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Modern sounds for the 21st century featuring modal, progressive and esoteric contemporary jazz from the UK, Spain, Netherlands, Finland, USA, Belgium, Canada, South Africa, Sweden, Germany & Italy.

The first 12 volumes of our hugely popular Spiritual Jazz series have unearthed a wealth of historic recordings in the genre, collating a variety of works from the '50s to the '80s by artists from all around the world.

And so, with Volume 13, we turn our attention to what's happening NOW.

Over the course of 24 tracks and spanning 2 x 2LPs, we present an overview of the contemporary exponents of Spiritual Jazz; musicians who are intent on bringing something personal to the table, as much as they recognize the importance of those who have paved the way for them. We feature music recorded within the past 20 years and from 15 different countries, including modern classics from veterans Steve Reid and Idris Ackamoor, providing a vital link between the past masters and the enlightened new generation.

It's pioneers such as John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders et al, with their innovations in reaching another plane of consciousness that was and remains uppermost in the minds of exponents of Spiritual Jazz. Fittingly, several of the artists featured on this compilation, such as Cat Toren and David Boykin, are practitioners of the art of music therapy and sound healing, and have absolute conviction in the role of song as solace. The pioneers may no longer be with us, but their saintly selves loom large, shining a light in the darkness, inspiring many a brave new disciple today, as this album will testify: the new wave of jazz is gathering pace and still sounds fresh, vibrant and as relevant as ever.

Available as 2 x 2LP sets each with gatefold sleeves, extensive liners, download card & pics inside.

Modern sounds for the 21st century featuring modal, progressive and esoteric contemporary jazz from the UK, Spain, Netherlands, Finland, USA, Belgium, Canada, South Africa, Sweden, Germany & Italy.

The first 12 volumes of our hugely popular Spiritual Jazz series have unearthed a wealth of historic recordings in the genre, collating a variety of works from the '50s to the '80s by artists from all around the world.

And so, with Volume 13, we turn our attention to what's happening NOW.

Over the course of 24 tracks and spanning 2 x 2LPs, we present an overview of the contemporary exponents of Spiritual Jazz; musicians who are intent on bringing something personal to the table, as much as they recognize the importance of those who have paved the way for them. We feature music recorded within the past 20 years and from 15 different countries, including modern classics from veterans Steve Reid and Idris Ackamoor, providing a vital link between the past masters and the enlightened new generation.

It's pioneers such as John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders et al, with their innovations in reaching another plane of consciousness that was and remains uppermost in the minds of exponents of Spiritual Jazz. Fittingly, several of the artists featured on this compilation, such as Cat Toren and David Boykin, are practitioners of the art of music therapy and sound healing, and have absolute conviction in the role of song as solace. The pioneers may no longer be with us, but their saintly selves loom large, shining a light in the darkness, inspiring many a brave new disciple today, as this album will testify: the new wave of jazz is gathering pace and still sounds fresh, vibrant and as relevant as ever.

Glenn Miller, leader of the best-loved dance band of all time
enlisted in 1942 in a personal crusade to entertain Allied
troops with his own distinctive brand of music. Whether
delivering ballads or setting the dancefloor moving with
‘Pennsylvania 6-5000’ and ‘The Woodpecker Song’, Miller
and his merry men set the mood of not only his fellow troops
but whole nations. He, and they, will never be forgotten.

A jazz musician playing spirituals? In a sense that is what Louis
Armstrong has been doing all along. Anyone who has ever read a
history of jazz knows that there’s supposed to be a relationship
between jazz and spirituals, jazz and work songs, jazz and the
blues. The patterns which the sax and reed sections use in swing
band arrangements are drawn from the “call” (the preacher) and
“response” (the congregation) patterns used in churches. This
album clearly shows Armstrong’s heritage and what an outstanding
and versatile musician he was.

"The Queen", they called her and Dinah Washington's regality
was nowhere more apparent than in the recording studio,
where she was uncompromising in her demands for the best in
material and in backing. She is marvelous in this recording,
which dates from 1957, for not only did she have some great
standards to sing in arrangements by Quincy Jones and Ernie
Wilkins, two of the best around at that time, but she also had
behind her a star-spangled band (the trumpet section alone is
sufficient indication of its quality) that gave her every
opportunity to be at her best.

"Sassy" Sarah Vaughan was a singer whose respect from fellow
artistes was as great as her popularity with fans. No less a
personage than Frank Sinatra once said, with tongue firmly in
famous cheek, that "Sassy is so good that when I listen to her I
want to cut my wrists with a dull razor." Vaughan certainly had
the smoothest voice of her generation. She could swoop from
the highest of notes down to the depths. The material
showcased here ranges from 1945 to 1959 and majors on
excerpts from the Great American Songbook like Nice Work If
You Can Get It, tackled here in 1950 with George Treadwell
and his All-Stars.

Ella Fitzgerald was, by any yardstick, a remarkable singer. She
had achieved much by the time she signed to the newly created
Verve Records in 1956, but it was the genius of Norman Granz,
her personal manager and Verve founder, in suggesting she
tackle the material of great contemporary composers in themed
albums that sent her career into orbit. As the New York Times
wrote on her passing in 1996, "These albums were among the
first pop records to devote such serious attention to individual
songwriters, and they were instrumental in establishing the pop
album as a vehicle for serious musical exploration." The song
selections ranged from standards to rarities, and the eight-title
series represented an attempt by Fitzgerald to cross over to a
non-jazz audience that may have been unaware of the talents
she first committed to vinyl in 1935.

Listening to Magic Sam playing and singing from a twenty first
century perspective shows distinctly how he was pushing the
blues in a rockier direction and influencing many subsequent
players. During the sixties he attracted many new fans with two
fine albums on Delmark Records that have remained very
collectable. This fine album represents the first phase of his
career and captures his distinct guitar playing with its crisp and
sometimes choppy attack. He was very much a second-wave
bluesman on the Chicago scene, but obviously had so much to
offer in terms of taking the blues in new and exciting directions.

These two tracks have been around since their first releases on Kent LPs in the late 80s. Taken from the Scepter/Wand tapes, the artists had one release each on those labels. Maurice Williams’ ‘Look My Way’ was recorded at the same session as the two songs issued on his Zodiacs-billed Scepter 45, although it outperforms them both.

It was assumed that ‘Not Now But Later’ by Walter Johnson was also an unreleased number, but a few years later, a Wand DJ copy was discovered in the home of the producer Billy Jackson, when the singer’s true identity was found to be Walter Wilson. However, Billy stated that it was an alias for Tommy Keith, who wrote and recorded some excellent soul music. It is a beautiful self-penned ballad in the Ashford/Simpson mould.

‘Dekalb Works’ is the collaborative project of Austin Peru (Vision Fortune) & Daniel Creahan (Sweat Equity / Alien D). Born out of a shared deep sociological interest of dialects and cultural frameworks, and the effects these have on meaning within modes of speech, the pair here delve into the dialects of their own beginnings, mining US/British regional accents and weaving these situational scenes through a textured, intentionally disjointed, hand made soundscape of bass tension and fleeting, glistening melody – adding additional layers of emotion and meaning to everyday observations of language.

‘Duologue’ intends to blur the lines between perceived and constructed reality, occupying a gauzy, dreamlike space shared by the likes of Hype Williams & James Ferraro, where foggy sonars & deep subs provide the backbone to both eccentric and mundane ephemeral flutters of dialect.

‘Duologue’ revels in its variance of linguistic stylings – from the deep US south religious lament of ‘of a’ hovering above an ambience of Zither & Bells, to the doom laden sax skronk and vocal stutter of ‘with’, to the creeping stripped micro dub of ‘only’ which allows the familiar hue of the British news reader and typical West Midlands dialectical moments to clash – aptly documenting of an impending collision.

This is certainly one for heads into all things slow & spacious - for sure there’s a lot to digest and get lost in here across the records quite intentionally intoxicating ark, where touch points and historical nods range from Laraaji’s signature ambience to Ernest Hood’s visionary ‘Neighbourhoods’, filtered through modern outer sound explorers such as John T. Gast, Mark Lecky, and the bass minimalism of SND.

“For six years now I’ve been arranging and booking Ella
Fitzgerald’s concert and club dates, and wherever she goes, her
reception bears out an opinion that I have long held: People who
love good popular music are the same all over the world. Take, for
example, this record – “Mack The Knife”. It was recorded during a
concert at the Deutschlandhallen in Berlin which holds almost
12,000 people, and you can hear the same enthusiastic reaction,
the same eager applause, that mark similar recordings Ella has
made before live audiences in America. That concert – and this
album – have come to be regarded as something special because
of Ella’s version of Mack The Knife. It was the first time she’d sung
the song, and not knowing the lyric too well, she substituted her
own – for what may well have been an improvement on the
original.” - Norman Granz

Like Chuck Berry and Little Richard, it was success in the
pop field and crossing over to the white teenage audience.
That helped establish Bo Diddley in the rock & roll charts,
but his blues roots are clearly evident on this collection. For
however successful he got on the pop charts, Bo always
stuck close to his blues heritage. Among the songs you can
listen to here are I'm a Man, Road Runner and You Can't
Judge A Book By Its Cover. His blues roots are clearly
evident on this collection.

We’ve recorded an intimate and homely acoustic version of Not So Manic Now to celebratethe 25th birthday of Disgraceful. It’s out now digitally, but we’re also releasing a souvenir7” to commemorate the occasion.The b-side is a cover of Free As A Bird.Why? When our debut album came out in 1995, werealised that it was coincidentally John Lennon’s birthday, and when Not So Manic Nowwas in the Top 20, Free As A Bird was too, which gave us the unexpected privilege ofbeing in the charts at the same time as the Beatles. Including it here seems to heightenthe nostalgia of the occasion, as it were.

In the Spring of 1978, Aaron McCarthy Jr, a.k.a. ‘Jelly’ was invited to Miami by local producer, Thomas Fundora to assist Herman Kelly with his forthcoming album, ‘Percussion Explosion!’. Herman, who was studying at the University of Miami at the time, had met Jelly whilst studying Music Theory together at Henry Ford Community College in Detroit. Both Detroit natives, Jelly had founded the group the Soulful Sonics, later to be known as Pure Pleasure whilst Herman transferred to Miami.
The group Life consisted of Jelly on Vocals, Percussion & arrangement, Oliver Wells on Keys, John DeMonica on Bass, Michal Cordoza on, Guitar, Travis Biggs on Horn Arrangements and Keys.
‘Percussion Explosion!’, which included the infamous ‘Dance To The Drummer Beat’, was recorded at ‘Miami Sound Studios’, as a forthcoming release on Fundora’s Electric Cat label, distributed by RCA. On reviewing which tracks made the album, there was a track recorded during those sessions that Herman decided to leave out, a song Oliver Wells had been working on and completed once Jelly arrived called ‘Everybody Needs Lovin, Now’s The Time’. Originally known as ‘Now’s The Time’,

London based producer Fiesta Soundsystem has been rapidly gathering attention over the past few years with a string of acclaimed records for Warehouse Rave. His latest outing ‘Rites Of Passage’ for Time Is Now sees the rising producer release his debut full long play, featuring ten cuts of broken beat bass music.

Soul Mass Transit System returns to Time Is Now with the weighty ‘Blocked’ EP featuring a collaboration with legendary vocalist Killa P.

Mysterious producer Soul Mass Transit System has been pumping out some serious twelves this year, with killer cuts on labels such as Warehouse Rave, Time Is Now & Rhythm & Vibe. His latest outing ‘Blocked’ EP is the rising producers weightiest work to date, lead track ‘Blocked’ featuring legendary ex Roll Deep member Killa P does some serious damage, backed with three rolling UKG cuts of groovers and movers, best played loud.

This 3LP compilation documents B.B.King's breakthrough years, when, initially signed to the Bihari Brothers' RPM label, he unleashed a torrent of superb recordings that would establish him as the world's most famous blues singer-guitarist. He made scores of remarkable recordings during his career - but the ones on this compilation represent that marvelous moment in time when Riley King and Lucille combined to make their indelible mark on the history of the blues.