MUSIC

It's a weird time in the world, but luckily we have Bremer/McCoy's really lovely music to listen to. Natten, which is Danish for “The Night,” takes inspiration from the end of day, that regenerative time under the constellations when our lives look different. Let it be your companion on this Earth, under the stars, as you contemplate this crazy time we’re in.

In March of 2023 composer, arranger & alto saxophonist Cassie Kinoshi premiered a commissioned suite of music in front of a sold out crowd at London’s Southbank Centre. She wrote the piece – gratitude – for her flagship large ensemble seed., in a special augmented formation that also featured turntablist NikNak and the London Contemporary Orchestra (LCO).

Followers of UK Jazz know Kinoshi from her previous work with seed. (including the Mercury Prize-nominated album Driftglass, released by jazz re:freshed in 2019), or as a former member of Kokoroko. But her compositional résumé also extends deeply into orchestral work for concert hall, contemporary dance, film, visual art, and theatre, with high profile collaborators including London Sinfonietta, Philharmonia Orchestra, and the London Symphony Orchestra. That depth of experience is on full display on gratitude, with the textural and dynamic flexibility of her large ensemble covering musical ground from groove-focused modal melancholia to anthemic brass and string themes. Striking upon first listen and even richer on repeat visits, gratitude scores the soul of contemporary Black London with philharmonic craftwork in the tradition of legendary jazz arrangers like Mary Lou Williams, Oliver Nelson, and Carla Bley.

Similar to those keystone writer-arrangers, here Kinoshi wields the power of a large ensemble to convey nuanced human emotion. “gratitude was written as a means of guiding my own healing,” says Kinoshi. “My mother told me that she keeps a gratitude book where she writes one thing, no matter how big or small, every day that helps to re-focus her mind on practicing gratitude. The examples that she gave were seeing the flowers that she'd recently planted in her garden bloom and a kaleidoscope of butterflies that she saw flitting about a tree in her garden.”

Inspired by her mother’s focus on natural beauty and the meaningful minutiae of everyday life, Kinoshi was driven to work through her own relationship with mental health and to pour that into composition. “I was spending a lot of time on my own, often at my desk writing continuously,” says Kinoshi. “At 3pm everyday, the winter sun would be positioned opposite my window and shine directly onto my face. The task of writing this piece was one of the most difficult I've endured – because of the headspace that I was in at the time – and this would be the one thing in the middle of the day that would bring me a very deep sense of contentment… my first attempt at consciously practicing gratitude for something that I so often take for granted.”

“At this point in my artistic career, highlighting the often overlooked subject of mental health and what it means to move towards creating healthy, positive and introspective practices in regards to both understanding and regulating one's own mental health is of the utmost importance to me.”

Throughout the writing process Kinoshi had the privilege of knowing that her composition would eventually be interpreted by seed. — an ensemble of players she founded in 2016 and whose collective talents she knows through and through. “The binding concept of seed. has always been to have a creative outlet that allows me to express and highlight subject matter important to me alongside musicians that I deeply respect, admire and enjoy spending time with,” explains Kinoshi. “It is the one environment where I feel extremely comfortable being able to experiment with sound authentically. Over the years, it has evolved in the sense that the more comfortable the band members get with interpreting my music, and the more we develop a creative language together, the more honest the music sounds.” That profound musical and personal trust helped make the ensemble a perfect vehicle for a composition augmented by new collaborators — in this case the LCO and NikNak.

Kinoshi and seed. first met turntablist NikNak at the Marsden Jazz Festival in 2019. After spending some time talking politics and sharing jokes it was clear that a creative relationship was possible. “I find that working with formidable artists that I get on well with on a personal level always leads to my best work, and knew as soon as I met NikNak that I wanted to work with them.”

On the genesis of her collaboration with the LCO, Kinoshi says: “I have always wanted to combine seed. with electronics and orchestral elements, as I have always envisioned the band performing multi-disciplinary works. I have long admired the members of the LCO and their way of successfully melding orchestral arrangements and improvisation with more contemporary artists. I was introduced to them via Lexy Morvaridi during his time at the Southbank Centre. It was through his support, creative insight and trust that we were able to make this project happen.” The beauty and harmony of these communal connections plus the depth and deftness of all the musickers involved truly made Kinoshi's dream of this composition a reality.

Running confidently at 21 minutes and 33 seconds (not including the album’s B Side / final track “Smoke in the Sun,” which was recorded separately at Total Refreshment Centre) and going straight for the heart, gratitude is an evolved, emotionally attuned, creatively ambitious and compositionally exquisite philharmonic expression of post-millennial UK jazz. 

International Anthem is proud to present 'Step on Step', a double LP collection of home recordings marking the de-facto eponymous debut album by enigmatic producer, arranger, and composer Charles Stepney (1931-1976). The music that makes up Step on Step was created by Stepney alone, in the basement of his home on the Southside of Chicago, sometime in the late 1960s and early 1970s, before his untimely death in 1976. A Chicago born and bred arranger, producer, multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, Stepney is known for his work with Earth, Wind & Fire, Deniece Williams, and Ramsey Lewis, and as a staff producer for Chess Records in the 1960s, where he was an essential creative force behind seminal recordings by Rotary Connection, Minnie Riperton, Marlena Shaw, Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, Terry Callier, The Dells, The Emotions, and many more. In the decades since his passing, the presence of his name in liner notes and on vinyl labels has become a seal of quality for record collectors, music historians, and aficionados, while his sound has been used by countless samplers in the hip-hop world including Kanye West, A Tribe Called Quest, The Fugees, MF Doom, and Madlib. But in comparison to the post-mortem renown of his sound, or the music he created and the artists he supported while he was alive, Stepney is a greatly underappreciated figure… a genius relegated to the shadows. One of the signature elements of his “baroque soul” sound is the epic, expansive, orchestral expression of his horn and string arrangements (in many cases brought to life by members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra), as heard on Minnie Riperton’s “Les Fleurs,” or Marlena Shaw’s “California Soul,” or Terry Callier’s “What Color Is Love.” Hence making it even more special that his de-facto debut LP Step on Step, which sees its first wide release nearly five decades after his death, is a collection of stripped-down 4-track tape recordings featuring Stepney, alone, performing all instruments with minimal means. It is, as said by Chicago culture historian (and author of Step on Step liner notes) Ayana Contreras, “the uncut funk,” an unprecedented depiction of an imbued composer imagining and conceiving music (some of which would eventually become massive studio productions) in its primal state. Step on Step features 23 tracks, most of which are original compositions by Stepney that were never again recorded by him or any other artist. It also features prototypical, seedling-style demos of Stepney compositions for Earth, Wind & Fire, including “That’s The Way of The World,” “Imagination,” and “On Your Face,” as well as the original version of “Black Gold,” which would eventually be recorded by Rotary Connection (as “I Am The Black Gold of The Sun,” with lyrics by Richard Rudolph). And in addition to the wordless croons of Stepney original and early single “Daddy’s Diddies,” Stepney’s actual voice is heard on a couple occasions across the album, testing microphones and inputs on his tape machine. All of the otherwise unrecorded, previously unnamed original compositions contained on Step on Step were given their titles by Stepney’s daughters Eibur, Charlene, and Chanté Stepney, whose voices are also heard throughout the album, telling stories and sharing memories about their father. The Stepney Sisters, who produced this album over many years, have long been engaged in efforts to celebrate their father’s legacy and bring his work into brighter light. They’ve cherished the tape reels left behind by their father in the basement of their home, transferring the audio on multiple occasions, and originally compiling the recordings for an ultra-limited CD on their own DIY label (The Charles Stepney Masters) in the early 2010s. “We always talk about how we were trying to develop this and would go to different people and they would go ‘what is this raw stuff…’ It was just the first level of something that became something really great,” says Chanté. “To get this type of intimate look into an artist’s process is really unknown and unheard of… so I just really appreciate the opportunity to give this. I am very happy for my Dad that we’re able to share this with the world in this way, with this amount of respect.” This new double LP collection on International Anthem presents “a genuine, beautiful, deeply emotional and personal effort by three women to reconnect with their father and validate their own memories of his passion and brilliance,” says label co-founder Scott McNiece. And it’s a long-overdue fulfillment of Stepney’s unsatiated plan to release a solo album – which he once vowed to his daughters that he would do, and that he would name it: “Step on Step.”

In 2017 Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer traveled together to the Åland Islands (an archipelago that is host to around 6,500 islands) in the Baltic Sea between Sweden and Finland. They headed to the islands with the intention of helping two friends (mother/daughter duo Jannika/Sage Reed) barn raise a small inn named Hotel Svala in Kumlinge (a municipality consisting of a small group of islands and a population of about 320). The idea was that, once completed, Svala would host artist residencies and workshop programs, creating a direct link between the islands and the USA. The concept of recording music there came about as Honer & Chiu learned more and more about the islands. They were taken by the serene and strange quality of the place. The sun doesn’t set in the summer (and barely rises in the winter). The network of miniature islands is traversed by ferry which, according to Chiu, “casts a surreal horizontal movement through space and time, with islands shifting into and out of periphery, totally still and calm, yet always in motion.” In 2019 they were awarded a grant from the Department of Culture to return and perform a concert at the Kumlinge Kyrka, a 14th century medieval church adorned with incredible frescos. The concert was recorded and became source material – along with improvisations on viola and electronics, pipe organ, pump organ, piano, synthesizers, field recordings and voice memos, all captured across both their trips at various locations on the archipelago – from which they meticulously crafted a post-script in the form of 'Recordings from the Åland Islands'. Easing listeners into the feeling of the place, the album’s opening track “In Åland Air” is a dream-like haze that slows time, invoking the feeling of descending by plane onto the archipelago, a place Chiu recalls as “lush with a gentle, brackish breeze...” On “Snåcko,” a track named for the island next to Kumlinge, the music becomes a transportive portrait, painting in sound “the romantic and gentle atmosphere of the forests in Åland — a place where your eyes slowly adjust to the rainbow-colored moss covering granite boulders. Walking around, you find the forest floor blossoming with blueberries, currants, and flowers...” The longest and darkest movement in the collection, “Archipelago,” encapsulates “the experience of being surrounded in the vast network of islands” with a dense cloud of slowly modulating string layers, improvised by Honer in an empty swimming pool at Svala. “The heaviness of the track,” says Honer, “is a reference to the deep darkness experienced during the Nordic winter days.” But the plaintive atmosphere of that penultimate piece is succeeded with the triumphant final movement of the album, “Under the Midnight Sun,” which bellows forth like a vibrant chorus of melodious sighs, echoing classic sounds from Jon Hassell’s 'Vernal Equinox', or Franco Battiato’s 'Clic', or Brian Eno’s 'Another Green World'. Just as two eyes, two ears, and two halves of a brain work together to create a memory, on their duo debut, Honer and Chiu’s collective pallet produces a vivid three-dimensional hyperreality of painterly tones and textures – bright and kaleidoscopic, but with a deeply warm, earthen resonance. The music evokes a powerful sense of place, transporting and immersing listeners in the other-world of the Åland Islands. And though they achieve this in beautifully natural, organic manner, Chiu & Honer agree this album is quite unlike anything they’ve made before, and likely unlike anything they’ll make in the future. ...about Chiu & Honer... The combination of modular synthesizer and viola is an uncommon one, but Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer manage to create a distinctive dyad that comes together with grace and truth. They’ve accomplished this by bringing much more than their respective axes to the table. Years of collaboration, cohabitation, shared experience, and separate but equally inspired commitments to utilitarian cultural work bind their disparate timbres together into a singular aesthetic reality. The two artists met, appropriately, as members of a large ensemble performing Terry Riley’s “In C,” for an annual concert organized by Bitchin Bajas at Chicago modern music hub Constellation. Honer & Chiu had been living and working in Chicago for a long time, both active members of the notoriously interconnected improvisational and experimental music scenes, but they were somehow previously unintroduced. Chiu’s musical CV to that point included work with bands like Icy Demons and Chandeliers, but he was mostly known for his visual and graphic design work as Some All None. Honer had primarily worked as an instructor in Chicago, as well as a member of the ensemble Quartet Datura. In 2014, a year after their first collaboration, together, they decided to migrate to Los Angeles to continue developing their respective careers and crafts in sunnier climes. Relocation to Los Angeles has proven to be fruitful for both artists. Honer has since become a first-call session player for the likes of Adrian Younge and Beyoncé. She’s also played on recordings by Chloe x Halle, Angel Olsen, Fleet Foxes, and Stanley Clarke, among others, including five recordings with Grammy nominations. Along with her session work, Honer is on the music faculty at California State University. Chiu has expanded his visual work in numerous capacities, in addition to becoming an active intersectional community organizer, and refocusing his musical practice to electronic music composition and sound art. He’s also become an Assistant Professor at Otis College of Art & Design; has exhibited/performed at The Getty Center, LACMA, and other distinguished locales; has become a resident programmer for Dublab; and has generated a strong unit of regular musical collaborators that includes Celia Hollander, Booker Stardrum, Ben Babbitt, Dustin Wong, Takako Minekawa, and Sam Prekop. Chiu has also designed album artwork for several International Anthem releases, including Angel Bat Dawid's Transition East, Dos Santos's City of Mirrors, Jeff Parker's Forfolks, and JP's Myspace Beats.

Jeff Parker, who is familiar with activities such as Tortoise and Chicago Underground Quartet, announces the latest work from the sanctuary of US contemporary jazz . It is an album composed of solo guitar works including interpretations of "Ugly Beauty" and "My Ideal" by Celonias Monk and 6 original songs, and it is a home in Altadena, California in June 2021. A gem of improvisational minimal ambient work recorded by Graeme Gibson in the studio over a two-day period!

With a lineup that includes Jamire Williams, Makaya McCraven, and Makaya McCraven, he delivers excellent, cutting-edge jazz and beat, from his own original compositions to Coltrane covers. This is a timeless masterpiece that was released on HEADZ in Japan.

The New Breed", the 2016 masterpiece from Jeff Parker, known for his work with Tortoise and the Chicago Underground Quartet, has been reissued for the 2021 edition of International Anthem. The New Breed is an experimental beat/jazz album with lo-fi good vibes, supported by Jamire Williams, John McEntire and many others. It's an experimental beat/jazz with lo-fi good vibes.

Nearly 48 hours of live improvised performance recorded at 1 venue over 12 months and 28 shows - culled, cut, rendered, and remixed into 19 potent pieces of organic beat music.

ドラマーのTom Sunneyとキーボード奏者のFilip Sowaからなる西ロンドンのデュオ、Kessoncodaによる最新アルバム『Outerstate』が英国の現代ジャズの聖地〈Gondwana Records〉からアナログ・リリース。ロックやエレクトロニカ、アンビエント、ブレイクビーツ、映画のサウンドトラック、Squarepusher、Radiohead、Clarkといった様々なインスピレーションを軸としつつ、アコースティックの伝統とエレクトロニカの間に佇む彼らのサウンドは、メロディアスなオスティナートが織り込まれたピアノと揺るぎないドラムのブレンドに基づいた、心地よく、新しいヴィジョンを示すものとなっています。

Elevating, uplifting and beautifully arranged. Jasmine Myra's sophomore album Rising builds on the success of her breakthrough album Horizons to deliver a major statement from one of UK Jazz's rising stars. Produced by Matthew Halsall and mixed by Greg Freeman (Hania Rani, Matthew Halsall, Portico Quartet), Rising delivers a confident and vibrant follow up that joins the musical dots between Myra’s influences Kenny Wheeler, Bonobo and Shabaka Hutchings while delivering something unique, beautiful and profound. "Much like my first album, Rising is a reflection of a period of my life. It is a continuation from Horizons, which was all about my experience during lockdown, and entailed overcoming my struggles with mental health. Following on from that experience, I set out to continue building my self-confidence". Rising features the same core of musicians as Myra’s debut album Horizons with guitarist Ben Haskins, drummer George Hall pianist Jasper Green, harpist Alice Roberts (who both also perform with Matthew Halsall) and bassist Sam Quintana who collectively bring a deft understating of the subtle textures of Myra’s music and perform with a collective empathy and drive that really pushes the music on a radiant journey. And a string quartet add gently elevating textures to Still Waters, Knowingness, From Embers and How Tall The Mountains.

With her third Gondwana album, ‘Constellation’, Caoilfhionn Rose has come of age as an artist, digging deep to find experimental new ways of expressing her wonder at nature’s beauty, her love of music in all its diversity, and her belief in the restorative powers that both afford in the troubled post-COVID world. The ten tracks on ‘Constellation’ feel rooted in a knowledge of folk, jazz and all the twentieth century’s classic tunesmiths, and yet they seem to create a magical, otherworldly space of her own imagining, blending Caoilfhionn’s core piano with synths, and pitting a live rhythm section and saxophone embellishments against ambient samples and future-facing production techniques. ‘Constellation’ features contributions from Halsall’s rhythm section, drummer Alan Taylor and bassist Gavin Barras, as well as Jordan Smart from Mammal Hands, whose supple sax exquisitely colours the fringes of most of its songs. Also guesting: John Ellis, former member of The Cinematic Orchestra, beatifically tinkling the ivories at the end of ‘Fall Into Place’, and producer Aaron Wood via a raft of ambient samples adding textured loveliness throughout ‘Rainfall’. “I love being open to collaboration,” Rose enthuses, “and the record’s a collage, knitting together all these influences, sounds and players, and just really going for it with the experimentation in the production.”

Based in musically fertile Leeds, the 14-member jazz ensemble Ancient Infinity Orchestra have made an album (their debut for Gondwana Records) that marries influences like John and Alice Coltrane with an emphatically Northern style, alongside a communal aspect of recording that fits both the aforementioned artists and the thriving jazz scene of their hometown. River of Light was recorded in just 3 days, the massive cast of players – key member and saxophonist Matthew Halsall is part of a rotating lineup of violinists, harpists, flautists and more – working with a similarly sized choir of Brighton friends. Over this time, the collective made food together and jammed in the heat between tracks, inducing a wholesome, exuberant warmth that percolates throughout the album.

Phi-Psonics is a meditative, deeply soulful, immersive instrumental group from Los Angeles, led by bassist Seth Ford-Young and featuring Sylvain Carton on woodwinds, Mitchell Yoshida on electric piano, and Josh Collazo on drums. Their beautiful music draws on jazz and classical influences together with Ford-Young’s own musical experiences, relationships, and his introduction to spirituality, yoga and philosophy at a young age. Along the way they create something uniquely their own, sharing beautiful landscapes for your spirit to roam freely within. Octava is their second album and like their debut The Cradle, it’s emotional, introspective, and unusual approach to meditative jazz offers us a beautiful space for uplifting contemplation and wields a quiet power to create a spiritually inspiring world of timeless, warm melodies and instrumental exploration for the deep listener and thoughtful voyager. Seth explains: “This album is about change and evolution to a higher version of ourselves. Understanding this journey through the idea of ascending a musical scale and arriving at a new, higher octave is natural especially for a musician. We move, struggle, and work through the various steps or tones and arrive at the octave a new version of ourselves, still the same person, but vibrating at a higher frequency.”

Strut present the first official reissue of a landmark album in the field of African music, Mulatu Astatke’s ‘Mulatu Of Ethiopia’ from 1972. Recorded in New York, the album arrived at a time when Astatke had begun to master the delicate fusion of styles needed to create Ethio jazz. “I left the UK for America and studied at Berklee College in Boston. I learnt the technical aspects of jazz and gained a beautiful understanding of many different types of music. That’s where I got my tools. Berklee really shook me up.” Journeying regularly to the Big Apple to play and watch live shows at the Cheetah, the Palladium and the Village Gate, Astatke met producer Gil Snapper on the circuit. “Gil was a nice and very interesting guy. He produced music and worked with all kinds of musicians.” The meeting would lead to a series of albums on Snapper’s Worthy label. The first, ‘Afro Latin Soul’, documented Astatke’s new-found directions. “Mulatu has created a new sound,” enthused Snapper on the album jacket. “He has taken the ancient five-tone scales of Asia and Africa and woven them into something unique and exciting; a mixture of three cultures, Ethiopian, Puerto Rican and American.” A second volume of ‘Afro Latin Soul’ followed before Astatke began to hone his sound further, infusing funk and Azmari “chik-chikka” rhythms into the mix. Returning to a downtown Manhattan studio with Snapper and working with some of the city’s top young jazz and latin session players, ‘Mulatu Of Ethiopia’ began to take shape. “We rehearsed for 3-4 weeks,” remembers Astatke. “it took them a while to get the right feeling in the music.” The resultant album represented the first fully formed document of Astatke’s trademark Ethio jazz sound. It features ‘Kulunmanqueleshi’, ‘Dewel’, and ‘Kasalefku-Hulu’, tracks that Mulatu would return to regularly on singles and in live shows, the Ethio-Latin workout ‘Chifara’ and the self-titled groover ‘Mulatu’ (“I wanted to make a track for…. myself!”).

A deluxe, embossed 2 LP box set. Alongside a remastered version of PHAROAH, his seminal record from 1977, are two previously unreleased live performances of his masterpiece, “Harvest Time." Includes a 24-page booklet with rarely seen photographs and ephemera, as well as interviews with many of the participants and a conversation with Pharoah himself.

Regardless of the confluence of events that led to this dream pairing, there’s a strong hint of clear-minded innovation to Promises. The debut collaboration LP from electronic musician Sam Shepherd aka Floating Points and legendary saxophonist Pharaoh Sanders, backed to a lavish fullness by The London Symphony Orchestra, feels like the murmurs of an entirely new language for jazz, quite distinct from either participant’s prior output — in fact, it seems to illuminate a hidden lexicon we didn’t know either artist had in the first place.

We say jazz, but Promises truly defies categorisation with its moody atmosphere and indeterminate music-like patience. The nine movements of the LP gently cradle a circular note pattern in the way of a minimalist classical piece, as a flood of synth and string drones gradually fill the empty spaces in-between. As this deep meditation progresses, Sanders recalls his adventurous past work with the Coltranes by undergoing his own inner journey, his sax flitting between conversational licks, esoteric mouth sounds and white-hot fury, bobbing against the rising tide of electronics, organs and orchestra swells.

In the Spring of 1966, ESP was given a grant by the New York State Council on the Arts, to tour the five colleges in the state with music departments. Artists for this tour included the Sun Ra Arkestra, Burton Greene, Patty Waters, Giuseppi Logan and Ran Blake. Accompanied by an all star backup group from among the participants, Patty's performances resulted in the album, "College Tour", her second recording for ESP-Disk'. The album expands upon the vocal acrobatics that were heard on her first recording, "Sings". "College Tour" won second place for Vocal Recording in Jazz and Pop Magazine in 1970.

Patty Waters is internationally recognized as one of the first major avant-garde vocalists. Her ESP-Disk' recordings cemented her reputation as a vocal innovator, and according to liner notes and public opinion, one whose influence extended beyond jazz to Yoko Ono and Diamanda Galas.
 

Known for the meditative ambient jazz masterpiece "Natten"! This work is also outstanding! The prestigious label "Luaka Bop" presided over by David Byrne of Talking Heads has announced the latest work "Kosmos" by Bremer McCoy, a noteworthy jazz unit from Denmark consisting of keyboardist Jonathan Bremer and acoustic bassist Morten McCoy.

"Sandman has added South Indian music to the genre-bending mix, along with funk grooves and nods to the Heath Robinson analog-synth adventures of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in the 1950s and 1960s" ⭐️ All About Jazz (UK) ⭐️ “The Sandman Project speaks the universal language of…global pop” ⭐️ Bayern Radio 7.4/10 (DE) ⭐️ “An exhilarating ten-track oeuvre, an evocative, borderless potpourri of global surf 'n' turf styles with a jazz ethos" ⭐️ Greedy For Best (DE) ⭐️ “It pivots around the character of Mulatu Astatke and the Fleet Foxes with winds and guitar and a little electronic touch from Brian Eno” ⭐️ DJ Magazine (ES) ⭐️ “This outfit is a jack of all trades and, on this evidence, a master of them all too” ⭐️ Pipelines Magazine (UK) ⭐️ “Brilliant album, will playlist on my PBB Radio show” ⭐️ Laurent Garnier (FR) ⭐️ Sandman Project’s long awaited debut album Where Did You Go? is a borderless amalgam of brass heavy sounds, a document of a band whose musical tendencies mimic their open-minded ethic where Ethio- jazz, Afrobeat, American soul music and psychedelic, Mediterranean funk traverse. Led by guitarist and composer Tal Sandman, Tel Aviv based Sandman Projects’s last release was in 2018 on their debut EP, their only existing recording. Six years later and it is no surprise this expansive work is positively brimming with an ocean of ideas, rooted in jazz, exceptionally crafted and boasting a myriad of musical pivots with a subtle but crucial production and synth touch by producer Tomer Baruch. Absolutely key to this new recording and Tal’s adult musical upbringing and education is the ongoing influence of saxophonist Abate Barihun, sometimes known as the Ethiopian John Coltrane who is an Ethiopian Jew who emigrated to Israel in 1999. Whilst he doesn’t feature directly on the record, Tal has long been mentored and stewarded by him and she affirms that “his inspiration continues to play a crucial role in my creative process.” And so, to the album’s title track Where Did you Go which oozes film- noir with Tal’s omnipresent Tizta sound using the Tezeta scales from Ethiopia dictating the mood whilst synths transcend and build an immersive soundscape something akin to Mulatu Astake jamming with the Fleet Foxes with Brian Eno-esque electronic manipulation. The Sandman project line up comprises of 5 core musicians with Tal Sandman on electric guitar, Tal Avraham playing trumpet, Tal Eyal on percussion, Noam Cherchie on drums and Ariel Harrosh on bass. Additional synth and organ provided by producer Tomer Baruch and guest vocalist Dafna Shilon joins on the album closer The Other Side. The group all live in Tel Aviv with Tal living in the Jaffa neighborhood for 12 years and the official birth-place of the Sandman Project. Jaffa is a diverse urban region where Arabs, Jews, Christians and many more live harmoniously together and it’s here where Tal has been active in building community ties and where she has recently started learning Arabic. The recent and shocking violence and war in Israel and Palestine has strengthened the bonds within the Jaffa community and a sense of unity and desire for peace has pervaded echoing Tal’s wish for peace, for real and imagined boundaries to dissolve and war and survival to be replaced with compassion and humanity. Jaffa is also Tal’s place of respite and spiritual place of being, where she returned to after significant musical and creative excursions to Goa in India (where she formed the Goa Afrobeat Band) and to London where she created a branch of the Sandman Project. Tal’s recent trip to Goa is effectively soundtracked on the album opener Karnataka, which borrows from the east, both the spirit and it’s drumming, inspired by a South Indian wedding ceremony. Trumpets and Tal’s incessant but measured guitar riffing using Indian scales transcends into a beautiful soundtrack of jazz and psychedelia energized with a propulsive funk. Temptation & Figs reverberates with a sly groove, an organ filled and chilled groove given a life affirming vibe with it repetitive and harmonized vocal pass building to a trumpet crescendo. The cine flavoured edge of Sandman Project goes wide screen on The X Files as bizarre electronic gurgling remiss of early BBC Radiophonic recordings intertwine with horn stabs and a percussion solo. Further vintage synth excursions repeat on Cauda Equina, with Tal’s heavy fretting giving the track a funk feel, and a dreamy one as the trumpet builds. Dafna Shilon’s entrance at the end of the album on The Other Side is unique in that it brings a skank to proceedings and is the only lyrical song from the collection. Six years in the waiting, and with plentiful personal and collective transformation giving Where Did You Go? a deeper sense of geography and global nuance, the new sound of Sandman Project is rich, porous and dreamy and essentially, full of hope.

Saadia Jefferson is a glorious act of vandalism on Yemeni traditions led by inventor, carpenter, musician, and composer Eyal El Wahab. Dismantling lyrics, melodies, and compositions from Yemeni folk songs, El Khat delve into uncharted sonic territory updating Yemen's ancient culture. Using an orchestra of instruments old and new, many repurposed from junk objects and turned into instruments that sound similar to traditional Arabic and North African lutes and percussion, Tel Aviv based El Khat have imagined an indelible stamp of polyphonic, harmony soaked, pan-Arabic braindance. Hover over the tracks and you can pick out certain influences such as Omar Souleyman and dabkefolk characterised by trance-inducing chants (Wahed Mozawej), the searing Ethiopique organ of Mulatu Astatke (Ala Jina Nuhayiykum), and the unashamedly sing-along choruses of Bowie or McCartney (Balagh Al Achbaab), but the over-arching concept within Saadia Jefferson is Eyal's sense of identity, or lack of it, as a Yemeni living in Tel Aviv. The album is the rewards of a self-imposed mission to discover Eyal El Wahab's Yemeni roots.

First reissue of these cult 1974 recordings of a Mayan brass band playing funeral dirges and popular songs in its distinctive extended harmonic and rhythmic style. The members of the San Lucas Band lived in the mountain village of San Lucas Tolimán, Guatemala, playing local events of both religious and social nature. The pride of its town since 1922, the band represented a fast-disappearing musical tradition when these recordings were originally released in 1975. Its unique sound derived from an unusual combination of instruments, a repertoire including pieces dating from more than fifty years before the recordings were made to more recent ones, and above all from the highland Maya style of its playing, which is characterized by a preference for freer rhythmic structures and a wider variety of pitches than Western scales allow. One of Jon Hassell and Charlie Haden's favorite records, it was nominated for a Grammy Award upon first release and has remained much beloved by a small community of enthusiasts for decades. A profound and rewarding musical experience for all adventurous listeners, notably fans of Albert Ayler, microtonal and raw cosmic music.

"Selected Ambient Works 85-92" is one of those rare albums where a composer provides clear evidence that he or she is in that special class of artistic genius where true originality is possible. I'm not suggesting that this is Aphex Twin's best album, as best work was yet to come; nor am I suggesting that this is one of the greatest electronic albums of all time. Perhaps it is, but the key is its influence. "SAW" is practically synonymous with that early Warp Records sound (although SAW wasn't actually released on Warp). The album is one of the sacred texts of the Intelligent Dance Music (IDM) movement and on this disc, you can hear the ideas that helped make electronic music what it is today. "SAW" dates back to a time when Aphex Twin was using a lot of analogue gear and the tracks have a nice warmth to them. Many of the sounds on this album will already be familiar to most listeners since they entered the canon of electronic sounds long ago. The cool thing is, this album is where so much began.

3rd album by Los Angeles based jazz duo Nicole McCabe and Logan Kane. Widely known for legendary concerts featuring instrumental madness amongst many synths and bonkers dance beats, Dolphin Hyperspace finds a new lane of expression within modern jazz and beat culture.

Etran de L’Aïr the STARS OF THE AÏR, the longest running wedding band in AGADEZ, capital of Tuareg guitar, return with a new album of sun-schlazed desert sound! Their first album, No.1, brought their music to critics and fans. Their second album, Agadez, sent them into the international touring circuit. And now they're back with 100% SAHARA GUITAR, ready to take on the world, with those swinging melodies, like a sandstorm blowing in from across the sea. Etran de L’Aïr are 100% SAHARA, and that goes same for the band, all sons of AGADEZ, including brothers Moussa, Abdoulaye, and Abdourahamane, and their dear friend, the youngest of the group, Alghabid. All the brothers write and play guitar, swapping out instruments while Alghabid keeps the FOUR ON THE FLOOR. In 100% SAHARA GUITAR, Etran de L’Aïr are back to claim the throne, with their first studio album! And what a sound it is. Recorded in sunny studios on the WEST COAST, the brothers take that old Agadez sound to new levels, adding even more guitars into the mix, weaving layers of reverb-laden melodies and shimmering harmonies into a tapestry of sound. How much guitar can they fit into one record? The answer is 100%.