Search:phil b

The music on Dance Nos. 1-5 was originally conceived as a three-way collaboration between composer Philip Glass, choreographer Lucinda Childs and artist Sol LeWitt. Dance received its world premiere in Amsterdam on October 19, 1979 and its New York premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on November 29, 1979.

Post-dating Einstein on the Beach - Glass’s 1975-76 collaboration with director Robert Wilson - Dance was another Glass collaboration, this time with choreographer Lucinda Childs, known for her austere, athematically exact dances, and artist Sol LeWitt, who provided a ghostly, gigantic black- and-white film for several of the piece’s five sections.














RELEASE: 5-3-2021





• 180 GRAM AUDIOPHILE VINYL
• DELUXE HEAVYWEIGHT SLEEVE WITH GLOSS LAMINATE
• PVC JACKET
• THE COMPLETE ALBUM, AVAILABLE ON VINYL FOR THE FIRST TIME IN ITS ENTIRETY ON A 3LP-SET
WITH FIVE SIDES OF MUSIC
• INCLUDES PHILIP GLASS CATALOGUE WITH INFO ON THE PHILIP GLASS SERIES ON MOV


SIDE A

Dance has an abstract purity that easily earned it the label “minimalist,” a term that Glass himself disavows but that seems appropriate, at least in this case. After Dance, Glass’s music took several turns, not so much in style as in the various new contexts in which it was presented: major opera commissions and film scores led him to write for forces other than those of the Philip Glass Ensemble. At the same time, an attempt to reach a wide audience resulted in some shorter, perhaps more accessible, narrative pieces. Dance marked the blossoming of the composer’s experimental work. Here, though, the music - particularly Dance Nos. “1”, “3” and “5”, all written for the Ensemble— has an unforgettable exuberance that somehow speaks all at once of joyful innocence, intense erotic desire, tenderness, regret and, finally, acceptance. On the other hand, Dance Nos. “2” and “4” see Glass composing several large-scale works for solo organ; for instance, Dance No. 2 originated as a 1978 work entitled Fourth Series Part Two. This piece, later incorporated into Dance, and Dance No. “4” as well, have a more subdued, more darkly romantic quality than the work’s other sections and are quite unlike anything Glass had previously written. Still, they too, with their mysterious tilts of time and key signatures, continue the exploration of polyrhythms and harmonic complexities within the context of Glass’s repetitive, “minimalist” style.

The complete Dance Nos. 1-5 album is now available on vinyl for the first time in its entirety on a 3LP-set with five sides of music. The 3 LP’s are housed in a heavyweight sleeve.

The first EP from Nottingham’s like-minded music collective, Plates.
Originally established as a record shop and now a record cutting studio and music community, this EP showcases sounds close to its core and original supporters.

A1 is a track salvaged from a box of long-lost cassette tapes dating back to the mid-90s, bursting with raw and uplifting grooves, a soundtrack to moody city nights in Nottingham. Facehugger a long-time friend and supporter of Plates, alongside musical partner, Mark Warden aka DeviantRIP brings a tearing live analogue jam mashed together on a Roland 202, 808, 909 and JD800 - ave it!

A2 offers a completely different take on the typical ‘jungle’ style. Citizen Griot, an already prolific local beatmaker, better known for his hip-hop grooves and collaborations with local rappers, brings moody and enchanting jazz club vibes over subtle but constantly moving breakbeats.

B1 is the first ever ‘finished’ track from Plates founder, DJ Squid who has spent the last 10 years focusing on DJing and wasting precious time. This tune dedicates his love for early 90s jungle, and hardcore with the roots of soul, rare groove, weird library music and the simplicity of hand-picked samples, an MPC 2000XL and a dust-covered Mackie mixing desk.

B2 brings you back down to earth in a smoky spaced-out back room courtesy of long-time crate digger and local hero Mr Wilson. Head-nodding beats cushioned by a soothing bassline and hypnotic chords that surround you and carry you away to another dimension that is neither new or funky.

This record is dedicated in memory of Rita, Philpotts, Pete Woosh, Adam XTC and Harry McCormick.

Legendary pedal steel player Susan Alcorn presents her music as curated and arranged by cellist and composer Janel Leppin. This recording is from a live performance from her residency at Issue Project Room in July 2012. Leppin’s arrangements and curation emotes the brilliance, transparency and resonance of the pedal steel guitar. Through this ensemble, the mastery of Susan Alcorn's compositions shine.

Susan Alcorn has taken the pedal steel guitar far beyond its traditional role in country music. Having first paid her dues in Texas country & western bands, she began to expand the vocabulary of her instrument through her study of 20th century classical music, visionary jazz, and world musics. Struck by the music of Messiaen she began transcribing classical music from recordings and scores on her instrument. Soon, she began to combine the techniques of country-western pedal steel with her own extended techniques to form a personal style influenced by free jazz, avant-garde classical music, Indian ragas, Indigenous traditions, and various folk musics of the world. By the early 1990s her music began to show an influence of the holistic and feminist “deep listening” philosophies of Pauline Oliveros. As her records gained a cult following she moved to Baltimore, MD. She performs internationally and is a key figure in the free improv scene in the US.

Janel Leppin is a core member of the Washington, D.C. experimental, jazz, punk and improvisational scenes and is a celebrated visual artist as a weaver. DownBeat Magazine describes her as “An absolute virtuoso”, NPR Music says “instrumental intimacy swept up in arrangements that cluster around her voice, as delicate and as imposing as a sheet of falling ice.”. Janel leads and writes for her free jazz sextet, Ensemble Volcanic Ash “a rarity..ahhh-vant garde at it’s finest." -Capital Bop. Leppin and Alcorn also recorded the composition “Thick Tarragon” by Eyvind Kang from the album Visible Breath on Ideologic Organ. Leppin appears as a string arranger on many recordings on labels from Dischord Records to Sacred Bones.

Tape Works Vol. 2 is the second album from the UK's leading musique concrète ensemble, Langham Research Centre, on Nonclassical. This album presents recent substantial pieces that contrast with the shorter pieces found on Tape Works Vol. 1 (2017) which showcased some of the group's earliest tape experiments. This album features 'Dinotique', commissioned for Café Oto's Stereo Spasms festival in 2019, a celebration of the work of the late French composer Luc Ferrari to mark his 90th birthday.

Langham Research Centre - Felix Carey, Iain Chambers, Philip Tagney and Robert Worby - make experimental music using resources and ideas that, until recently, were considered obsolete, redundant or outdated. Their music is made using tape recorders, cassette machines, shortwave radios and specialist devices found in recording studios. Their inspiration and enthusiasm is driven by the soundworlds produced by maverick composers working in the middle of the 20th century. The four members met at the BBC, where they all work in production. Their music has received significant radio airplay on BBC Radio 3 and more.

The album will be featured along with an interview with the group in the February 2021 issue of Electronic Sound Magazine.

Tape Works Vol. 2 is the second album from the UK's leading musique concrète ensemble, Langham Research Centre, on Nonclassical. This album presents recent substantial pieces that contrast with the shorter pieces found on Tape Works Vol. 1 (2017) which showcased some of the group's earliest tape experiments. This album features 'Dinotique', commissioned for Café Oto's Stereo Spasms festival in 2019, a celebration of the work of the late French composer Luc Ferrari to mark his 90th birthday.

Langham Research Centre - Felix Carey, Iain Chambers, Philip Tagney and Robert Worby - make experimental music using resources and ideas that, until recently, were considered obsolete, redundant or outdated. Their music is made using tape recorders, cassette machines, shortwave radios and specialist devices found in recording studios. Their inspiration and enthusiasm is driven by the soundworlds produced by maverick composers working in the middle of the 20th century. The four members met at the BBC, where they all work in production. Their music has received significant radio airplay on BBC Radio 3 and more.

The album will be featured along with an interview with the group in the February 2021 issue of Electronic Sound Magazine.

Father John Misty is the nom-de-plume of Josh Tillman, who
has been recording and releasing solo albums under his own
name since 2003 and who recently left Seattle’s Fleet Foxes
after playing drums with them from 2008-2011.
When discussing Father John Misty, Tillman paraphrases Philip
Roth: “‘It’s all of me and none of me, if you can’t see that, you
won’t get it.’”
‘Fear Fun’, Father John Misty’s album from 2012 and now
available again through Sub Pop, began gestating during what
Tillman describes as an “immobilizing period of depression” in
his former Seattle home, when he had lost interest in
songwriting and wound up finding his voice by writing a novel.
After breaking from Seattle and settling in a spider-infested
Laurel Canyon treehouse, Tillman spent months demoing
songs, eventually liberating himself from his creative impasse.
With the help of LA producer/songwriter/pal Jonathan Wilson, a
wealth of talented musicians kicking around LA and producer
Phil Ek (who everyone knows has worked with Built to Spill,
Modest Mouse, Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes), ‘Fear Fun’
blossomed into a fully-formed expression of Tillman’s
unrestrained vision.
‘Fear Fun’ consists of such disparate elements as Waylon
Jennings, Harry Nilsson, Arthur Russell, All Things Must Pass
and Physical Graffiti, often within the same song. Tillman’s
voice has never been better and often sounds like Roy Orbison
at his most joyous, while the music maintains a dark,
mysterious yet playful, almost Dionysian quality.
Lyrically, his absurdist fever dreams of pain and pleasure elicit,
in equal measures, the blunt descriptive power of Bukowski or
Brautigan, the hedonist-philosophy of Oscar Wilde and the
dried-out wit of Loudon Wainwright III.
6-panel digipack CD. Gatefold LP.

Father John Misty is the nom-de-plume of Josh Tillman, who
has been recording and releasing solo albums under his own
name since 2003 and who recently left Seattle’s Fleet Foxes
after playing drums with them from 2008-2011.
When discussing Father John Misty, Tillman paraphrases Philip
Roth: “‘It’s all of me and none of me, if you can’t see that, you
won’t get it.’”
‘Fear Fun’, Father John Misty’s album from 2012 and now
available again through Sub Pop, began gestating during what
Tillman describes as an “immobilizing period of depression” in
his former Seattle home, when he had lost interest in
songwriting and wound up finding his voice by writing a novel.
After breaking from Seattle and settling in a spider-infested
Laurel Canyon treehouse, Tillman spent months demoing
songs, eventually liberating himself from his creative impasse.
With the help of LA producer/songwriter/pal Jonathan Wilson, a
wealth of talented musicians kicking around LA and producer
Phil Ek (who everyone knows has worked with Built to Spill,
Modest Mouse, Band of Horses, Fleet Foxes), ‘Fear Fun’
blossomed into a fully-formed expression of Tillman’s
unrestrained vision.
‘Fear Fun’ consists of such disparate elements as Waylon
Jennings, Harry Nilsson, Arthur Russell, All Things Must Pass
and Physical Graffiti, often within the same song. Tillman’s
voice has never been better and often sounds like Roy Orbison
at his most joyous, while the music maintains a dark,
mysterious yet playful, almost Dionysian quality.
Lyrically, his absurdist fever dreams of pain and pleasure elicit,
in equal measures, the blunt descriptive power of Bukowski or
Brautigan, the hedonist-philosophy of Oscar Wilde and the
dried-out wit of Loudon Wainwright III.
6-panel digipack CD. Gatefold LP.

I’ve known Alex Bleeker my entire life. Well, okay, maybe not since I was born, but there’s no doubt that I’ve shared a fair bit of memories with him over the years. We’ve acted in high school productions of Shakespeare together, gone on late-night diner runs, argued about which Weezer album is the band’s best, and swapped mutual appreciation for the music of Yo La Tengo on car rides careening around the snaky suburbia of our hometown. Just like his Real Estate bandmates Martin Courtney and Julian Lynch, we attended high school in the New Jersey enclave of Ridgewood, a place where sticky summer days yielded cool nights with a glow so nocturnal that you can practically hear the fireflies buzzing off of this sentence alone.

Indie rock—a type of music that can easily be made or listened to in someone’s garage—often dominates teenage suburban preoccupations, and both Alex and I were no exception. You can hear this legacy of listening on his new album Heaven on the Faultline, which departs from his last full-band outing as Alex Bleeker and the Freaks, 2015’s Country Agenda. Whereas that album had a more full-bodied explicitly folk-y feel, Heaven on the Faultline finds Bleeker getting back to his homespun roots over the course of its 13 songs, from the jangly guitar pop of New Jersey heroes the Feelies and YLT’s hushed, acoustic reveries to the open-hearted folk rock that marks so much of the Grateful Dead’s early catalog.

Written and recorded over the last several years, Heaven on the Faultline’s songs were initially recorded straight to GarageBand in Bleeker’s bedroom before receiving further studio refinement in co-producer Phil Hartunian’s Tropico Beauty space in Los Angeles. With contributions from Confusing Mix of Nations’ Josh Da Costa, Cameron Stallones of Sun Araw, singer-songwriter Kacey Johansing, and Parting Lines’ Tim Ramsey, Heaven on the Faultline achieves a warm and intimate feel that defines Bleeker’s mission for the album: “I wanted to capture the moment in which I fell in love with making music to begin with. This is music for myself—me getting back to music for music’s sake.”

The unsteady times we live in certainly creep into view on Heaven on the Faultline. The deceptively easygoing “D Plus” was written on the day of President Donald Trump’s inauguration with the cursed event in mind, while the anxiety of climate change hovers just above the lovely guitar loops of “Felty Feel.” “The album is very much about dealing with the anxiety of a sense of impending doom,” Bleeker states while discussing the album’s portentous vibes. “When is the hammer going to fall? How do we go forward in the face of such anxiety and experience the complexity of life?”

Tough questions with few answers, but try not to stress too much. It’s possible to experience such existential doubt while also enjoying the simple pleasures that life has to offer, and that ethos is square at the heart of Heaven on the Faultline. It defines who Alex Bleeker is, too, and is one of many reasons why I’m proud to have known this special person and artist for so long.

Larry Fitzmaurice

Philly-based indie rock band Tigers Jaw release
their new album and Hopeless debut ‘i won’t care
how you remember me’.
Described by the members’ moms as Saves The
Day meets Fleetwood Mac, Tigers Jaw have been
carving out their own legacy in the indie,
alternative and emopunk genres since 2006.
The band’s last two albums, 2014’s ‘Charmer’ and
2017’s ‘Spin’, were their most successful to date,
receiving critical acclaim from the likes of Pitchfork
and Stereogum, as well as charting at #3 in the
US vinyl charts and #11 in the current rock and
alternative album charts.
For fans of Joyce Manor, The Front Bottoms,
Turnover.

After numerous successes across nearly every notable MC/DJ battle of the late 90's and early 00's, followed by their poignant debut, First Born (2001), and the innovative follow-up, E&A (2004), Eyedea & Abilities expanded upon their reputation for multi-dimensional lyricism and production, establishing the duo as a progressive and integral part of the underground hip-hop sound. In 2009, they re-emerged with rap-punk vocals, gutted guitar riffs, and synthesized drum beats on By The Throat, their final studio release before Eyedea's untimely passing in 2010. Together, the experimental and philosophical rapper Eyedea, synchronizing with the precision and ingenuity of producer/turntablist Abilities, curated a raw form of escapism that still resonates ten years later. While a song like "Spin


Cycle" delicately unravels the barriers of human intimacy, “Smile” immerses us into the horrors of poverty and hardships, and our society's obliviousness to them. In each track, Abilities compliments Eyedea’s fluctuating patterns by maintaining ranges from each

side of the spectrum, ensuring their advanced creation still stands as a testament of their dedication to the craft. Now, the long out-of-print vinyl is being reissued for the 10 year anniversary on a custom formulated watercolor swirl vinyl, wrapped art paper jacket of original watercolor artwork by Michael Gaughan with film lamination finish, full color printed record sleeve, insert with full album lyrics and free download card.

Johnny Cash had a birth certificate marked J. R. Cash because his parents couldn’t decide what to call him. Their environment was the recurrent poverty that reigned in Thirties America, a background of depression where J. R. went to work in flooded fields, learned music and sang along with other cotton pickers, picking up jobs here and there, and finally signing up for three years in the Army.

In 1954 he went back to civilian life, married Vivian Liberto, and went through the studio doors at Sun Records, where Sam Phillips recorded his first hits. In ’57 he joined Columbia Records and a decade later married June Carter (of The Carter Family) in 1968. The following years were complicated by drugs, alcohol and constant tours, yet the pair remained together until June passed away in 2003. Johnny Cash only survived another four months.

His original country music showed empathy for those who had been rejected, and his vision of the misery around him. But he also had an especially warm baritone, and it gave Johnny Cash an immense and faithful audience. He sold 90 million albums, confirming him as one of the greatest artists in music, all genres included.

Lost Souls Of Saturn (Seth Troxler and Phil Moffa) launch their new label ‘Holoverse Research Labs’ as the hub for both LSOS’s audio transmissions and their adventures in media and technology.

The first release HRL 001 presents special interpretations of Lost Souls Of Saturn’s eponymous debut album by the legendary Pépé Bradock. ’Cycloned by Pépe Bradock’ finds Lost Souls of Saturn, in the words of Bradock, “Dreamed, Weighted and Micro-Waved”. This is the album shattered into pieces and brought back together into new forms as the parts and files fall. Deconstruction or reconstruction? It’s unclear. What’s tangible is that the new tracks are very special, with Pépé bringing his unique talents to the control room / operating table.

“Bouillabaisse From Space Remix” is the sound of Pepe singlehandedly launching the French space program to find lost dance floors deep in our own cerebral cortex. “Pacific Limbo Bonus Beat” channels more of the same. This is head music for the dance floor. No amateurs.

Further remixes of tracks from the ‘Lost Souls of Saturn’ album are to follow in March from Mathew Jonson, Freedom Engine and Carl Craig.

Clive Phillips, Dominic Goodman, Peter Blundell are Mosquitoes, a somewhat inscrutable London-based outfit in operation for something close to seven years now, and have released music across a host of celebrated and broad-minded underground labels. Give or take the occasional interview in the less-straight parts of the music press, this is as much formal biography as their music has thus far allowed, for there's something essentially unknowable at the centre of what makes Mosquitoes what they are. So murky is their early history in fact, the first two self-released Mosquitoes records seemed to disappear from sight before really becoming visible. As more records have emerged, those first communications accumulate new meanings, acting as vital documents in tracking the evolution of a band who stand at the vanguard of contemporary British music.

The second of these records, recorded to tape in summer 2016 and first released as a single-sided 12" under the name MOS-002, is arguably the first true iteration of Mosquitoes. Now fittingly renamed Mosquitoes for its reissue as a dubplate-style 10" on World of Echo on 5th March, these five cryptically titled, shape-shifting tracks, see the trio embrace a near-genre-less fluidity, and in doing so express a unique combination of both freedom and intent. By design or instinct, Mosquitoes stand at their own inverted rock nexus, presenting a music that's turned inside out, and in doing so, music that twists the listener the same way.

In that sense, Mosquitoes plug into a long lineage of DIY savant iconoclasts, those outliers who would deny orthodoxy in order to excavate new languages and ideas - The Dead C, This Heat, the anti-formalism of No Wave, David Toop's General Strike. As such, Mosquitoes rely on a musical pluralism in order to take it apart - you must know how something is made before you reassemble it anew. Labelling this an EP may possibly underplay the breadth and ambition of what's on show. Later records would arguably be more cohesive, but what stands as particularly startling with this early work is their fearless and all-encompassing dive into the avant garde. Consider the anti-rockism of the scorched earth 90s re-imagined through a distinctly avant filter of free jazz and dub aesthetics. And it's the latter which perhaps shapes Mosquitoes most, dub the perfect vehicle for the articulation of such wilful anti-formalism. Make no mistake, this is music that's unafraid to be tough, to demand something of the listener and to not ask permission. And to bear witness to a rejection of formalism so aggressively pursued is to be reconciled.

The New Philadelphians recorded their sole 45rpm single "Mustang" for the local Quaker City Jazz label in the late 1960s. And what a monster it is. 8 minutes of smokin' soul-jazz at its best. If someone would claim this was an unreleased Jimmy Smith Blue Note recording from 1969, no one would doubt it. More information about Charlie Chisholm and the band can be found on Tramp's "Movements Vol.10" compilation album.

Justin Thurgur has been at the heart of the UK's World Music scene for over twenty years, primarily through his collaborations with the Afrobeat maestro Dele Sosimi (former keyboardist for both Fela and Femi Kuti) and with the pianist Kishon Khan. Most recently in Khan's projects Lokkhi Terra and the Afrobeat/Cuban crossover, Cubafrobeat.

Thurgur has worked with Cuban giants Giraldo Piloto, Changuito and Julito Padron, with the Nigerian drum legend Tony Allen and with Damon Albarn's Africa Express project; which included Cheick Tidiane-Seck and Fatoumata Diawara. He's also worked with the likes of Bukky Leo, Francis Fuster, Pandit Dinesh, Baby Akhtar, Inemo, Tony Kofi, Kodjovi Kush, The Soothsayers, The Levellers and The Selecter.

He is perhaps most known as the trombonist from the multi-award winning 'folk' group Bellowhead. Their split in 2016 led to him forming his own band and releasing his debut album as a bandleader, 'No Confusion'.

The album features original compositions written by Thurgur in collaboration with double bassist Max De Wardener, piano/rhodes/Hammond organ player Kishon Khan and guitarist Phil Dawson, with band members including the likes of Graeme Flowers on trumpet, James Allsopp on bass clarinet and Oreste Noda on congas.

Thurgur promoted 'No Confusion' throughout 2016 and 2017, culminating in an enthusiastically received performance at Love Supreme Jazz Festival in 2017. Jazz FM, in particular Chris Philips, gave extensive airplay to the album as well as streaming a live performance from the Jazz FM studios and doing an interview. They subsequently playlisted two of Thurgur's single releases. Lopa Kothari played a track on BBC Radio 3's show 'The World On 3'. The band did a live interview and performance on DJ Ritu's 'A World In London' show on Resonance FM. Beyond this Thurgur has been developing relationships with various other digital radio stations, including Gordon Wedderburn, John Waugh and a number of Global music stations based in Europe.

Stimulator Jones breaks new ground on his sophomore LP, La Mano. The Stones Throw affiliate heads over to Mutual Intentions for a novel instrumental record that expands a musical dialect built on his singular fusion of sounds. The artist explores the musical possibilities contained in his hands as he moves between keys, guitars, drums and wind instruments in arrangements that break down the intellectual barriers of genre for the corporeal intimacy of the soul.

Vital Sales Points:
The title track is already picked up and compiled by Gilles Peterson on Brownswood Recordings.
La Mano is Stimulator Jones first instrumental LP between two Stones Throw albums as a singer.¨


Scroll to next page for audio and artwork links + resources…

This is Jack Wilson's debut album as a bandleader, originally released in 1963 for Atlantic label, featuring a young Roy Ayers on vibraphone, bassist Al McKibbons and drummer Nick Martinis. Jack Wilson was a fine and often underrated pianist and composer who played with many great names such as Gene Ammons, Jacki Mclean, Esther Phillips, Lou Rawls, Johnny Griffin, Ertha Kitt, Lambert Hendricks & Ross, Antonio Carlos Jobim... This is a lively studio session opening up with a beautiful rendition of Jobim's classic "Corcovado" and followed by WIlson's five originals. A great debut album full of warm, sophisticated and yet highly dynamic Jazz vibes.

Sealed original copies of the Horace Tapscott's 'The Tapscott Sessions' solo piano series, released on Nimbus West Records ‎from 1982 to 1984. Horace Tapscott has been one of the top "unknown" jazz pianists in the Los Angeles area since the 1960s, recording far too few sessions which has led to him being continually overlooked by jazz fans from outside L.A. During 1982-84 he recorded seven solo piano albums for the tiny Nimbus label, playing unaccompanied solos, his improvisations consist of deeply emotional exploration of his music. Tapscott has always had a strikingly original sound that, despite occasional hints at other pianists, is quite distinctive, falling between advanced hard bop and the avant-garde. Totally Essential.




Jazz, with its many iterations and forms, has always been a music on the move - its own changes and evolutions mirroring a flux in the perception of what is and was. This is all too evident when addressing its avant-garde realisations, particularly those rising across the 1960s and 70s - free and spiritual - musics which were both of their moment and beyond them - of a specific people, culture, social reality, philosophy, and political position, while transcending each. These radical sounds have rarely received the wide understanding, recognition, and appreciation in their own time. Thankfully, we have have hindsight. Historical Avant-garde jazz, springing from African American communities and taking seed in every corner of the globe, is increasingly celebrated for the seminal music is was and remains, but there’s still plenty of work to be done, especially when addressing the long standing rift in the United States which favours the east coast over the west.

Kënnlisch, one of the rarest haunting psychedelic acid folk LPs from France, was the work of brothers Philippe and Jean-François Macherey.

Originally released in 1976 on the mega collectable label Le Kiosque d'Orphée, it contains some of the most beautiful sounds to come out of the 1970s alternative music scene.

An instrumental album, it opens with a burst of sunshine vibes and takes them into the experimental scene of French alternative folk avantgarde with a strong Cosmische influence. Beauty is the word, grown over acoustic guitar parts harmonised with the most elegant Moog Satellite lines you'll ever hear to create atmospheres of sound that make this is the perfect record for your mind to float away on a peaceful Sunday morning under a clear blue sky - it does have that therapeutic quality that we miss so much in modern music.

Wah Wah presents the very first official reissue of this mega rare LP, housed in it's original minimalist hand made artwork with the little upgrade twist of silk-screen printing and including a 4-page colour booklet with photos and text provided by the Macherey brothers themselves.

500 copies only!

Lancaster had initially cut his musical teeth with the avant-garde on New York’s Lower East Side in the 1960s (famously on sessions with pianist Dave Burrell and drummer Sunny Murray) and in Paris during the ‘70s after an appearance at the Actuel festival but, throughout his career, his path was built around community engagement, positivity and “the Philly jazz sound, Germantown style.” He became an ambassador for the music of the City Of Brotherly Love, starting his own Dogtown label, helping launch the Philly Jazz imprint and campaigning tirelessly to improve the circumstances of the city’s street musicians. Lancaster’s sessions for Black Fire were planned following a gig at Caverns Jazz Club in Washington DC. “Jimmy Gray of Black Fire and I originally met during the ‘riotous blisters’ of the late Sixties there,” explained Lancaster. “We became the best of friends.” Backed by a band of Philly musicians including percussionist Keno Speller and Baba Robert Crowder (drummer for Olatunji and Art Blakey), the album also featured the Drummers From Ibadan led by Tunde Kuboye, another influential figure dedicated to community jazz with whom Lancaster had bonded while teaching in Lagos. The result was a free-flowing set of spirituality and positivity, built around full band groove workouts, solo pieces and heavy African roots. “We had big fun documenting this music,” remembered Lancaster. The message of the album remains as relevant today as ever, “I dedicate this album to all African Americans in the USA. To the youth, I ask ‘What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul?’”