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The song that marked the return of Joe Bataan in 2004 finally makes it into a 7” single for the first time. Recorded at the Daptone studio this is a dancefloor favourite by the King of Latin Soul!

Terrific session just released in 1974 on influential independent Muse. A modal masterpiece verging on spiritual jazz with a series of excellent players: from Richard Davis and Cecil McBee on bass to Ray Mantilla on congas and percussion, through Harold Vick distinctive flute and tenor sax. The major voice on this record belongs to the traps of Joe Chambers. The enormous potency combined with complete authority and tonal clarity that Chambers brings to the drums has made him one of the more distinctive percussive voices in jazz.

Joe Henderson, who had made a name for himself with his Blue Note albums, was based at Milestone from the late 1960s onward, releasing a series of albums that pushed blackness to the forefront. In the summer of 1971, Joe Henderson visited Japan by himself and delighted Japanese audiences. One of the climaxes of his visit was a five-day concert series at Junk in Ginza, Tokyo. Henderson's Habiliment” is a record of that night. The powerful, emotionally rich, and lustrous playing is a masterpiece. The Japanese musicians who performed with him, Hideo Ichikawa, Kunimitsu Inaba, and Motohiko Hino, also showed their sharpness. Starting with “Junk Blues,” which even has a terrible taste, followed by the blaring “'Round About Midnight,” the deeper “Blue Bossa,” and the hip and beautiful “Black Narcissus,” which was not included on the American version of “In Japan,” the performance was so rich and full that it tore at the seams.

Miyazake collaborator Joe Hisaishi's accompaniment to 1993 crime thriller 'Sonatine' is another lovingly repackaged oddity from the WRWTFWW stable; one of Hisaishi's personal favorites, it's an eccentric, vividly colored mash-up of global percussion, Tangerine Dream-style cosmic minimalism and earworm piano themes.

Hisaishi isn't the first person we'd think of if we were directing a gangster film, but we're not Takeshi Kitano. The award-winning pianist and composer has penned over 100 scores, and is best known for his work with Hayao Miyazaki, having worked on all but one of his films, but he also nurtured a close relationship with Kitano, scoring 'Kids Return', 'Hana-bi' and 'Dolls', among others. 'Sonatine' is one of Kitano's most acclaimed films, and follows an aging yakuza (played by Kitano) who expressionlessly contemplates his decisions as his time ticks away. Somehow, Hisaishi takes this prompt as an opportunity to work in technicolor, juxtaposing his expectedly jaunty motifs with plasticky fanfares, Midori Takada-style marimba sequences, hand drum workouts and wyrd library psych detours.

We don't fully remember how the soundtrack meshed with the visuals (it's been a while), but as a stand-alone, Hisaishi's bizarre suite of cues works remarkably well. 'Sonatine' arrived over a decade after 'MKWAJU', his outstanding African-inspired collaboration with Takada, and his new age/kosmische-slanted solo album 'Information', and there are traces of each to be found here. Centerpiece track 'Into A Trance' might lack the Prophet 5-powered bite of 'Information', but its Reich-to-YMO electroid minimalism echoes the themes, and 'Eye Witness', a wonky ethno-scrunch of sitar drones, hollow reversed percussive thumps, shamisen plucks and sampled vocal stings is a tongue-in-cheek extension of Hisaishi and Takada's high-minded concepts.

Elsewhere, Hisaishi tries his hand at tabla-tinted Hammond psych on 'Mobius Band', and deploys a Miyazake-ready solo piano heart-melter with 'Light and Darkness'.

Miyazake collaborator Joe Hisaishi's accompaniment to 1993 crime thriller 'Sonatine' is another lovingly repackaged oddity from the WRWTFWW stable; one of Hisaishi's personal favorites, it's an eccentric, vividly colored mash-up of global percussion, Tangerine Dream-style cosmic minimalism and earworm piano themes.

Hisaishi isn't the first person we'd think of if we were directing a gangster film, but we're not Takeshi Kitano. The award-winning pianist and composer has penned over 100 scores, and is best known for his work with Hayao Miyazaki, having worked on all but one of his films, but he also nurtured a close relationship with Kitano, scoring 'Kids Return', 'Hana-bi' and 'Dolls', among others. 'Sonatine' is one of Kitano's most acclaimed films, and follows an aging yakuza (played by Kitano) who expressionlessly contemplates his decisions as his time ticks away. Somehow, Hisaishi takes this prompt as an opportunity to work in technicolor, juxtaposing his expectedly jaunty motifs with plasticky fanfares, Midori Takada-style marimba sequences, hand drum workouts and wyrd library psych detours.

We don't fully remember how the soundtrack meshed with the visuals (it's been a while), but as a stand-alone, Hisaishi's bizarre suite of cues works remarkably well. 'Sonatine' arrived over a decade after 'MKWAJU', his outstanding African-inspired collaboration with Takada, and his new age/kosmische-slanted solo album 'Information', and there are traces of each to be found here. Centerpiece track 'Into A Trance' might lack the Prophet 5-powered bite of 'Information', but its Reich-to-YMO electroid minimalism echoes the themes, and 'Eye Witness', a wonky ethno-scrunch of sitar drones, hollow reversed percussive thumps, shamisen plucks and sampled vocal stings is a tongue-in-cheek extension of Hisaishi and Takada's high-minded concepts.

Elsewhere, Hisaishi tries his hand at tabla-tinted Hammond psych on 'Mobius Band', and deploys a Miyazake-ready solo piano heart-melter with 'Light and Darkness'.

Absolute K.O. bout of free jazz poetry by a spry, 85 year old Joe McPhee, adapting his renowned improvised practice to words - juxtaposed with Mats Gustafson’s sparing brass and electric gestures. It’s an utterly timeless and transfixing salvo, another shiny notch for Smalltown Supersound’s brilliant Le Jazz Non Series.
*300 copies limited edition* As a common ligature to the OG free jazz scene of ‘60s NYC, with formative binds to its European offshoots and the experimental avant garde, Joe McPhee is a true force of nature who has represented jazz at its freest over a remarkable lifetime. In duo with Swedish free jazz and noise standard bearer Mats Gustafson, he upends expectations with an astonishingly vivid and upfront example of his enduring contribution to freely improvised music. In 11 parts he variously reflects on everything from the neon sleaze and scuzz of NYC to contemporary US politicians and laugh out loud imitations of his previous sparring partners such as Peter Brötzmann, with a head-slapping immediacy that leaves you reeling, spellbound. 

McPhee’s flow of rare, organic cadence, ranging from urgent to contemplative and dreamlike, is blessed with a unique turn-of-phrase that surely mirrors his decades of instrumental work. Gustafsson, meanwhile, dextrously takes up the mantle with a multi-instrumental spectrum of sounds, leaving McPhee unbound and able to float and sting on the mic. There’s obvious wisdom in his perceptively penetrative observations, as derived from a rich cultural life well spent, but also a playful naivety and levity in his ability to veer from almost melodic speech to explosive aggression and a knowing, bathetic wit. It’s perhaps hard to believe that McPhee only started incorporating and performing spoken word in his work in the past ten years, a half century since his declaration of “What Time Is It‽” announced his arrival on a legendary debut ‘Nation Time’ (1971), ushering in one of free jazz’s most singular characters in the process. 

"Black Magic Man is arguably the pivotal Joe McPhee release. It bridged the span between the regional and the international, bypassing the national altogether. "Recorded in the same sessions that produced Nation Time, Black Magic Man consists of music not chosen for that LP. Like its much-feted sister, technically it falls under the domain of CjR, Craig Johnson's herculean effort in support of McPhee. An erstwhile painter, Johnson became a self-taught audio engineer, acquiring equipment expressly to document McPhee's music. In December 1970, five years after Johnson and McPhee had met, they recorded two days of activity – a concert followed by an additional day of recordings – at Vassar College where McPhee was teaching in the Black Studies department. About half of the material was used to make Nation Time. While they had planned to issue a follow-up, the money wasn't there, so the tapes sat dormant. "Fast-forward five years – Werner X. Uehlinger, a Swiss businessman who worked for Sandoz Pharmaceuticals, contacted Johnson while on a trip to the US, and over dinner with McPhee, they discussed putting out some of the unused tracks from the Nation Time sessions. With this casual encounter in 1975, Hat Hut Records was inaugurated. The new label's maiden release was Black Magic Man, dubbed Hat Hut A, the first in what would become Hat Hut's letter series. Along the way, the series would feature seven Joe McPhee records, including the first four in a row."

"It's been nearly five decades since Joe McPhee assembled a group of musicians to perform the weekend concerts that would become Nation Time. It was December 1970, thirty-one-year-old McPhee was inspired by Amiri Baraka's poem 'It's Nation Time,' and the students at Vassar College didn't know what hit them. 'What time is it?' shouted the bandleader. 'C'mon, you can do better than that. What time is it?!'

"The music on Nation Time came out of the fertile, but little-known creative jazz scene in Poughkeepsie, New York, McPhee's home base. Two bands were deployed, one with a funky free foundation featuring guitar and organ, the other consisting of a more standard jazz formation with two drummers and the brilliant Mike Kull at the piano. Across the concert and the next afternoon's audience-less recording session, the band was ignited by McPhee's passion and his gorgeous post-Coltrane / post-Pharoah tenor. On 'Shakey Jake,' they hit a James Brown groove filtered through Archie Shepp, while the sidelong title track is as searching and poignant today as it was during its heyday.

"Originally released in 1971 on CjR, an imprint started expressly to document McPhee's music, Nation Time has a sense of urgency and inspiration. Additional material from those December days would later appear on Black Magic Man, Hat Hut's first release. In fact, the first four records on this seminal Swiss label all featured McPhee.

"Nation Time was largely unknown a quarter century or so later, when it was first issued on CD through Atavistic's Unheard Music Series. On Corbett vs. Dempsey, we reissued the album along with all known tapes leading up to and around it as a deluxe box set, but the standalone LP has long remained incredibly rare. Now is the time for a new generation of freaks to lose their shit when settling into the cushy beat of 'Shakey Jake' and answer McPhee's call with the only appropriate response: It's NATION TIME."

– John Corbett

There are lots of outstanding Joe McPhee LPs. Nation Time being chief among them, but there's also Pieces Of Light, Oleo and Topology. The Poughkeepsie, New York-based multi-instrumentalist, by now an international star of free music, has amassed a daunting discography, no doubt. If you want to peer deeply into the soul of Joe McPhee, however, there's no way around it, you need to spend some quality time with Tenor. " Tenor is McPhee's first solo record. He did not set out to make it. It was an afterthought, quite literally, born of a gathering of friends at the Swiss farmhouse of cellist Michael Overhage. A beautiful meal, some drinks, warm conversation, and ... why not, an impromptu recital. Hat Hut producer Werner X. Uehlinger was there and a year later issued it as McPhee's third LP for the label (Hat Hut C in their famed letter series). "The existential blues 'Knox' sets the stage, indicating that this will not just be a toss-off postprandial singalong. 'Good-Bye Tom B.' carries on with aching melancholy, through burred notes and hushed harmonics. The relatively jaunty 'Sweet Dragon' is also emotionally loaded with Ayler-esque vibrato, slurs, wipes, and blasts of tone. The side-long title track comes without a theme, as a kind of pure investigation of the horn, its potential, its limits, its expressive capacity. There have been few solo sessions as comprehensive and devastating as this spontaneous after-dinner diversion in rural Switzerland in 1976. We're very lucky someone pressed record."

"Joe McPhee's first international release, Black Magic Man, was issued on the newly formed Hat Hut imprint in 1975. It was a watershed moment for the 35-year-old musician. Based in Poughkeepsie, New York, he was too far away from Manhattan to have participated extensively in the Loft Jazz happenings of the decade. European exposure, however, would give McPhee an alternative circuit, something of an escape route from the trappings of American cultural myopia. "In support of the new record for this Swiss label, McPhee invited John Snyder on a European tour in October 1975. Snyder was a synthesizer player with whom McPhee had made the duet LP Pieces Of Light, released a year earlier on CjR. The two musicians developed an extensive repertoire, playing diverse spaces in the Hudson Valley. Geographically close gigs were a plus, since it took extra energy to hoist Snyder's ARP 2600.

Weirdo-rockabilly, early pop-electro, great drums, haunting. from collection of 45s

Pow wow singer and Bon Iver collaborator Joe Rainey directs his astonishing voice thru industrial grit, widescreen orchestrals and chaotic DIY synth noise on "Niineta", his debut for Justin Vernon's 37d03d label. Completely singular music. Rainey was brought up in Minneapolis, with a heritage that links to the Red Lake Ojibwe - an indigenous tribe that has a sovereign state in northern Minnesota. And while he didn't grow up there, he long felt the pull of a culture that at various times has been blotted out by the USA. Rainey has been involved in pow wow singing since he was just five years old, and has performed in bands as well as building up an immense archive of field recordings. 'Niineta' is his debut album, but he's been performing for years - in 2016, he even brought Justin Vernon to tears during a festival show in Wisconsin. It was enough for Vernon to invite Rainey to contribute to his last album, and sign him to the 37d03d he runs with The National's Aaron and Bryce Dessner. The record is an example of how pow wow traditions can be synthesized into different forms without losing their musical core; Rainey's range and vocal style roots the album in tradition, but his production and willingness to experiment fires "Niineta" into the future. With help from Fog's Andrew Broder, Rainey has put together a distorted, abstract backdrop that happily ducks from jagged beatscapes into luscious orchestral cinematics without any unintentional jerkiness. The music is consistent with Rainey's pow wow tradition, but acknowledges decades of music that too often has sat distant. 'b.e. son' loops vocal phrases across each other over blown-out percussion and sweeping strings, and 'easy on the cide' foregrounds a beat that sounds rougher than gravel, Autotuning Rainey's lead vocal and contorting it evocatively. On 'no chants', a frazzled TR-808 kick booms beneath tape saturated pulses, creating a soundscape that's not a million miles from Kanye West's game-changing "Yeezus" - but this isn't homage, Rainey uses the distortion to hint at darker elements, a disturbance in his culture that's violent, deafening and charged with emotion. The album's lengthy finale 'phil's offering' is also its most impressive, building slowly over looped crackle that gives a rhythmic click to Rainey's unforgettable vocal performance - eventually the track disappears into an industrial blur as processed field recordings reveal Rainey's heritage. Trust us, this ain't like anything you've heard before.

Lady of Mine is the 1989 debut LP by self-made Italian-American Joe Tossini. An astoundingly honest, passionate record of cosmopolitan lounge music, he willed this charming suburban oddity into existence without any formal musical training.

Sicilian by birth, Tossini drifted around the world between Italy, Germany and Canada, before finally settling in New Jersey. After the passing of his mother and the breakdown of a second marriage, an anxious and depressed Tossini took to songwriting as a form of therapy, crafting disarmingly candid lyrics from his extraordinary life and loves. Whatever industry savvy or musical virtuosity he lacked was made up for by unflinching resourcefulness and infectious charisma. Befriending bandleader Peppino Lattanzi at local club The Rickshaw Inn, he was encouraged to animate his singular songs with an ambitious cast of 9 players and 5 backing vocalists, sincerely credited as his Friends.

The Atlantic City basement sessions are a low budget, high romance testament to Tossini’s character and the power of positive thinking. From the defiant, Casiotone samba of If I Should Fall In Love, to Wild Dream’s dizzying escapism and the native tongue croons of Sulla Luna and Sincerita, Lady Of Mine hums with the inimitable magic of a true original. Piercing the heart with an effectively sparse combination of humming keys, CompuRhythm drums, horn flourishes and backing divas, ample room was left for Tossini to frankly deliver his much-needed life lessons.

Underperforming commercially at the hands of short lived label IEA Records, Lady Of Mine has since earned a place in the outsider music canon. Recently peaking interest as a cornerstone of the Sky Girl compilation, the private press trades for inordinate sums, typically with no financial benefit to its creator. Lady Of Mine is now finally reissued on the artist’s own terms via Joe Tossini Music, in partnership with Efficient Space, restored from original master tapes with unseen photos, extensive liner notes and Tossini’s trademark wisdom. 



Devoutly independent, Tossini has previously self-released the 2015 instrumental album When You Love Someone as well as two books - a new fiction novel The Devil In White and his autobiography The Account of My Life. 

During the last half-decade Joe Westerlund became engrossed in studying the clave, the metric pattern that first defined so much Afro-Cuban and Latin music and then drifted into almost every corner of jazz and rock. What did it mean for an idea to be so flexible, for it to fit so many forms while retaining its own essence? The result is aleap into the unknown for Westerlund: Curiosities from the Shift, a 12-track playground of endlessly interwoven beats and melodies, where Westerlund’s clave enthusiasm collides with his textural experimentalism, where his rhythmic symphony of one shakes hands with friends decorating this space alongside him.The three-piece suite that holds Curiosities’ first half begins with the junkyard percussion and delightful bass splashes that frame “Tem” and ends with the surrealistic boom-bap of thumb pianos and shakers on “Can Tangle.” There is a hard-won joy to these numbers, as if Westerlund is delighting in real time in spotting a potential dead end but finding his own way forward, anyway. Those songs became a kind of working roadmap for the terrain that Westerlund explores across Curiosities, from the call-and-response glory of opener “Nu Male Uno” to the uncanny amorphousness of closer “Felt Like Floating.” All of these songs are defined by an identifiable rhythm, like the loping strut at the center of “Midpoint” and the head-nodding pulse that winds through “Persurverance,” winkingly misspelled to suit his North Carolina-via-Wisconsin pronunciation. But those are springboards for other textures, moods, and notions, like the New Age references—shimmering metallophones, chattering birds, retiring flutes—that circle through “Midpoint” or the dub-indebted delays and gamelan hymns that bubble up through “Persurverance.” This is deeply multivalent music, each number’s propulsive core counterbalanced by a series of surprising choices. Bittersweetness and joy, grief and liberation, sighs and smiles: It all exists here, tangling toward infinity.In the months after the initial sessions were done, Westerlund reached out to friends—Califone’s Tim Rutilli, saxophonist Sam Gendel, trumpeter Trever Hagen, and violinists Libby Rodenbough and Chris Jusell among them. These were his most thoroughly composed and precisely built works ever, but he wanted to hear what happened when his pals responded in real time. They delivered grace, depth, and feeling, with their parts pulling back curtains on hidden recesses of rhythmic worlds.Westerlund readily admits he is surprised by the album’s insistence on groove and meter rather than drifting abstraction. Having lived and worked so long with bands, he assumed he was done functioning within basic meter. These 12 songs fuse so many of Westerlund’s loves into pieces that are endlessly fascinating, using familiar elements to render his adventures into the unknown. Playful but tender, wistful but wondrous, driven by beats but not bound by them, this is Westerlund’s definitive statement so far, the solo drummer record that opens wide to reveal a musical and emotional landscape richer than perhaps even he imagined he might find.

If you were to ask Joey Quiñones where he found inspiration for his music, you wouldn't have to look far from where the East LA son grew up. Listen to his work, and you're transported to a two-block radius of his neighborhood—from the liquor store to Sign of Music record store on Whittier Boulevard and back to a homie's house. In those two blocks, you hear cumbia blaring from the stores, punk rehearsals from a garage, oldies drifting from a neighbor's yard—a sensory overload that follows you home, all those genres singing in your head at once. This isn't a revelation to longtime fans of Quiñones' music. He has established himself as a premier interpreter of his generation, dedicating his career to offering his unique perspective on the Chicano soul songbook. But before Thee Sinseers, before the lush orchestrations and pitch-perfect harmonies that became his signature, Quiñones cut his teeth leading various backing bands for visiting Jamaican ska and dancehall acts touring Southern California. He describes those years as reggae college, getting yelled at by every Jamaican artist who had a record out. Those years of apprenticeship in rock steady and roots reggae would inform everything that followed—and on his new solo record Inna Soul Steady Situation, Quiñones finally showcases those influences front and center. That quintessential blending of styles rings out immediately on the opening track "Soul Steady Situation"—Quiñones's vocals enter like a selector toasting over the riddim, an alarm call announcing his intentions with an urgency that feels club-ready and immediate. Then comes the classic drum fill, dropping into a rock steady groove that establishes the vibe: this is dancehall-infused soul meant for movement, not just contemplation. It's a deliberate departure from Thee Sinseers' lush orchestrations, stripped down to showcase the Jamaican foundations that have always lived beneath Quiñones's work. Before you know it, you've taken off on a sonic soul spaceship with Quiñones at the helm, supported by his two-person crew: Eric Johnson from Thee Sinseers on saxophone and Eleazar from the Brown Boyz on piano, as you cruise across silver-lined clouds and dip your toes into dreamy moonlit grooves found on "Don't Let Go," "Driftin'" and "One More Night." What Quiñones manages to do on this record—with the full support of Colemine Records, the defining label for contemporary soul music happening right now—is prove time and time again that he is an artist willing to take risks and continue to show his prowess when it comes to experimenting with different styles, while still being able to authentically express himself. It's a partnership built on trust: Colemine has established itself as the premier destination for modern soul artists pushing the genre forward, recognizing that genre-blurring isn't a gimmick but the natural evolution of soul music itself. With that authentic self-expression, Quiñones and his crew manage to squeeze in some lighthearted fun as well, establishing a sense of equilibrium to counteract the heavier emotional overtones found on previous Sinseers efforts. A perfect example is "Bolsita," a tongue-in-cheek party song paying homage to iconic anthems like "Tequila" by The Champs and "Tighten Up" by Archie Bell & the Drells. But Quiñones doesn't stop there—he folds in electric boogaloo, early Ray Charles big band energy, and the Latin soul flourishes of Joe Cuba and Willie Colón, creating something that feels both nostalgic and fresh. Eric Johnson's saxophone takes center stage, adding playful solos that widen the sonic spectrum. The term "bolsita," which translates to "little bag," serves as the lingua franca for "let's get the party started"—it's admittedly corny, Quiñones will tell you, but it's the kind of song where everybody's going to shout along whether they like it or not. And that's precisely the point. By the time you reach the end of the record, having followed Quiñones across various genres and eras, you realize you've witnessed an artist in his prime doing what the best always do: capturing something deeply specific—Chicano identity, East LA's sonic DNA—and in that specificity, revealing something universal. It's music that transcends age, race, geography, and class precisely because it refuses to sand down its edges. Cross-generational talent building timeless appeal, one genre-blurring groove at a time.

If you were to ask Joey Quiñones where he found inspiration for his music, you wouldn't have to look far from where the East LA son grew up. Listen to his work, and you're transported to a two-block radius of his neighborhood—from the liquor store to Sign of Music record store on Whittier Boulevard and back to a homie's house. In those two blocks, you hear cumbia blaring from the stores, punk rehearsals from a garage, oldies drifting from a neighbor's yard—a sensory overload that follows you home, all those genres singing in your head at once. This isn't a revelation to longtime fans of Quiñones' music. He has established himself as a premier interpreter of his generation, dedicating his career to offering his unique perspective on the Chicano soul songbook. But before Thee Sinseers, before the lush orchestrations and pitch-perfect harmonies that became his signature, Quiñones cut his teeth leading various backing bands for visiting Jamaican ska and dancehall acts touring Southern California. He describes those years as reggae college, getting yelled at by every Jamaican artist who had a record out. Those years of apprenticeship in rock steady and roots reggae would inform everything that followed—and on his new solo record Inna Soul Steady Situation, Quiñones finally showcases those influences front and center. That quintessential blending of styles rings out immediately on the opening track "Soul Steady Situation"—Quiñones's vocals enter like a selector toasting over the riddim, an alarm call announcing his intentions with an urgency that feels club-ready and immediate. Then comes the classic drum fill, dropping into a rock steady groove that establishes the vibe: this is dancehall-infused soul meant for movement, not just contemplation. It's a deliberate departure from Thee Sinseers' lush orchestrations, stripped down to showcase the Jamaican foundations that have always lived beneath Quiñones's work. Before you know it, you've taken off on a sonic soul spaceship with Quiñones at the helm, supported by his two-person crew: Eric Johnson from Thee Sinseers on saxophone and Eleazar from the Brown Boyz on piano, as you cruise across silver-lined clouds and dip your toes into dreamy moonlit grooves found on "Don't Let Go," "Driftin'" and "One More Night." What Quiñones manages to do on this record—with the full support of Colemine Records, the defining label for contemporary soul music happening right now—is prove time and time again that he is an artist willing to take risks and continue to show his prowess when it comes to experimenting with different styles, while still being able to authentically express himself. It's a partnership built on trust: Colemine has established itself as the premier destination for modern soul artists pushing the genre forward, recognizing that genre-blurring isn't a gimmick but the natural evolution of soul music itself. With that authentic self-expression, Quiñones and his crew manage to squeeze in some lighthearted fun as well, establishing a sense of equilibrium to counteract the heavier emotional overtones found on previous Sinseers efforts. A perfect example is "Bolsita," a tongue-in-cheek party song paying homage to iconic anthems like "Tequila" by The Champs and "Tighten Up" by Archie Bell & the Drells. But Quiñones doesn't stop there—he folds in electric boogaloo, early Ray Charles big band energy, and the Latin soul flourishes of Joe Cuba and Willie Colón, creating something that feels both nostalgic and fresh. Eric Johnson's saxophone takes center stage, adding playful solos that widen the sonic spectrum. The term "bolsita," which translates to "little bag," serves as the lingua franca for "let's get the party started"—it's admittedly corny, Quiñones will tell you, but it's the kind of song where everybody's going to shout along whether they like it or not. And that's precisely the point. By the time you reach the end of the record, having followed Quiñones across various genres and eras, you realize you've witnessed an artist in his prime doing what the best always do: capturing something deeply specific—Chicano identity, East LA's sonic DNA—and in that specificity, revealing something universal. It's music that transcends age, race, geography, and class precisely because it refuses to sand down its edges. Cross-generational talent building timeless appeal, one genre-blurring groove at a time.

If you were to ask Joey Quiñones where he found inspiration for his music, you wouldn't have to look far from where the East LA son grew up. Listen to his work, and you're transported to a two-block radius of his neighborhood—from the liquor store to Sign of Music record store on Whittier Boulevard and back to a homie's house. In those two blocks, you hear cumbia blaring from the stores, punk rehearsals from a garage, oldies drifting from a neighbor's yard—a sensory overload that follows you home, all those genres singing in your head at once. This isn't a revelation to longtime fans of Quiñones' music. He has established himself as a premier interpreter of his generation, dedicating his career to offering his unique perspective on the Chicano soul songbook. But before Thee Sinseers, before the lush orchestrations and pitch-perfect harmonies that became his signature, Quiñones cut his teeth leading various backing bands for visiting Jamaican ska and dancehall acts touring Southern California. He describes those years as reggae college, getting yelled at by every Jamaican artist who had a record out. Those years of apprenticeship in rock steady and roots reggae would inform everything that followed—and on his new solo record Inna Soul Steady Situation, Quiñones finally showcases those influences front and center. That quintessential blending of styles rings out immediately on the opening track "Soul Steady Situation"—Quiñones's vocals enter like a selector toasting over the riddim, an alarm call announcing his intentions with an urgency that feels club-ready and immediate. Then comes the classic drum fill, dropping into a rock steady groove that establishes the vibe: this is dancehall-infused soul meant for movement, not just contemplation. It's a deliberate departure from Thee Sinseers' lush orchestrations, stripped down to showcase the Jamaican foundations that have always lived beneath Quiñones's work. Before you know it, you've taken off on a sonic soul spaceship with Quiñones at the helm, supported by his two-person crew: Eric Johnson from Thee Sinseers on saxophone and Eleazar from the Brown Boyz on piano, as you cruise across silver-lined clouds and dip your toes into dreamy moonlit grooves found on "Don't Let Go," "Driftin'" and "One More Night." What Quiñones manages to do on this record—with the full support of Colemine Records, the defining label for contemporary soul music happening right now—is prove time and time again that he is an artist willing to take risks and continue to show his prowess when it comes to experimenting with different styles, while still being able to authentically express himself. It's a partnership built on trust: Colemine has established itself as the premier destination for modern soul artists pushing the genre forward, recognizing that genre-blurring isn't a gimmick but the natural evolution of soul music itself. With that authentic self-expression, Quiñones and his crew manage to squeeze in some lighthearted fun as well, establishing a sense of equilibrium to counteract the heavier emotional overtones found on previous Sinseers efforts. A perfect example is "Bolsita," a tongue-in-cheek party song paying homage to iconic anthems like "Tequila" by The Champs and "Tighten Up" by Archie Bell & the Drells. But Quiñones doesn't stop there—he folds in electric boogaloo, early Ray Charles big band energy, and the Latin soul flourishes of Joe Cuba and Willie Colón, creating something that feels both nostalgic and fresh. Eric Johnson's saxophone takes center stage, adding playful solos that widen the sonic spectrum. The term "bolsita," which translates to "little bag," serves as the lingua franca for "let's get the party started"—it's admittedly corny, Quiñones will tell you, but it's the kind of song where everybody's going to shout along whether they like it or not. And that's precisely the point. By the time you reach the end of the record, having followed Quiñones across various genres and eras, you realize you've witnessed an artist in his prime doing what the best always do: capturing something deeply specific—Chicano identity, East LA's sonic DNA—and in that specificity, revealing something universal. It's music that transcends age, race, geography, and class precisely because it refuses to sand down its edges. Cross-generational talent building timeless appeal, one genre-blurring groove at a time.

Face is a synthbathed meditation on decay and acceptance and shows the typical Jogging House sound in which warm soundscapes are mingled with soft and playful melodies. Boris Potschubay is a German musician based in Frankfurt am Main. Besides his own music, Potschubay curates his own label, Seil Records which forms a home for Hainbach, KMRU among others. Jogging House debuted in 2011 and brought us more than a dozen releases in the meantime. Listening to all the records chronologically one after the other, demonstrates us how Potschubay is experimenting a wide range of sound sources and creates a variety of atmospheres but stays true to its own individuality.

Here's to feeling everything. Made with Elektron Digitakt & Digitone, Ciat Lonbarde Deerhorn & Cocoquantus, Korg MS 20, Chase Bliss Habit & Gen Loss, EHX 22500 looper, OTO Bim & Bam. Recorded straight to 1/4" tape in single takes.

John Also Bennett (JAB)’s Music for Save Rooms 1 & 2 compiles two volumes of minimal music conceived as infinitely looping and morphing compositions for “save rooms” - temporary safe spaces within video game maps. The compositions primarily stem from a week spent at work in a former military barn in the Marin Headlands just north of San Francisco, spurred on by multimedia artist and Bennett’s frequent collaborator Peter Burr (for whom a handful of the pieces on these albums were initially composed). Consumed with the idea of music that could create an effortless sense of stasis, yet never exactly repeat itself, Bennett spent days alone in the remote, empty barn composing endless loops, experimenting with phasing techniques, and melding with the surrounding ambience. The groundwork was laid for over 11 compositions, a few of which at that time were finished. But in early 2020, faced with a pandemic-canceled tour and non-refundable plane tickets, Bennett digitally released a premature version of Music for Save Rooms containing two finished ‘Save Room’ pieces plus various unreleased odds and ends - a synthesized version of Arvo Pärt’s “Spiegel im Spiegel”, “Still Inside the Deku Tree”, an alto flute piece and live staple referencing Koji Kondo’s classic score for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and “Utopia and Oblivion”, a work for a virtual just intonation piano & DX7. Bennett presents here a definitely mixed, mastered, and expanded version of Music for Save Rooms (now Music for Save Rooms 1), alongside Music for Save Rooms 2, a fully realized album of new music stemming directly from those original sessions in Marin County. Composed almost exclusively for a Yamaha DX7, Roland D-50 and JV1080, Music for Save Rooms 2 differs from its predecessor - instead of a collection of disparate works centered around the theme of stasis, the album presents a more cohesive narrative, with shorter tracks relative to its predecessor’s more long-form pieces. Opener “Sky Music'' contains as much silence as it does sound - effortless chords float into view and then sizzle into nothingness. “Power Plant”’s glissando vocal pads and deep percussion hits seem to create a regenerative space, while “Out Back” and “Ambling'' both hint at some distant, foggily recollected liminal place. “Glass Castle” is perhaps more explicit with its imagery, combining the sounds of a glass harmonica and fragile vocal pads with alternatively gorgeous and dissonant piano motifs that utilize a tuning system developed by Iannis Xenakis. Boiled down over years to only its essential parts, Music for Save Rooms 2 is a tour through the mind’s eye of an artist searching for an elusive place, somewhere deep in the open world of our collective consciousness.

Experimental musician John Also Bennett’s latest full-length emerged from a bicoastal pandemic road trip through the badlands of South Dakota. Moved by the scale and complexity of the landscape – “remnants of an ancient seafloor mixed with the ash of a volcanic eruption, eroded over millennia and now resembling the tangled folds of earth’s brain” – he sculpted a series of stark, microtonal arrangements using a 1940’s Oahu lap steel guitar, a Yamaha SY77 multi-timbral synthesizer, and field recordings. The following year, upon relocating with his wife (Kranky composer Christina Vantzou) to the cliffside village of Livaniana on the island of Crete, Bennett discovered a method of translating his minimalist lap steel phrases into live MIDI information, which he then used to trigger different waveforms to extend the resonance of the instrument. This multi-layered generative process resulted in a collection as vast and bewildering as the terrain that inspired it: Out there in the middle of nowhere. Opening with the desolate 15-minute “Nowhere,” Bennett’s playing is both glacial and geological, attuned to “the wonder and absolute emptiness” of the Badlands as “an infinite living sculpture.” Notes stretch, shift, and drift into vistas of twilit silence. Footsteps crunch across dry soil and rocky ravines, beneath skies stretching to the horizon. The use of extreme glissandos conjures a sense of windswept plains and winding canyons, primordial and unpopulated. Even outlier “Spectral Valley” – one of the few nods towards Bennett’s work in progressive kosmische trio Forma – unfolds with patient grandeur, rich swells of electronics gleaming in long golden arcs. Closing track “Embrosnerόs” (named for the verdant interior Cretan village where it was recorded) best embodies the album’s cinematic liminality, at the axis of barren and beatific. Gestural breaths of lap steel shimmer in sparkling air, with echoes of both the dusty West and some forgotten paradise. Bennett describes its creation as taking place “mostly during sunset hours, blanketed by waves of cicadas as sheep bells twinkled in the distance.” A micro-tuned DX7 radiates in the periphery while the guitar’s strings hang and reverberate like deepening shadows at dusk.

Ston Elaióna is John Also Bennett’s first album for Shelter Press since his 2019 solo debut Erg Herbe. The American born, Athens, Greece, based flautist, synthesist, and composer weaves a strikingly singular electroacoustic excursion for bass flute and Yamaha DX7ii, largely recorded in the golden haze of the early morning hours - bending time at the otherworldly juncture of consciousness and place. Translating from Greek as “in the olive grove”, Ston Elaióna is permeated with the ambiences of the ancient and present world, guided into form by a playfully rigorous approach to sound.

Initially emerging during the mid 2000s as part of Columbus, Ohio’s noise scene, before relocating to NYC around 2010, Bennett’s diverse activities picked up an increasing sense of pace over the following decade - performing and recording as a solo artist (JAB), with the trio Forma and with CV & JAB, his prolific duo with his partner Christina Vantzou, as well as playing in Jon Gibson’s ensemble among many other multifaceted collaborations. However, since 2020 the flautist and electroacoustic composer has existed in a semi nomadic state: drifting between Brooklyn, Brussels, extensive tours, and Greece, where he finally came to rest in Athens last year. Drawing upon a carefully honed attentiveness to the environments and experiences of everyday life, Ston Elaióna is a suite of nine pieces (with an additional track exclusive to physical formats), many of them composed and played live as the early morning sun touched the Parthenon, in full view from Bennett’s studio window in Athens. Bennett’s refinement and restraint, honed over his years adrift, led him to adopt a limited palette focused on his primary instrument, the bass flute, and a Yamaha DX7ii synthesizer tuned to just intonation scales. Alongside a handful of other keyboards, digital oscillators triggered by his flute, and occasional field recordings, this simple palette is reflected by the deeply emotive sense of minimalism that permeates the album’s two sides.

Following two solo albums defined by outward facing temperaments - 2022’s Out there in the middle of nowhere (Poole Music), which used a lap steel guitar and generative oscillators to evoke the surreal landscapes of the South Dakota badlands, and the largely synthetic atmospheres of the 2024 anthology Music For Save Rooms 1 & 2 (Editions Basilic) - the shift in Bennett’s worldly circumstances offered an intuitive return to the calm, inward states of creative exploration that have historically defined JAB’s sound. In parallel, context provided clear sources of inspiration for many of the album’s themes, as well as sources for some of its sounds. The aura of Greece, from the ancient to the present, from its stones and olive groves to its traffic, figures heavily across Στον Ελαιώνα (Ston Elaióna)’s two sides.

The album’s title track and opener “Ston Elaiona” is but one key to opening the album’s multilayered worlds: swells of intertwining of bass flute, oscillators, and DX7ii channel feelings of playful contentment felt by Bennett when “in the olive grove” or in his apartment, reflecting quiet moments spent among the ancient hills of the noisy city that he now calls home. Drawing upon chance encounters within daily life, the flowing synthesizer tones of “Gecko Pads” dance in motions that seem to mimic the movements of a house gecko that appeared on a wall of Bennett’s studio - a quick dash, and then stillness - while “Hailstorm” expands this vision of domestic intimacy, playing the rise and fall of bass flute melodies against the captured sounds of an intense storm outside: a potent sonic metaphor for his intra and extra worlds. As the sharpness and depth of Ston Elaióna comes into focus, playfully threaded amongst its seductive tonal interplay, we encounter Bennett moving across dimensions of time, topical experience, and layers of cultural conjunction. Like “Hailstorm”, “Easter Daydream” incorporates field recording, but here his flute tones are joined by urban ambience and subtle punctuations of melody and rhythm, captured from a day long bell procession at the small church across the street from his apartment during Orthodox Holy Week, seeding the composition with a deep sense of immediacy and place that draw consciousness well beyond the limits of sound.

Moving the narrative possibilities further out into the landscape, “A Handful of Olives” utilizes Bennett’s technique of triggering long synthesizer tones with another instrument - in this case, fluctuating modular synth drones underscoring the glacial melodies of his bass flute. Immersive and meditative, the piece’s title nods to the resilience of a character from a Nikos Kazantzakis novel, who begins a long journey across the countryside with nothing but some wine, a piece of cheese, and a handful of olives. “First Lament” is the oldest work on Ston Elaióna, having been performed live by Bennett, in evolving states, for the past three or four years. A strongly affecting exercise in deep listening, meditation, and sometimes emotional catharsis, like “A Handful of Olives” it utilizes his technique of triggering long synthesizer tones with the flute, extending and overlapping resonances to create tone clusters that hang in the air with an otherworldly effect, echoing Bennett’s heartfelt yet restrained melodies of lament.

Tapping a sense of dualism endemic to Greece, where the ancient world continues to occupy the present day, both “Sacred House” and “Oracle” refer to the building that housed the Oracle of Ancient Dodoni in Epirus, where people have continued to seek guidance or assistance from the gods for thousands of years, in modern times by hanging small notes on the tree within its grounds. Unaccompanied pieces composed and played on Bennett’s just intoned synths, each positions haunting, slow paced melodies - imbued with metaphysical and spiritual weight - as bridges that span the millennia and diverse states of the conscious and unconscious mind. With “Seikilos Epitaph”, Bennett takes his immersion into the subcutaneous depths of Ancient Greece one step further. The piece is a version of the oldest known surviving complete musical composition, found notated in Greek on a stone pillar / stele on the site of an ancient village. Played on his DX7ii, and subtly permeated with field recordings of environmental sounds, his brilliant rendering builds bridges between the present and the distant time Bennett calls forth: another key, equal to the title track, to unlocking the album’s lingering depths.

John Also Bennett’s Ston Elaióna forms an elegantly rigorous world of electroacoustic sonority, bridging the expanse of time with the immediacies of environment and happening in the here and now: a profound sonic mediation on the countless dimensions unlocked by life in Greece.

Ston Elaióna is John Also Bennett’s first album for Shelter Press since his 2019 solo debut Erg Herbe. The American born, Athens, Greece, based flautist, synthesist, and composer weaves a strikingly singular electroacoustic excursion for bass flute and Yamaha DX7ii, largely recorded in the golden haze of the early morning hours - bending time at the otherworldly juncture of consciousness and place. Translating from Greek as “in the olive grove”, Ston Elaióna is permeated with the ambiences of the ancient and present world, guided into form by a playfully rigorous approach to sound.

Initially emerging during the mid 2000s as part of Columbus, Ohio’s noise scene, before relocating to NYC around 2010, Bennett’s diverse activities picked up an increasing sense of pace over the following decade - performing and recording as a solo artist (JAB), with the trio Forma and with CV & JAB, his prolific duo with his partner Christina Vantzou, as well as playing in Jon Gibson’s ensemble among many other multifaceted collaborations. However, since 2020 the flautist and electroacoustic composer has existed in a semi nomadic state: drifting between Brooklyn, Brussels, extensive tours, and Greece, where he finally came to rest in Athens last year. Drawing upon a carefully honed attentiveness to the environments and experiences of everyday life, Ston Elaióna is a suite of nine pieces (with an additional track exclusive to physical formats), many of them composed and played live as the early morning sun touched the Parthenon, in full view from Bennett’s studio window in Athens. Bennett’s refinement and restraint, honed over his years adrift, led him to adopt a limited palette focused on his primary instrument, the bass flute, and a Yamaha DX7ii synthesizer tuned to just intonation scales. Alongside a handful of other keyboards, digital oscillators triggered by his flute, and occasional field recordings, this simple palette is reflected by the deeply emotive sense of minimalism that permeates the album’s two sides.

Following two solo albums defined by outward facing temperaments - 2022’s Out there in the middle of nowhere (Poole Music), which used a lap steel guitar and generative oscillators to evoke the surreal landscapes of the South Dakota badlands, and the largely synthetic atmospheres of the 2024 anthology Music For Save Rooms 1 & 2 (Editions Basilic) - the shift in Bennett’s worldly circumstances offered an intuitive return to the calm, inward states of creative exploration that have historically defined JAB’s sound. In parallel, context provided clear sources of inspiration for many of the album’s themes, as well as sources for some of its sounds. The aura of Greece, from the ancient to the present, from its stones and olive groves to its traffic, figures heavily across Στον Ελαιώνα (Ston Elaióna)’s two sides.

The album’s title track and opener “Ston Elaiona” is but one key to opening the album’s multilayered worlds: swells of intertwining of bass flute, oscillators, and DX7ii channel feelings of playful contentment felt by Bennett when “in the olive grove” or in his apartment, reflecting quiet moments spent among the ancient hills of the noisy city that he now calls home. Drawing upon chance encounters within daily life, the flowing synthesizer tones of “Gecko Pads” dance in motions that seem to mimic the movements of a house gecko that appeared on a wall of Bennett’s studio - a quick dash, and then stillness - while “Hailstorm” expands this vision of domestic intimacy, playing the rise and fall of bass flute melodies against the captured sounds of an intense storm outside: a potent sonic metaphor for his intra and extra worlds. As the sharpness and depth of Ston Elaióna comes into focus, playfully threaded amongst its seductive tonal interplay, we encounter Bennett moving across dimensions of time, topical experience, and layers of cultural conjunction. Like “Hailstorm”, “Easter Daydream” incorporates field recording, but here his flute tones are joined by urban ambience and subtle punctuations of melody and rhythm, captured from a day long bell procession at the small church across the street from his apartment during Orthodox Holy Week, seeding the composition with a deep sense of immediacy and place that draw consciousness well beyond the limits of sound.

Moving the narrative possibilities further out into the landscape, “A Handful of Olives” utilizes Bennett’s technique of triggering long synthesizer tones with another instrument - in this case, fluctuating modular synth drones underscoring the glacial melodies of his bass flute. Immersive and meditative, the piece’s title nods to the resilience of a character from a Nikos Kazantzakis novel, who begins a long journey across the countryside with nothing but some wine, a piece of cheese, and a handful of olives. “First Lament” is the oldest work on Ston Elaióna, having been performed live by Bennett, in evolving states, for the past three or four years. A strongly affecting exercise in deep listening, meditation, and sometimes emotional catharsis, like “A Handful of Olives” it utilizes his technique of triggering long synthesizer tones with the flute, extending and overlapping resonances to create tone clusters that hang in the air with an otherworldly effect, echoing Bennett’s heartfelt yet restrained melodies of lament.

Tapping a sense of dualism endemic to Greece, where the ancient world continues to occupy the present day, both “Sacred House” and “Oracle” refer to the building that housed the Oracle of Ancient Dodoni in Epirus, where people have continued to seek guidance or assistance from the gods for thousands of years, in modern times by hanging small notes on the tree within its grounds. Unaccompanied pieces composed and played on Bennett’s just intoned synths, each positions haunting, slow paced melodies - imbued with metaphysical and spiritual weight - as bridges that span the millennia and diverse states of the conscious and unconscious mind. With “Seikilos Epitaph”, Bennett takes his immersion into the subcutaneous depths of Ancient Greece one step further. The piece is a version of the oldest known surviving complete musical composition, found notated in Greek on a stone pillar / stele on the site of an ancient village. Played on his DX7ii, and subtly permeated with field recordings of environmental sounds, his brilliant rendering builds bridges between the present and the distant time Bennett calls forth: another key, equal to the title track, to unlocking the album’s lingering depths.

John Also Bennett’s Ston Elaióna forms an elegantly rigorous world of electroacoustic sonority, bridging the expanse of time with the immediacies of environment and happening in the here and now: a profound sonic mediation on the countless dimensions unlocked by life in Greece.

A classical example of ‘tune in, turn on, drop out’ this mystified session was recorded in '74 and it’s basically a drug-infused meeting of John Lennon and Paul McCartney after the Beatles break-up. At that time Lennon was producing Harry Nilsson's album Pussy Cats, when Paul and Linda McCartney dropped in after the first night of the sessions at Burbank Studios on the 28th of March. They were joined by Nilsson, Stevie Wonder, Jesse Ed Davis, May Pang, Mal Evans, Bobby Keys and producer Ed Freeman for an impromptu jam session. The result is a stoned as fuck manifest you need to hear to believe it !