora of musicians improvising individually and in combinations over variations on the hypnotic bassline.

Recorded in March 1970, 'Go Ahead John' is an outtake from Davis's Jack Johnson sessions. The recording is a riff and groove- based, with a relatively sparser line-up of Steve Grossman on soprano saxophone, Dave Holland on bass, Jack DeJohnette on drums, and John McLaughlin on guitar with wah-wah pedal.

Hailed as one of the most beautiful women in the world, Sophia Loren began her film career in 1950 at the age of 15,
working her way through bit parts and minor roles and on to international stardom, winning awards that include a Best
Actress Oscar (1961), a Grammy, and several Golden Globes. Additionally, along the way she established a reputation
as a singer of considerable talent - as the recordings on this compilation surely confirm. Enjoy this superb LP including
"Felicita", "Almost In Your Arms" and "Tu Vuo Fa' L'Americano".

During an interview recorded at the KPFA Radio Steve Reich and John Gibson introduced an East Coast performance of Steve Reich masterpiece 'Four Organs' as well as an exciting recording of Ghanian drumming which the artist recorded in Ghana. They also introduced the music of Philip Glass, playing a tape of his historical Music in Similar Motion.

As the grandson of the late trumpeter Doc Cheatham, and former student of legendary jazz trumpeter Donald Byrd, trumpeter Theo Croker is an artist steeped in jazz tradition and he is rapidly becoming one of the hottest jazz artists of this era.

Croker's own music reveals a love of organic funk, soul, and groove-oriented hip-hop. Helping to raise Croker's musical vibrations is his ensemble, featuring saxophonist Anthony Ware, keyboardist Michael King, guitarist Ben Eunson, bassist Eric Wheeler, and drummer Kassa Overall. Also adding color to the proceedings are guitarist Femi Temowo and saxophonist Irwin Hall. Dee Dee Bridgewater appears on the classic tune 'Love From The Sun'. Croker proves he's got deep ideas about life, spirituality, and how music connects us all. It's an ebullient, groove-conscious message perhaps best expressed on the bass-heavy 'It's Gonna Be Alright.' Trading the song's title phrase back and forth like old friends high-fiving on the street, you can hear Croker and his band smiling.

Vanessa Paradis is the self-titled third album and English debut by popular French singer Vanessa Paradis. It was originally released in 1992. Lenny Kravitz, who was Paradis' partner at the time, produced and co-wrote the album.

The album was one of her most successful and most critically acclaimed, proving to be both popular in France and the UK. It spawned several successful singles, including one of her most recognisable songs 'Be My Baby' and the hit single 'Sunday Mondays'.

The album is also noted for being the first time Paradis took creative control over her music. The album also became memorable for being extremely innovative in its use of instruments, and for its replication of the 60s soundscape on virtually every song.

Killer funk compilation full of highlights from the music archives of Josef Weinberger Ltd. in London, pulled from the most famous library albums on labels like JW (Josef Weinberger/ Theme Music), IA (Impress) or PM (Programme Music). First selection of 16 lost tracks by Toni Campo, Midas Touch, Trevor Bastow, Sidney Dale or Vick Flick, oscillating between jazz-funk, soul music, proto techno and eastern-tinged disco, with open drum breaks, fat bass lines and plenty of horns/ wah wah/ organs/ vibes/ flutes/ electronic effects. Recorded from the master tapes, restored and mastered 2016 for 6-Page-Digipack-CD and limited vinyl LP, comparable to the best works of KPM, De Wolfe or Bosworth.

Lichter is the first piece in a new series of electroacoustic dub compositions by Mouse on Mars. It is a massive, lurching, up-tempo percussive epic - a long-haul runaway train that keeps switching tracks without ever losing sight of its destination. Like much of Mouse on Mars' output, Lichter deftly traverses a varied sonic landscape, encompassing elements of jazz, dub, krautrock juke and psychedelia.

Lichter incorporates trigger robots built by Sonic Robots' Moritz Simon Geist and features Andi Toma & Jan St. Werner's long time collaborator Dodo NKishi on percussion. The basic layers were produced with a feedback software called smrph, and were edited, arranged and used as a foundation for various live and studio improvisations. The 13min track, Lichter, is a concentration of these various layers. Lichter is also a highly visual piece, and performed live it employs a bespoke network of light-bulbs triggered by data derived from the sounds and pulses of the composition.

Andi Toma and Jan St. Werner have been recording and playing live as Mouse on Mars since 1993, and have released over a dozen albums. In 2014 the duo celebrated their 21st birthday with a curated festival at Berlin's HAU theatres, and an accompanying compilation which showcased the band's numerous collaborations.

The video for Lichter was created by Paul McDevitt and Jamie Lemoine.

Insurgently crossing Philly Soul, Cape Jazz and bump jive in 1976, the same year as the Soweto Uprising, poignantly shot through with Timmy Thomas' Why Can't We Live Together.
'It was so important for us to play a kind of crossover then, to weave in touches of Motown, Philadelphia soul and Teddy Pendergrass that the coloured community appreciated, and Basil's Cape Town sound, and Sipho's sound that was legendary in the black community, and make music that people could all enjoy together... The regime divided us: people classified coloured had identity documents, black people had the dompas. We didn't accept that separation. Sipho, although he was born in KZN, could play any feel. Sometime he'd joke, Does my bass line feel coloured enough'
Another landmark Matsuli. The title track is killer.

BUNDLED WITH A 22'x 22' POSTER OF THE COVER ART.

Maceo Parker was one of the most revered and loved members of James Brown's famed J.B.'s band from the late '60s to the mid-1970s. Alongside his instantly-recognizable alto saxophone solos, he occasionally performed as comedian before James Brown shows, in addition to playing MC. He was a true renaissance man. And while other members of The Godfather of Soul's inner circle - most notably trombonist Fred Wesley - had solo albums at the advent of Brown's People Records, Maceo had to wait his turn for a couple years. By the time 1974 rolled around, this talented musician and personality could not be denied, and he burst onto the scene as a group leader with one of the most impressive albums in the People catalog: the simply titled, but deeply felt, Us. Maceo's group (occasionally called The Macks) and Fred Wesley's J.B.'s were essentially the same unit - including guitarists Jimmy Nolen and Hearlon Cheese' Martin, drummer John Jabo' Starks, saxophonist St. Clair Pinckney and of course Fred Wesley on trombone. Unsurprisingly, the material here is never-endingly funky. But as shown in the song selection (presumably by Parker, with heavy-handy assistance from the Godfather himself), there are as many ballads and soul groovers as there are straight-up funk workouts. Cases in point include the mellow, Gamble & Huff-penned Drowning In The Sea Of Love' (with organ, most likely played by James Brown, slithering in the background) and the syrupy Show and Tell.' The album's closer is also on the slower side, going very deep and striking a chord, as Maceo and Brown talk about conditions in the Black American landscape of the day over the course of 10-plus minutes. And there is, of course, plenty of diesel funk here as well: singles like Soul Power 74' and Parrty' are downright nasty grooves, known well by James Brown fans old and new. Soul Power 74' additionally features very early proto-sampling, with a baby's cry as well as Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous I Have Been To The Mountain Top' speech. And Maceo's take on the J.B.'s classic Doing It To Death' is a unique version, more muted and of course featuring Maceo's gorgeous horn front and center. Appearing at the apex of both James Brown's and People Records' power, Us is a treasured jewel in the J.B. catalog, and rightfully so. This 150 gram vinyl LP comes in a Stoughton Jacket, housed in a custom People Records poly bag, and includes 24' x 24' poster.

Rise, Seun Anikulapo Kuti picks up the mantle as undisputed champion and true prince of the Afrobeat movement.

A JAZZ HARPIST is a rare thing. First of all the harp is a rather unlikely instrument to swing. It's an awfully difficult instrument to play really well and it demands technique that is incongruous with swinging. Perhaps as important is the thinking that the harp, by the very nature of the instrument, is likely to attract musicians who, in themselves, are improbable swingers. Dorothy Ashby is, then, a rare thing. She is indeed a jazz harpist and she does swing (...) This is not hard jazz. This is an album that says jazz can, after all, be melodic, that a thing can be gentle without being weak and can be sweet without being saccrine. What is done here is done well, the improvisation is creative, and in typical Dorothy Ashby thinking—it's done in beautiful taste.

Jim Rockwell

Station WKMH, Detroit (from original liner notes)

Jimi Tenor has compiled a selection of afro jazz tracks that he has written and performed over the years with musicians Icelandic drummer, Helgi Svavar Helgason, Helsinki based guitarist/bassist and journalist Ilkka Mattila, legendary drummer Tony Allen, Cuban & Berlin based trumpeter Daniel Allen Oberto, Ethiopian/Finnish & Helsinki based percussionist Abdissa 'Mamba' Assefa (Itetune), Nigerian/German & Berlin based percussionist Akinola Famson, Helsinki based percussionist Mongo Aaltonen, American & Paris based spoken word artist/singer & painter Allonymous, Helsinki based flügelhornist Tero Lindberg, Finnish & Berlin based guitarist Kalle Kalima, Polish & Berlin based bassist Patrick Frankowski, British trombonist Hilary Jeffery and Ghanaian/German & Berlin based drummer Ekow Alabi Savage. Jimi Tenor, born Lassi Osmo Tapio Lehto in Lahti, Finland, who has been releasing recorded music for 30 years, plays several instruments as is his usual practice. He is credited for playing on the upcoming release Saxentric, acoustic guitar, acoustic piano, background vocals, bass kalimba, drums, drum programming, electric guitar, electric piano, flute, Hammond organ, Korg MS-20, Korg PolySix, Log-o-phone, Moog, organ, percussion, Photophone, plastic bongos, programming, shaker, synthesizers, tambourine, tenor saxophone, vocals and Walton organ.

The second album by Ornette Coleman's legendary quartet featuring Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, and Billy Higgins, Change of the Century is every bit the equal of the monumental The Shape of Jazz to Come, showcasing a group that was growing ever more confident in its revolutionary approach and the chemistry in the bandmembers' interplay. When Coleman concentrates on melody, his main themes are catchier, and when the pieces emphasize group interaction, the improvisation is freer. Two of Coleman's most memorable classic compositions are here in their original forms -- 'Ramblin'' has all the swing and swagger of the blues, and 'Una Muy Bonita' is oddly disjointed, its theme stopping and starting in totally unexpected places; both secure their themes to stable, pedal-point bass figures (...)

Numbered first press of 500 copies.

In the spring of 1954 Jazz-great Dave Brubeck did a tour of North American college campuses. Paul Desmond (alto sax), Bob Bates (bass), and Joe Dodge (drums) joined him and their support of Brubeck is uniformly flawless, ultimately producing what many consider as the most memorable music in the artist's cannon.

Indeed the genre gets schooled as the quartet leans in with striking energy and finesse. Enjoyed among college students in the 50s and early 60s both the tour and album brought Jazz to a whole new generation.

* 180 gram audiophile vinyl
* Feat. John Abercrombie, Steve Gadd, Anthony Jackson

Known for housing a famous Beastie Boys sample, the reissue of the 1975 funk and fusion classic Funk Factory brings peerless Polish and American players together for a groovy, eccentric journey.

It was an album cut from this LP that captured a particular corner of the music-geek imagination for more than 40 years: "Rien Ne Va Plus," from the self-titled 1975 album, had its reckoning with the canon when the Dust Brothers sampled major chunks of it for Beastie Boys' "Car Thief." "Rien Ne Va Plus" is a banger, all post-Head Hunters springy synth-bass.

As for the rest of the album, Funk Factory can stray pretty far into the cheerier excesses of prog-jazz. It emphasizes the alluring strangeness of its more experimental moments, like the hallucinogenic haunted-house tour of "Lilliput" or the banshee James Brown vocal riffs on "Horsing Around." "Rien Ne Va Plus" remains the top highlight. This album is proof that a core of musicians schooled in jazz but culturally steeped in the folk and classical traditions of Eastern Europe could, at least once, put out something that fit well with the crossover sound of the times while being unafraid to dive into freeform weirdness.

Tradition shapes your work. For saxophonist and bandleader Shabaka Hutchings, that's something he's long understood. After years spent in the orbit of London's jazz circuit, he examines and reimagines his influences with a dexterity that's unique. Drawing out the vision underlying his new album, he says, I see energy as being a form of wisdom to be passed down through the ages.'

Unpicking the album's title, he continues, "When we study the music, the lives, the words of our master musicians we obtain a glimpse of that artist's essential energy source. This is the core vitality of the individual which leads them to utilise the musical specifics of their chosen genre in a way that mirrors their inner source of power. This is an intuited wisdom that's handed to us from the legacies of our elders.

The album is a document of sessions combining Hutchings with a group of South African jazz musicians he's long admired. His connection to the group was Mandla Mlangeni (bandleader of the Amandla Freedom Ensemble), whom he'd flown there to play with over the past few years. Recorded across just one day, the group drew on their South African lineage - heroes like Zim Ngquwana and Bheki Mseleku - to bring their own slant to the American jazz lineage which is reconfigured in Hutchings' compositions themselves.

Going beyond the jazz greats Hutchings cites, influences are drawn from plenty of other sources: Caribbean calypso, central African song structures and Southern African Nguni music all play a part. Bringing together those ideas with the contributions of his bandmates is, he explains, crucial to what he sees in the role of an album artist. Even though I wrote all the music, for me, the leader of the project isn't the person who writes all the music but the one who has a vision for how certain musical elements will be combined."

A regular sight on stages around London and beyond, playing - and often leading - groups like The Comet Is Coming, Sons of Kemet and Melt Yourself Down, he's part of a generation whose idea of jazz is pointedly unrefined. That's to say, Wisdom of the Elders comes from an artist interested in the indefinable gaps more than fitting into boxes.

The Iris Bell Trio was originally from Charleston, WV and consisted of Iris Bell, Dick Pierson, and Butch Miles. In their seven years of existence the trio recorded two 45RPM singles and one full length album. This is their debut release and what a smokin' monster it is.

Remastered and limited edition reissue of 1971 Brazilian Samba/Jazz rarity, for fans of Cartola and Bezzera Da Silva, Caetano Veloso, Joao Donato. Jorginho Gomes Pessanha (1931-1981) released two solo albums in the 1970s. Born and raised in the Parada De Lucas suburb of Rio De Janiero, Jorginho Pessanha aka Jorginho' was the son of the founder of the United Samba School Chapel. Jorginho ultimately joined the hugely influential Imperio Serrano School of Composers under the tutelage of Imperian President Moacyr Rodrigues, who was part of Brazil's delegation to the First Black Arts Festival in Senegal in 1966. This is a hard-to-find piece of 1st-tier Samba, recorded in 1970, which will appeal to fans of Brazilian Funk and Jazz, easily the rarest and best work by one of Imperio Serrano's major figures.

2016 EP from Black Spirituals. Combines material from studio and live recordings, including a track from Seattle sessions with producer Randall Dunn (Earth, Sunno))), etc.). Originally a tour only release, now available for wider circulation. A preview for the forthcoming full length due later this year on SIGE. 'Two of the brightest musical minds of today - Marshall Trammell and Zachary James Watkins bring their skills and passion to Black Spirituals. Get this recording right away!' - Pauline Oliveros