Jazz / Soul / Funk
1546 products
In 1958, John Coltrane had yet to take the modal post-bop plunge. He was still a hard bopper, although his "sheets of sound" solos were certainly among the most interesting, creative, and distinctive that bop had to offer in the late '50s. Stardust contains some highlights of two bop-oriented Coltrane dates from 1958: one is a July 11 session with trumpeter/flugelhornist Wilbur Harden, pianist Red Garland, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Jimmy Cobb; the other is a December 26 session with Garland, Chambers, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, and drummer Art Taylor. At both sessions, Coltrane's playing is quite engaging. He is a lyrical, expressive ballad player on "Then I'll Be Tired of You," "Stardust," and "Time After Time," but he swings fast and aggressively on "Love Thy Neighbor" (the only track on this 39-minute program that isn't a ballad). At both sessions, Coltrane is well served by Garland's piano and Chambers' bass. When Coltrane was playing alongside those jazzmen in Miles Davis' 1955-1957 quintet, he enjoyed a strong rapport with both of them -- and that rapport wasn't any weaker in 1958. It is no coincidence that Prestige's A&R department united Coltrane with Garland and Chambers so often; Prestige knew how compatible all of them were. Although not quite essential, Stardust paints a consistently attractive picture of Coltrane's 1958 output. ~ Alex Henderson
アトランタ出身の知られざるレアソウルグループWilkie & The Wayyが83年に悪名高いCold Wave Recordsに残した唯一の7インチ・シングル音源『It Only Happened Once』と未発表音源を収録したコンピレーション盤。
“Milton,” released in 1976 by Brazilian music legend Milton Nascimento, is a profound masterpiece that blends MPB, bossa nova, and Latin jazz. His deep and gentle vocals, combined with Toninho Horta’s delicate guitar arrangements, create a sound that is both urban and rooted in tradition. Featuring lyrics in both English and Portuguese, the album is recognized as a symbol of MPB’s maturity and international reach.
Clube da Esquina 2 is a 1978 album by Brazilian singer-songwriter Milton Nascimento. The album serves as a continuation to the Clube da Esquina album and retained the collective approach, stylistic diversity, and experimental elements of its predecessor, spread across two LPs. Musically, the album reflects the Brazil’s social contradictions, exploring themes of hope and despair, beauty and hardship, and the tension between historical trauma and uncertain futures. The album featured a broader range of collaborators, including Brazilian artists like Elis Regina, Chico Barque, and Lo Borges.
Outstanding and limited compilation of Turkish Jazz-Funk rarities. The release explores what happened when Western music styles such as modal jazz, bossa nova, fusion and funk met Arabic folk music, tone scales and rhythm structures in the late sixties and seventies in Turkey and Egypt.
One of the best Italian Library jams on the Edipan label. An inspired musical interpretation of mid '70s young America with spacey Funk/Breaks and strung-out Italian sounds of the period. An essential grail and top of the top dusty fingers / music producers / beat makers / sample hunters record.
Italian FunkY Library true classic! - What we have here is a Remigio Ducros and Luciano Simoncini (Arawak, Jason Black, etc.) sure shot and fantastic record for those who are into the classic Simoncini/Ducros sound and generally into the groovy Italian Library sounds. Very reminiscent of the "Accadde A.." and Jason Black recordings. What you can expect are tightly knitted and compressed drums, stoned flute sections, shouting horns, Fender Rhodes Piano, heavy basslines and that signature spacey Wah Wah guitar that's on all of the earlier Simoncini recordings. Variations on the Sgambetto - Sgambata theme from LA PALLA E' ROTONDA / stoned "Accadde A.." styled flute / amazing Hip-Hop beats / 'popping' percussion, Fender bass & piano etc. Daniela Casa is probably the girl playing all the Wah Wah and cosmic Fuzz distortions. Booming Italian Library production - loads of mellow grooves, samples and inspired beats. GREAT for DJs!
Afro-jazz ancestral healing at the crossroads of tradition and tomorrow
Matsuli Music is proud to announce the first vinyl reissue of Philip Tabane’s Sangoma ("Spiritual Healer") since its 1978 release. Remastered from the original tapes with lacquers cut by Frank Merrit and pressed on 180g heavyweight vinyl at Pallas in Germany, this definitive edition re-asserts the power of one of South Africa’s landmark recordings. Featuring new liner notes by cultural critic Kwanele Sosibo and artwork restoration by Siemon Allen, Sangoma returns in full force through an extended Malombo line-up, fronted by Tabane's spellbinding guitar - ancestral, timeless, and unbound.
Philip Tabane (1934–2018), the mercurial guitar genius of South African music, forged a sound that was as rooted in the spirit world as it was in daily life. With the Malombo Jazzmen of the 1960s, Tabane disrupted Western notions of “jazz,” bringing the resonant rhythm of cowhide malombo drums into the foreground. While outsiders and the uninitiated often reached for labels like “primitive yet sophisticated,” Tabane and his collaborators named it more truthfully: “music of the spirit.”
By the time of Sangoma, Tabane stood at a crossroads. Fresh from a period of three years’ touring in the United States where he graced the Newport Jazz Festival, and played alongside Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Pharoah Sanders and others, he brushed off comparisons with characteristic self-assurance: “No, I don’t play like Miles. Miles plays like me.” Back home in South Africa, and with a newly signed international distribution deal with WEA Records, he harnessed this momentum into a larger band setting, capturing a rare intensity.
The result was Sangoma—an album that bridges contradictions: expansive yet intimate, celebratory yet haunted by exile and return. Tracks such as “Sangoma,” “Hi Congo,” and “Keya Bereka” are not simply performances but living testaments, songs that would remain in his repertoire for decades. Unlike the moody, immersive character of much of his work, here Tabane is on the move—urgent, restless, uncontainable. As he announces on the second track, “Maskanta wa tsamaya” (“something that kicks ass”).
More than four decades on, Sangoma is both an historical document and a timeless invocation. From his home in Mamelodi to the world and back again, Tabane’s spiritual healing endures—raw, electric, and unbowed.
Meitei’s 2020 album 'Kofū' was the bold bookend to an expedition, where sounds were first navigated and then subverted in 2018’s 'Kwaidan' and 2019’s 'Komachi'.
All three albums were Meitei’s attempt at immersive storytelling, reimagining moments of Japanese history he felt were being washed away – not least by the unforgiving sands of time – through wistful compositions that stretched across ambient music, hauntology, and musique concrete.
When it came to finalizing 'Kofū', Meitei found he was left with over 60 fully realized tracks, bursting with ideas that fired in divergent, curious directions. Meitei was content with the 13 tracks he had selected. But when it came time to begin his next album, he found that it had been sitting in front of him all along. He realized his work wasn’t over yet.
Meitei sounds right at home celebrating the past he first reimagined in his previous work. The merriment is palpable in its first two tracks of 'Kofū II' – a loop of cheery whistling amidst the clanking of wood leads into strings, cricket sounds and flutes, all united in bustling harmony.
'Happyaku-yachō' is where it comes into focus. Pitch-shifted vocal samples roam around in the crowded sonic field. “My image of this music is that it expresses the vibrant mood of Edo's merchant culture,” says Meitei, “where old Japanese dwellings were densely packed together in a vast expanse of land.” The affair becomes bittersweet as the track leads into the desolate 'Kaworu', a compositional piece lifted from his 'Komachi' sessions – a final requiem to his late grandmother.
The album is bursting with spectral vignettes of wandering samurais, red lanterns, ninjas, puppet theatres, poets, even a vengeful assassin ('Shurayuki hime', known to Western audiences as ‘Lady Snowblood’).
'Saryō' is as elegant and refined as you would expect. It induces stillness in its repetition, with each synth note a brushstroke. It was inspired by a Sengoku-era tea house he once visited, designed by national icon Sen no Rikyū. Meitei tied it to the reaction he felt while poring over the ink paintings in his grandmother’s house. “The decayed earthen walls and faded tatami mats gave me an emotional impression,” he says. “And the cosmic flow of time drifting in the small room. I decided to put my impression of this into music.”
In 'Akira Kurosawa', an appropriately thunderous track, Meitei finds deep resonance in his vast filmography, which drew equally from Japan’s rich heritage and troubled circumstances post-WWII.
'Kofū II' is not a leftovers album, nor is it a straightforward companion piece. In this album, Meitei has his biggest reckoning with the Japanese identity yet. Over the years, he has attempted to peel back what he believes has defined Japan and its people. After seeking answers with three full-length albums, his fourth poses more questions.
If his first three albums inspired a sense of longing – or, perhaps inevitably, fed an irreparable nostalgia doomed to history – 'Kofū II' compels us to reassess our relationship with the past. By constantly looking back, are we ever afforded a clearer present? After capturing the “lost Japanese mood”, where does that leave its country in the modern world? Meitei offers no immediate answers with 'Kofū II'. It forces you to sit with its disparate moods, to meditate amidst the textured fragments.
'Kofū II' will be released on 180g LP, CD and digital format on December 10, 2021 (LP expected to land January 28, 2022) via KITCHEN. LABEL. Both LP and CD format are presented in a debossed sleeve with obi strip and include a 16-page insert with words in Japanese and English from Meitei, printed on premium paper stock with design by KITCHEN. LABEL founder Ricks Ang, and is mastered by Chihei Hatakeyama in Tokyo, Japan.
In the final month of 2024, Meitei arrived in Beppu, a city long steeped in vapor, myth, and mineral memory. Invited to create onsen ambient music commemorating Beppu’s 100th anniversary, he immersed himself in the city’s geothermal psychogeography, where sound rises from the ground and time clings to mist.
Known for his Lost Japan (Shitsu-nihon) works, which channel forgotten eras into flickering auditory relics, Meitei took residence in the warehouse of Yamada Bessou, a century-old inn perched by the bay. Over two weeks, he listened intently to steam, to stone, to the atmosphere itself. The resulting work, Sen’nyū, traces the inner spirit of onsen culture. Like water finding its path, the music emerged with quiet inevitability, shaped by Meitei’s synesthetic sensibility and deep attunement to place.
Equipped with a microphone, he wandered Beppu’s sacred sites: Takegawara Onsen, Bouzu Jigoku, Hebin-yu, and the private baths of Yamada Bessou. There, he captured the breath of the springs, bubbling mud, hissing vents, wind against bamboo, and the murmurs of daily visitors. These field recordings became the sonic bedrock of Sen’nyū, an act of deep listening that attempts to render even the rising mist and shifting heat into sound.
Unfolding as a single, continuous piece, Sen’nyū drifts like fog through sulfur and stone. It traverses the veiled madness of Bouzu Jigoku, the spectral resonance of Yamada Bessou’s inner bath, and the hushed voices of Takegawara Onsen. It is a gesture of quiet reverence, for water’s patience, the land’s memory, and the hands that have bathed here for generations.
Where Meitei’s earlier works conveyed his personal impression of a fading Japan, Sen’nyū is grounded in tactile presence, music not imagined but encountered. Here, his practice moves closer to the spirit of kankyō ongaku, environmental music born from place, shaped by it, and inseparable from it.
As part of the project, Meitei conceived a two-day public sound installation inside Takegawara Onsen, culminating in a live performance. Bathers soaked in mineral-rich waters while submerged in sound, an embodied ritual of place, body, and listening.
Sen’nyū marks Meitei’s first full-length work centered entirely on onsen and opens a new chapter of his Lost Japan project under the expanded title 失日本百景 (One Hundred Lost Views of Japan), a series exploring extant sites of longing still quietly breathing within contemporary life. The album will be accompanied by Meitei’s first photo book, a visual document of his time in Beppu. A new layer is added to the world he has, until now, built only through sound.
Sen’nyū continues Meitei’s devotion to Japan as subject, while opening new terrain: both ritual and remembrance, an immersion into the mineral soul of Beppu.
Growing up in the sound system culture of Leeds in England, George spent a fiver, courtesy of his mum, on a battered old speaker box he named “Echo45”. That box led him to Kevin Harper, a founding member of Nightmares on Wax, a chance meeting that would change the course of his life.
With the latest music “Echo45 Sound System”, Nightmares On Wax takes that lineage a step further—a mixtape that feels like both a celebration and a declaration. It's a living, sound system journey inspired by the original “Echo45” speaker box that merges soul, roots, hip-hop, dub, and electronic textures with a fearless spirit.
Featuring a carefully curated ensemble of collaborators—including Yasiin Bey, Greentea Peng, Sadie Walker, Liam Bailey, and more—the record doesn’t just reflect where Nightmares on Wax has been. While deeply rooted in his origins, sound system culture, and pirate radio, it boldly announces where he’s going.
Vibe Ride is the sixth release of Adam Rudolph's Hu Vibrational project and marks his 60th release as a leader or co-leader.
“With every record, the goal is to explore new creative territory,” explains Rudolph. Vibe Ride continues a deeper exploration of a trance-like groove and a conceptual framework known as Sonic Mandala. This album marks the most complete realization of that idea, partly due to the group's experience touring beforehand. That time on the road helped to refine ideas and strengthen musical chemistry. The recording process unfolded organically—likely due to the long-standing collaboration within ensembles like Go: Organic Orchestra and Moving Pictures, where the musicians have developed a deep familiarity with the shared musical language.
Sonic Mandala refers to a musical approach distinct from traditional linear structures of theme and development. Found in cultures across the globe, it may represent one of the oldest forms of musical expression—predating written history by tens of thousands of years. Today, it is most vividly preserved in the music of the Ituri Forest peoples (Aka, Baka, Ba Benzele, Mbuti), whose sound traditions revolve in cyclical, orbit-like patterns. Vibe Ride seeks to bring that ancient sense of circularity into a contemporary—and perhaps even futuristic—context.
The ensemble of Vibe Ride—Alexis Marcelo, Jerome Harris, Harris Eisenstadt, Neel Murgai, Tim Kieper, and Tripp Dudley—brings exceptional creativity and skill to the project. While grounded in the sonic languages of today, their performance channels an ancient vibrational lineage, connecting with ancestral sound makers who were attuned to the rhythms of the sun, moon, stars, and seasons. Human beings have always been deeply responsive to natural cycles.
Like a mandala, where the circle reveals itself as a spiral—always returning, but never to the exact same point—the Sonic Mandala musical experience spirals through motion. Refined signal patterns emerge through overtone-rich instrumentation. The groove becomes a threshold, shifting the listener from passive observation into active, even transcendent, participation. With open ears and an open mind, the sound spirals inward—toward a primal center—and outward into the cosmos. When this elevated state is shared among participants, it creates what mystics describe as resonance.
Vibe Ride thrives on the distinctive sonic voices of its players, interwoven with care and nuance into the compositions. Hu Vibrational merges elements of world music, electronica, and improvised jazz into something both funky and spiritual, intense and soothing.
Using signature techniques of organic orchestration, layered arrangement, and electronic processing, the compositions are sculpted from percussion, electronics, and ethereal textures. Rhythmic foundations drawn from diverse traditions serve not as endpoints, but as building blocks. As the saying goes, “Orchestration is the key.” In shaping the sound, the aim was to discover fresh ways of balancing structure and sonic color. As Don Cherry once said: “The swing is in the sound.”
In the final month of 2024, Meitei arrived in Beppu, a city long steeped in vapor, myth, and mineral memory. Invited to create onsen ambient music commemorating Beppu’s 100th anniversary, he immersed himself in the city’s geothermal psychogeography, where sound rises from the ground and time clings to mist.
Known for his Lost Japan (Shitsu-nihon) works, which channel forgotten eras into flickering auditory relics, Meitei took residence in the warehouse of Yamada Bessou, a century-old inn perched by the bay. Over two weeks, he listened intently to steam, to stone, to the atmosphere itself. The resulting work, Sen’nyū, traces the inner spirit of onsen culture. Like water finding its path, the music emerged with quiet inevitability, shaped by Meitei’s synesthetic sensibility and deep attunement to place.
Equipped with a microphone, he wandered Beppu’s sacred sites: Takegawara Onsen, Bouzu Jigoku, Hebin-yu, and the private baths of Yamada Bessou. There, he captured the breath of the springs, bubbling mud, hissing vents, wind against bamboo, and the murmurs of daily visitors. These field recordings became the sonic bedrock of Sen’nyū, an act of deep listening that attempts to render even the rising mist and shifting heat into sound.
Unfolding as a single, continuous piece, Sen’nyū drifts like fog through sulfur and stone. It traverses the veiled madness of Bouzu Jigoku, the spectral resonance of Yamada Bessou’s inner bath, and the hushed voices of Takegawara Onsen. It is a gesture of quiet reverence, for water’s patience, the land’s memory, and the hands that have bathed here for generations.
Where Meitei’s earlier works conveyed his personal impression of a fading Japan, Sen’nyū is grounded in tactile presence, music not imagined but encountered. Here, his practice moves closer to the spirit of kankyō ongaku, environmental music born from place, shaped by it, and inseparable from it.
As part of the project, Meitei conceived a two-day public sound installation inside Takegawara Onsen, culminating in a live performance. Bathers soaked in mineral-rich waters while submerged in sound, an embodied ritual of place, body, and listening.
Sen’nyū marks Meitei’s first full-length work centered entirely on onsen and opens a new chapter of his Lost Japan project under the expanded title 失日本百景 (One Hundred Lost Views of Japan), a series exploring extant sites of longing still quietly breathing within contemporary life. The album will be accompanied by Meitei’s first photo book, a visual document of his time in Beppu. A new layer is added to the world he has, until now, built only through sound.
Sen’nyū continues Meitei’s devotion to Japan as subject, while opening new terrain: both ritual and remembrance, an immersion into the mineral soul of Beppu.
Neon Castle hones in on a fleeting sub-genre of early to mid-’80s female fronted ambient folk. For a brief moment, glistening slide guitar, ethereal voices, fretless bass, drum machines and satin sounds all intertwined, conjuring a sound at once familiar and otherworldly—pop structures laced with strange visions. Some songs sway with the warmth of open ranch-land—originating from the same myths Stevie Nicks devoted herself to; others are shrouded with candlelit mysticism, crafted with the very staff Kate Bush might have wielded. Together, these pieces reveal a singular tapestry.
Compiled by Charles Bals—now in his third collaboration with Smiling C—Neon Castle affirms his rare gift for storytelling through sound. Each track unfolds like a scene from an imagined film: castles glowing with noble gas, kingdoms awash in purple haze, wild horses roaming free, hair cascading to the waist. The collection sketches a realm both new and 'upon a time', a world where fantasy takes shape through music. With Neon Castle, attentive listening becomes narrative.
NooPop Records proudly presents 'Naissoo Freeform Quintet,' led by keyboard maestro Tõnu Naissoo.
Recorded in Tallinn during two electrifying, improvisational sessions in July 2024, this LP captures the infectious energy of funk, the adventurous spirit of free jazz, and infused with a nostalgic nod to the psychedelic era.
This album is a celebration of dynamic percussive rhythms and exploratory sound of Bass Clarinet, Rhodes, Moog Source and ARP Odyssey, offering a unique blend of past and future musical influences.
Whether you're a jazz aficionado, a groove enthusiast, or simply a lover of innovative music, "Naissoo Freeform Quintet" is an essential addition to your collection. Join us on this cosmic expedition and discover the infinite possibilities of sound that await in the astral realms of plate reverb and tape delay.
"Naissoo Freeform Quintet" is a rare gem for collectors and music lovers alike. Grab yours before it’s gone and embark on this stellar journey!