MUSIC

Svaneborg Kardyb are Nikolaj Svaneborg – Wurlitzer, Juno, piano and Jonas Kardyb – drums, percussion a multi award winning duo from Denmark, where they won two “grammys” at the Danish Music Awards Jazz 2019: New artist of the year and Composer of the year.
Drawing on Danish folk music and Scandinavian jazz influences, including Nils Frahm, Esbjörn Svennson and Jan Johansson’s landmark recording Jazz På Svenska, their music is an exquisite and joyful melding of beautiful melodies, delicate minimalism, catchy grooves, subtle electronica vibes, Nordic atmospheres and organic interplay, all underwritten by the sheer joy of playing together. Following on from their Gondwana Records debut 'Over Tage', 'Superkilen' their forthcoming album, is named after a public park in the ethnically diverse Nørrebro district of Copenhagen. This erstwhile strip of waste ground was repurposed by the Superflex art group in the early 2010’s to bring together immigrants and locals in a mood of tolerance and unity. Its title feels emblematic of their music, which, equally inventively, creates space and serenity as a tonic within the tense and cluttered environment of 2020’s living. In the same way that the regeneration project has transformed that neighbourhood, Svaneborg Kardyb have drawn on that positive energy to help instigate changes in their own music.

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.

On the 6th of October 2023, the release date of her third solo album ‘Ghosts’, Hania Rani organised a special album release concert with a string ensemble in a very unique location - Witold Lutosławski's Concert Studio at the Polish Radio in Warsaw. “Over the years, the spaces of Polish Radio became an important part of my life - both privately and professionally. I visited it for the first time as a student of Chopin University of Music and came back to make my first recordings in late 2018, just before the release of the debut album ‘Esja’. Since then I have been a regular guest.” The building is located in the Mokotów district in Warsaw and has served generations of musicians and sound engineers for decades. For Hania it is a home from home; a beloved recording studio but something more important and resonant too. Nostalgia does more than just present a memorable concert; it celebrates a space and an idea as through the mediums of photography and recorded sound. Hania creates something profound and enlightening. “Some months after this special concert in Studio S1 I came back to the chambers of Polish Radio. This time not as a musician, but as an observer. It was one of the coldest Mondays of January and Warsaw was adorned with fresh, plush snow. The building seemed completely empty, so I was able to navigate freely with my camera from space to space without interruption. I relished each object and each room waiting patiently to be consumed by a film roll. The obscure lighting was putting things in a subtle movement, the strong white beams were making them still again” Through Nostalgia, Hania presents the studios in her own perspective, as somewhere unique and unknown. A place of work, but something more. A place of ghosts and hidden meanings, of inspiration and mystery; The deluxe LP comes with a 16-page booklet featuring Hania’s unique analogue photos, along with her thoughts on the recording process, studios, and the compositions themselves. The CD includes these photos in a beautifully glued-in 12-page booklet.

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.

Never released outside South Africa since its original release in 1974, Outernational Sounds presents one of the most sought-after international jazz exclusives ever to appear on South Africa's famous Gallo imprint: the funky, spiritual and outward bound Habiba. Limited, fully licensed vinyl reissue of a lost modal classic by renowned pianist Kirk Lightsey and Black Jazz stalwart Rudolph Johnson. As the archives of South Africa's premier record labels steadily give up the treasures that were hidden in the darkness of the apartheid era, the incredible heritage of South African jazz is gradually finding an international audience. And while most of the laurels are naturally for South Africa's own overlooked musicians, the South African discography contains a few sparkling, nearly unknown jazz sessions by visiting players. Habiba is the greatest of them -- a raw, impassioned set led by bop pianist Kirk Lightsey, who had been a regular sideman for Chet Baker and Sonny Stitt, and saxophonist Rudolph Johnson, a key player at the storied West Coast indie Black Jazz. Visits to the apartheid state by respected Black musicians were hardly a common occurrence during apartheid's darkest years -- so how did a crew of crack American jazz players end up in the Gallo studios? The story starts with the now almost forgotten crooner, Lovelace Watkins. Sometimes billed as "the Black Sinatra", the Detroit-born Watkins sang standards, show tunes and ballroom classics on the Las Vegas circuit. In his 1970s heyday he was a huge star in the UK and in southern Africa, where he toured regularly. In 1974 he hired a jazz big band to accompany him on a tour of South Africa -- and among their number were Lightsey and Johnson, as well as Mastersounds bassist Monk Montgomery, West Coast trombonist Al Hall Jr., and Marshall Royal, musical director of the Count Basie band. The tour was a huge success, and during downtime from performing, members of Watkin's group independently record no fewer than three albums. Two of these LPs appeared on the IRC label, billed as the Mallory-Hall Band -- the third, on the more prestigious Gallo, was Habiba. Three tracks deep, the album is a heavy-duty excursion into post-Coltrane spiritual modernism, ranging from the modal, cerebral intensity of the side-long title track "Habiba", to the downhome breakbeat groove of "There It Is", and the dark glitter of minor key waltz "Fresh Air". Long one of the most desired global jazz LPs, and never before available outside South Africa, Habiba is a forgotten masterpiece of its era.

1971 REVOLUTIONARY SPIRITUAL AFRO JAZZ FROM EXILE Matsuli Music presents soul, spirituality and avant-garde jazz from South African political exile Ndikho Xaba. Its rarity has until now served to obscure both its beauty and its historical significance. Making profound links between the struggle against apartheid and the Black Power movement in the USA Ndikho Xaba and the Natives is arguably the most complete and complex South African jazz LP recorded in the USA. It stands out as a critical document in the history of transatlantic black solidarity and in the jazz culture of South African exiles. This reissue from Matsuli Music brings this collectors’ treasure back into print for the first time since 1971. Ndikho Xaba and the Natives opens a fluid channel of sonic energy that courses between two liberation struggles and two jazz traditions, making them one. It is a critical statement in the history of transatlantic black solidarity, unifying voices stretching from San Francisco to Johannesburg. There is no other recording or group in which the new jazz spirituality of the late 1960s is so fully blent with an African jazz tradition. The limited edition vinyl edition is presented with re-mastered sound in a gatefold sleeve containing unseen photographs and concert bills from Ndikho Xaba’s personal archive together with a personal recollection from Plunky Branch and extensive sleeve-notes written by Francis Gooding. The CD version reproduces this new content in a 24 page booklet as well including two additional tracks taken from a hard to find single released by Ndikho Xaba’s band African Echoes.

Limited, fully licensed 180g vinyl-only reissue for a hidden gem of South African jazz. Featuring tracks: Side A: Oh Happy Day; You And Me Together; Nqomfi Side B: Philia; Rabothata; Micky One of the rarest and most sought after South African recordings of the early 1970s, available again for the first time since its original South African release – the swinging township groove of The Jazz Clan’s 1973 debut LP, Dedication Die-hard fans of South African jazz speak about The Jazz Clan in hushed tones. One of the dozens of South African groups who styled themselves as ‘jazz dignitaries’ – like the Jazz Giants, the Jazz Ambassadors, or the Jazz Ministers, for instance – their two widely separated studio albums for Gallo (Dedications and Makwenkwe, released in 1973 and 1976 respectively) are extremely hard to find, and were never repressed after their initial runs. Until now their work has graced neither re-release nor compilation. But they were no also-rans. They may have left a small recorded footprint, but it was an impressive one, epitomised by their hard-swinging 1973 debut, Dedication – a tough, swinging soul-jazz set with distinct African touches which is counted by those in the know as among the best South African jazz recordings of the era. Once you dig down into the history of the group, this is no surprise: the players that comprised the Jazz Clan were veterans. And they thought big – their first incarnation during the 1960s had been as a 16-piece, and they had held down a residency at one of Nelson Mandela’s regular haunts, the Planet Hotel in Fordsburg. The original leader, drummer Gordon ‘Micky’ Mfandu, had been a regular on the Johannesburg jazz scene since the early 1960s and had recorded with figures including Gideon Nxumalo, and the famous Blue Notes; along with bassist Mongezi Velelo he had also been a member of the revered Soul Giants unit. Baritone player Cornelius Khumalo had also played with Chris McGregor and the Blue Notes in the pit band of the musical play Mr Paljas, and had also recorded with township legend Zakes Nkosi. Also in the line-up, and handling most writing duties on this disc, was the great trumpeter Peter Segona – a quicksilver hornsman, Segona later sought exile in Europe, where he played with musical luminaries across the continent including Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath, Cymande, and Manu Dibango. By the 1970s Mfandu was dead, murdered in Soweto, and the group had consolidated as a septet – the late drummer is memorialised here on closer ‘Micky’. South African jazz was moving toward electrified funk and bump, and the new township style of Dollar Brand was just around the corner. But Dedication captures the acoustic jazz sound of the early 1970s in its pomp – a handful of tightly wound songs jostling for space, blending uptempo soul-jazz sensibilities with Latin influences and pronounced township jazz accents, the latter especially audible in Dimpie Tshabalala’s piano vamps, Jeff Mpete’s pattering hi-hat emphases, and the unmistakably South African swagger and dip of the horns on cuts like ‘Rabothata’. It is music on the brink of a transition, looking ahead but still dedicated to the sound of the golden years, and it could have been made nowhere else on earth but in Soweto. Transferred from the master tapes by Gallo in South Africa, mastered for release by D&M and pressed at Pallas. Fully licensed from Gallo South Africa. Distributed by Honest Jons. Outernational Sounds: Bringing you Spiritual, Eastern, Afro Eurasian, Middle Eastern, and Outer Galactic Deep Jazz Vibes from around the globe and beyond...

When Festival de Frue’s organizers asked Sam Wilkes to put together an ensemble for their 2022 festival, they initially asked for the band he created for his 2021 album “One Theme & Subsequent Improvisation.” With keyboardist Chris Fishman (Pat Metheny, Louis Cole) the only member of that group who was available, Wilkes asked that the organizers select one of two groups as an alternative: a Trio featuring drummer Craig Weinrib (Henry Threadgill, Amen Dunes) and guitarist Dylan Day (Jenny Lewis, Jackson Browne)—with whom Wilkes recently released a trio album—or a Quartet featuring Weinrib, Fishman, and keyboardist and guitarist Thom Gill (KNOWER, Joseph Shabason). “I couldn’t make the decision on which band I should bring, I felt very confused about it,” he says. Through a strange series of miscommunications—or simply a bit of serendipity—both Wilkes and the Frue organizers thought the other had suggested combining the ensembles into a Quintet including members of both groups. An idea that neither side voiced somehow became the obvious choice. The combined Quintet represents what Wilkes calls “two disparate worlds in my community,” that of the “virtuosic, fast-paced grid” of music played with Fishman and Gill, “and this other thing with Dylan that’s coming from different elements of traditional American music.” Luckily, Weinrib fits seamlessly into both worlds. While all members of the group played on Wilkes’ 2023 album Driving, they’d never all played together. They had one five-hour rehearsal in Tokyo, but, Wilkes says, “It was impossible for me to predict how this music was going to sound.” His strategy, after showing them the arrangements of several of his own compositions and a few covers, was to “allow everyone to blossom fully” with the hope that “what I’ll get is everyone’s personality being expressed unfettered.” iiyo iiyo iiyo is Sam Wilkes’ fifth album as bandleader and arranger, and the atmosphere is so rich it spills out of the speakers. The album, a document of the Quintet’s meeting, was recorded live at Festival de Frue in Kakegawa and at WWWX in Tokyo, where they played headlining sets for hundreds of people. Not that you’d know it from the intimate interplay between the players or the small-room feel of the recording. In opener “Descending,” which made its debut on Wilkes’ 2018 self-titled album, the mood is so cozy you’d swear the sound of kids at play in the back of the hall had been sampled in—another perfect bit of serendipity. For Wilkes, setting the right tone for a performance or a recording is paramount, and it’s inseparable from how he understands his role as a bassist. “My entryway into understanding my thing, what I care about the most in music, was through accompaniment; focusing on time, feel, tone, form, and most importantly, listening.” he says. “There are things that are ineffable about that, which is the energy. But there are also conscious and subconscious decisions, where I’m arranging and orchestrating to create the ultimate environment for, say, Dylan to play his melody over, or Thom to play his. Those are choices as much as reactions, combining in equal parts in-depth preparation and total improvisation” The title iiyo iiyo iiyo is a Japanese expression used in response to an outpouring of gratitude, a cheeky way of brushing the accolades off of oneself. Accordingly, the record is full of charming, homespun personality. In a gorgeous version of the standard “I Wanna Be Loved,” Day plays the melody in a way that moves between washed-out ambient gauze and a traditionally beautiful run of lines that echoes the Dinah Washington original. While the band circulates the mantric melody in “Descending,” Fishman dots around it on his Moog One, opening a new seam in a song that’s quickly become a Wilkes standard. Weinrib’s patient, impressionistic brush strokes seem to swirl beneath the melody, while Gill fogs the room with thick, reverb-heavy accompaniment from his keys. And where is Wilkes in all this? He’s guiding his friends, helping them decorate a room that he himself built, drawing them deeper into the song’s wistful, hopeful, grounded atmosphere. His polyphonic voicings—a signature of his playing—sets out the song’s boundaries and acts as both its musical and emotional anchor. It’s the approach Wilkes takes across the album, using his phrasing as both the music’s gravitational center and its heart, and he does it to perfection in the opening minute or so of “Girl.” The song originally appeared on Sam Wilkes “Sings” (2014–2016)” in what he calls a “psychotically different arrangement.” On stage in Kakegawa, he slows the song to a crawl and isolates its central chords. He plays them gently, patiently; he voices the chords with the clarity of a person who’s just cried out all of their confusion. As Wilkes says, his role as a bassist means that he’s the foundation of these songs, and foundations by their very nature tend to be obscured. Here, for one lovely moment, he strips everything back to the studs, revealing the lush architecture that holds this miraculous music together.

When Festival de Frue’s organizers asked Sam Wilkes to put together an ensemble for their 2022 festival, they initially asked for the band he created for his 2021 album “One Theme & Subsequent Improvisation.” With keyboardist Chris Fishman (Pat Metheny, Louis Cole) the only member of that group who was available, Wilkes asked that the organizers select one of two groups as an alternative: a Trio featuring drummer Craig Weinrib (Henry Threadgill, Amen Dunes) and guitarist Dylan Day (Jenny Lewis, Jackson Browne)—with whom Wilkes recently released a trio album—or a Quartet featuring Weinrib, Fishman, and keyboardist and guitarist Thom Gill (KNOWER, Joseph Shabason). “I couldn’t make the decision on which band I should bring, I felt very confused about it,” he says. Through a strange series of miscommunications—or simply a bit of serendipity—both Wilkes and the Frue organizers thought the other had suggested combining the ensembles into a Quintet including members of both groups. An idea that neither side voiced somehow became the obvious choice. The combined Quintet represents what Wilkes calls “two disparate worlds in my community,” that of the “virtuosic, fast-paced grid” of music played with Fishman and Gill, “and this other thing with Dylan that’s coming from different elements of traditional American music.” Luckily, Weinrib fits seamlessly into both worlds. While all members of the group played on Wilkes’ 2023 album Driving, they’d never all played together. They had one five-hour rehearsal in Tokyo, but, Wilkes says, “It was impossible for me to predict how this music was going to sound.” His strategy, after showing them the arrangements of several of his own compositions and a few covers, was to “allow everyone to blossom fully” with the hope that “what I’ll get is everyone’s personality being expressed unfettered.” iiyo iiyo iiyo is Sam Wilkes’ fifth album as bandleader and arranger, and the atmosphere is so rich it spills out of the speakers. The album, a document of the Quintet’s meeting, was recorded live at Festival de Frue in Kakegawa and at WWWX in Tokyo, where they played headlining sets for hundreds of people. Not that you’d know it from the intimate interplay between the players or the small-room feel of the recording. In opener “Descending,” which made its debut on Wilkes’ 2018 self-titled album, the mood is so cozy you’d swear the sound of kids at play in the back of the hall had been sampled in—another perfect bit of serendipity. For Wilkes, setting the right tone for a performance or a recording is paramount, and it’s inseparable from how he understands his role as a bassist. “My entryway into understanding my thing, what I care about the most in music, was through accompaniment; focusing on time, feel, tone, form, and most importantly, listening.” he says. “There are things that are ineffable about that, which is the energy. But there are also conscious and subconscious decisions, where I’m arranging and orchestrating to create the ultimate environment for, say, Dylan to play his melody over, or Thom to play his. Those are choices as much as reactions, combining in equal parts in-depth preparation and total improvisation” The title iiyo iiyo iiyo is a Japanese expression used in response to an outpouring of gratitude, a cheeky way of brushing the accolades off of oneself. Accordingly, the record is full of charming, homespun personality. In a gorgeous version of the standard “I Wanna Be Loved,” Day plays the melody in a way that moves between washed-out ambient gauze and a traditionally beautiful run of lines that echoes the Dinah Washington original. While the band circulates the mantric melody in “Descending,” Fishman dots around it on his Moog One, opening a new seam in a song that’s quickly become a Wilkes standard. Weinrib’s patient, impressionistic brush strokes seem to swirl beneath the melody, while Gill fogs the room with thick, reverb-heavy accompaniment from his keys. And where is Wilkes in all this? He’s guiding his friends, helping them decorate a room that he himself built, drawing them deeper into the song’s wistful, hopeful, grounded atmosphere. His polyphonic voicings—a signature of his playing—sets out the song’s boundaries and acts as both its musical and emotional anchor. It’s the approach Wilkes takes across the album, using his phrasing as both the music’s gravitational center and its heart, and he does it to perfection in the opening minute or so of “Girl.” The song originally appeared on Sam Wilkes “Sings” (2014–2016)” in what he calls a “psychotically different arrangement.” On stage in Kakegawa, he slows the song to a crawl and isolates its central chords. He plays them gently, patiently; he voices the chords with the clarity of a person who’s just cried out all of their confusion. As Wilkes says, his role as a bassist means that he’s the foundation of these songs, and foundations by their very nature tend to be obscured. Here, for one lovely moment, he strips everything back to the studs, revealing the lush architecture that holds this miraculous music together.

Two days after his 100th birthday, Marshall Allen started recording New Dawn, his debut solo album. A member of Sun Ra’s Arkestra since 1958, Allen assumed leadership of the band in 1995. Throughout his nearly seventy-year career, Allen has never released a solo album under his own name, and yet, instead of capping such a legendary output, New Dawn seems to herald a new beginning. A love letter to spacetime, it channels a century of musical intelligence into seven tracks, showing Allen at his most protean — freely moving from relaxed, transdimensional palettes to bluesy big band and beyond.

One of music’s vanguard avant-saxophonists, Allen continues to deliver durational feats during the Arkestra’s gigs. Still, the compositional energy contained on New Dawn is striking. Allen was approached with the idea of a solo record by Week-End Records’ Jan Lankisch. The Arkestra’s Knoel Scott — who has lived with Allen at the Arkestral Institute of Sun Ra since the 1980s — worked with Allen to pore over the archive of unrecorded material and develop this debut. Scott assembled some of Philadelphia’s brightest jazz stars as well as some Arkestra veterans for the sessions. New Dawn was then recorded over a couple of days in Philadelphia, with additional recordings added in the following weeks and months.

The title track “New Dawn” is the centerpiece of this impressive album and the arranger Knoel Scott wrote the lyrics himself. We are thrilled to have the incomparable Neneh Cherry, stepdaughter of legendary jazz musician Don Cherry, lend her unmistakable voice to this song.

Though greatly informed by the philosophy of Sun Ra and his Saturnian teachings — traverse jazz’s traditions, dig deep into spiritual geographies — New Dawn signals Allen as his own singular voice, one that’s swinging and bopping and reflecting into the future, with no sign of stopping. Week-End Records is proud to release this debut solo album by Marshall Allen.

“The one thing that I'm really looking forward to, and I think this is the best thing ever, is the fact that Marshall Allen is about to release, at the age of 100, his debut album under his own name. There is no greater feat of durability, working at your craft, and putting your ego to the back of the room while you're supporting other artists and performers.” – Gilles Peterson

“New Dawn is clearly an extension of Ra’s legacy and sound, but it’s also a masterful endeavour filtered through Allen’s tastes and approach.” – John Morrison, The Wire 

Following their collaboration on 2021’s Oscar winning Drive My Car, Eiko Ishibashi & filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi up the ante with a deeply inspired synergistic exchange: music for images, visuals for sounds. Eiko’s score initiated the project that has become his celebrated new film (Best Picture – BFI London Film Fest, Asian Film Awards, Silver Lion – Venice Film Fest, Best Score – Asia Film Awards). Every nuance mixed & mastered by Jim O’Rourke.

A legendary yet long lost crown jewel from the early 80s
Japanese Electronic and Jazz Rock scene.

MARIAH used to be a Japanese outfit in the field of art pop, long way back in the very late 70s and early 80s with 6 albums up
their score from 1979 to 1983. The album at hand is the sixth and for the time being last album in this row, released as a double
vinyl back in 1983. Prices for original copies, that are at least in very good condition, are hard to find and go up to 250 Euro/USD.
The brandnew reissue on Everland, unlike the original and the first vinyl reissue from 2015, comes housed in a thick and artfully
designed gatefold sleeve with OBI, which finally does justice to the progressive spirit of the music you can find here.
The musical basement is a fusion of dreamy synthesizer pop and haunting new wave music, that could be found all around
the globe back in 1983. In the vein of TEARS FOR FEARS or more adventurous DAVID BOWIE stuff, with a touch of KRAFTWERK or
even BRIAN ENO here and there, but all this gets spiced up with an atmosphere of Japanese traditionalism, with a few bits and
pieces from the old music from this Far East island, which sounds so magic us Westeners. The progressive, wacky art pop of this
project was led by the popular Japanese composer and musician Yasuaki Shimizu, a relentlessly exploratory saxophonist who
even dared to rework Johann Sebastian Bach’s cello suites for saxophone.
As brilliant as this man is, the music on „Utakata No Hibi“ turns out to be. And the master himself approved and much
appreciated the brandnew remastering of this album by assisting a highly professional team of sound engineers who dusted off
the ancient tape reels. For certain the record sounds and feels 80s through and through, electronic to the very rhythmical bone
of each song sugar coated with catchy melodies that resemble Japanese classic and Enka music, which is a kind of folksy pop
music. The listener gets directly drawn into a feverish dream of steaming Far Eastern cities and their darkest and most depraved
corners where you find everything cheap in sleazy bars and unlighted backyards and alleys. The next moment he strolls through
a beautiful Japanese park surrounded by a sea of blossoms. This change in mood and style you will experience in the sparsely
instrumented tune „Shisen“, which indeed comes closest to classic Japanese folk tunes without any too catchy and pop oriented
melodies. But we certainly find these harmonies allover the album. Some tunes even feel like ancient BEACH BOYS compositions
and Brian Wilson creations played by a then contemporary electronic pop act and sung in Japanese.
An amazingly colorful album with songs that are based on solid substance rather than cheap pop structures. This is music for
the bold listeners and music lovers and this awesome reissue should quickly find it’s way into the record collections of 80s synth
and art pop aficionadoes.
Yasuaki Shimizu did what he wanted with MARIAH, pushed the borders of popular music further than anybody would have
thought. Listen to a track like „Shonen“ with a repetitive rhythm pattern that hypnotizes you and somehow silky melodylines by
saxophone and synth piano upon which a female voice sings in a very spiritual way. Praising pop or whatever this can be called,
it is sheer magic put in music. I wonder if this would have made it into the charts back then, but you never know. It is a piece of
musical art that shall be listened to. 

Ambarchi, Berthling and Werliin share a fascination with rhythm and the myriad of ways it can subdivide within the beat. Using aspects of jazz, world and experimental musics, each tune settles into a deep groove, digging itself via continuous minimal adjustments into an ever-deeper, eternal groove.

Japan exclusive Purple vinyl, Limited 400 copies. Sam Shepherd aka Floating Points has announced his new album Crush will be released on 18 October on Ninja Tune. Along with the announcement he has shared new track 'Last Bloom' along with accompanying video by Hamill Industries and announced details of a new live show with dates including London's Printworks, his biggest headline live show to date.

The best musical mavericks never sit still for long. They mutate and morph into new shapes, refusing to be boxed in. Floating Points has so many guises that it’s not easy to pin him down. There’s the composer whose 2015 debut album Elaenia was met with rave reviews – including being named Pitchfork’s ‘Best New Music’ and Resident Advisor’s ‘Album of the Year’ – and took him from dancefloors to festival stages worldwide. The curator whose record labels have brought soulful new sounds into the club, and, on his esteemed imprint Melodies International, reinstated old ones. The classicist, the disco guy that makes machine music, the digger always searching for untapped gems to re-release. And then there’s the DJ whose liberal approach to genre saw him once drop a 20-minute instrumental by spiritual saxophonist Pharoah Sanders in Berghain.

Fresh from the release earlier this year of his compilation of lambent, analogous ambient and atmospheric music for the esteemed Late Night Tales compilation series, Floating Points’ first album in four years, Crush, twists whatever you think you know about him on its head again. A tempestuous blast of electronic experimentalism whose title alludes to the pressure-cooker of the current environment we find ourselves in. As a result, Shepherd has made some of his heaviest, most propulsive tracks yet, nodding to the UK bass scene he emerged from in the late 2000s, such as the dystopian low-end bounce of previously shared striking lead single ‘LesAlpx’ (Pitchfork’s ‘Best New Track’), but there are also some of his most expressive songs on Crush: his signature melancholia is there in the album’s sublime mellower moments or in the Buchla synthesizer, whose eerie modulation haunts the album.

Whereas Elaenia was a five-year process, Crush was made during an intense five-week period, inspired by the invigorating improvisation of his shows supporting The xx in 2017. He had just finished touring with his own live ensemble, culminating in a Coachella appearance, when he suddenly became a one-man band, just him and his trusty Buchla opening up for half an hour every night. He thought what he’d come out with would "be really melodic and slow- building" to suit the mood of the headliners, but what he ended up playing was "some of the most obtuse and aggressive music I've ever made, in front of 20,000 people every night," he says. "It was liberating."

His new album feels similarly instantaneous – and vital. It’s the sound of the many sides of Floating Points finally fusing together. It draws from the "explosive" moments during his sets, the moments that usually occur when he throws together unexpected genres, for the very simple reason that he gets excited about wanting to "hear this record, really loud, now!" and then puts the needle on. It’s "just like what happens when you’re at home playing music with your friends and it's going all over the place," he says.

Today's newly announced live solo shows capture that energy too, so that the audience can see that what they’re watching isn’t just someone pressing play. Once again Shepherd has teamed up with Hamill Industries, the duo who brought their ground-breaking reactive laser technologies to his previous tours. Their vision is to create a constant dialogue between the music and the visuals. This time their visuals will zoom in on the natural world, where landscapes are responsive to the music and flowers or rainbow swirls of bubbles might move and morph to the kick of the bass drum. What you see on the screen behind Shepherd might "look like a cosmos of colour going on," says Shepherd, "but it’s actually a tiny bubble with a macro lens on it being moved by frequencies by my Buchla," which was also the process by which the LP artwork was made." It means, he adds, "putting a lot of Fairy Liquid on our tour rider". 

Yazz Ahmed, hailed as one of the most influential trumpet players of her generation. An Ivor Novello award winning composer who makes sweeping epics that are rich with storytelling, depicting evocative ancient worlds and mythological muses. With her fourth studio album, A Paradise in the Hold, the British-Bahrani musician dives even deeper into her dual heritage and has come up with a treasure trove that draws on traditional music and stories from her childhood home. Ahmed writes for the voice for the first time, with lyrics inspired by Bahraini wedding poems and the yearning songs of the pearl divers. Deeply textural, expansive and full of potent performances, the album charts the heroic voyages of the jewel-hunters of yore, who sailed home through rough seas with precious cargo, and Ahmed’s own voyage of self-discovery over the past decade.

“A thread in my work has been searching for, establishing and, now, finally embracing and celebrating my cultural identity,” she says. Whereas she explored Arabian music more generally with her earlier material, this release is more explicitly linked to her homeland. “If my first album, 2011’s Finding My Way Home, represents the first steps on this path then with A Paradise In The Hold, I’ve arrived at a deeper understanding of how my British and Bahraini heritage can co-exist, in personal as well as musical terms.”

Ahmed began A Paradise in the Hold’s journey back in 2014, on a research trip in Bahrain, during her Jazzlines Fellowship. She’d trawl local bookshops looking for poems and lyrical inspiration. Many came from wedding songs, which were “a lot about beauty and connecting beauty with nature,” she says. Deepening her connection to the tradition, her grandfather even sang her some songs from his own wedding day. At the same time, she became fascinated by the celebratory music of women’s drumming circles and how they contrasted the work songs of the pearl divers. The latter dangerous pursuit has since ceased, though the divers’ sorrowful music – sung and clapped in a polyrhythmic style known as fijiri – lives on.

“They were songs that encouraged the fishermen to stay in good spirits, or songs about missing your loved ones,” says Ahmed. Some of the former pearl divers have formed choirs that tour around the Gulf and she caught a performance by the Pearl Divers of Muharraq, the name of her former hometown. “It gave me an opportunity to connect on a deeper level with the music that I grew up with as a child, but didn’t really embrace at the time.”

Ahmed grew up in Bahrain until the age of nine and lived there during the Gulf War in the early 90s. While she has happy memories of her childhood, many were overshadowed by conflict, like “having a gas mask and not being able to go to school. We went to school in people’s garages,” she says. “I remember the sirens going off when there was a bomb threat, and closing the curtains, turning off all the lights, and covering the plughole in the bathtub so no poisonous gases could get in.”

She moved to London with her mother and sisters in 1992 but says, “I felt like I didn’t quite belong and I didn’t know why that was. For a long time, I would lie about my heritage because of how Arab and Muslim people were represented in American films and British dramas. When I was at school, I never said that I was half Bahraini.” Music, however, helped to strengthen her sense of identity. She saw links between the jazz she studied at university and Arabian classical music, and started to learn Arabic. “I started to rediscover my mixed heritage,” she adds. “And that’s when I started to remember all this music that I grew up hearing but never fully engaged with.”

The fruits of Ahmed’s 2014 research trip became a 90-minute suite, Alhaan Al Siduri, which she performed the following year in both the UK and Bahrain. It’s named for the character Siduri from folk tale the Epic of Gilgamesh: “a wise woman who lives on an island of absolute beauty, which some scholars have suggested may be Bahrain,” Ahmed explains.

She has reworked the suite’s main theme into album opener ‘She Stands On The Shore’, which sets the tone for an inky odyssey through mermaids, goddesses, sirens and, on ‘Dancing Barefoot’, a runaway bride; and love, loss, new beginnings and a newfound freedom.

Ahmed has always been drawn to stories of women in mythology – her last album, 2019’s Polyhymnia, was based on the Greek goddess of poetry and dance – but this time she has wider intentions. “I want to change the narrative about Arab women,” says Ahmed. “A lot of people think that Arab women are just oppressed. But in Bahrain there are plenty of creative women trying to do something different in the world.” Ahmed notes how Arabic music has been stereotypically used in western entertainment and she wanted to challenge that perception. “We hear it a lot in movies to represent the desert, or poor villagers,” she says, “but you rarely see it representing strong women, for example.”

Alhaan Al Siduri formed the basis of Ahmed’s album but it has evolved ambitiously over the following decade, during performances both solo and with orchestras. She expanded tracks with intricate sound design and added multiple trumpet parts. “I learned to think of them as antiphonal, so you can hear them from different angles,” she says. “And so it feels like you’re surrounded by this very majestic instrument.” The album’s texture, meanwhile, also stems from the field recordings she used to form loops and patterns, a technique Ahmed expanded upon with the track she made for US TV network Adult Swim’s jazz compilation New Jazz Century. On A Paradise in the Hold, ‘Dancing Barefoot’ is particularly exquisite, where vibraphonist Ralph Wyld played milk bottle tops and used cello bows made from coat hangers, “to conjure the feeling of a mind spiralling into a dream,” says Ahmed. Equally visceral, on ‘To The Lonely Sea’ collaborator Jason Singh created a “vocal sculpture” to echo the wind and waves.

Notably, Ahmed hadn’t written for the voice until now. For A Paradise In The Hold, she penned lyrics in English, which she then translated to Arabic, or, on ‘Though My Eyes Go To Sleep My Heart Does Not Forget You’, adapted the words from a pearl divers’ standard. She worked with a range of impressive singers to bring her vision to life: Brigitte Beraha, Natacha Atlas, Randolph Matthews and Alba Nacinovich. The voice of her father, meanwhile, can be heard on standout track ‘Into The Night’, which lands you in the centre of a percussive hubbub and which Ahmed intended as a celebration of female independence. “He was trying to conduct the recording session in the family house,” she says of her dad. “Everyone was gathered in the sitting room and I recorded some of the ululations and clapping that you can hear in the track. I’m so glad I got to have my family on the album.”

The collaborators on the album in particular, percussionist Corrina Silvester and the greatly missed giant of the jazz world and Yazz’s dear friend, drummer, Martin France, helped Ahmed to strengthen the connection between the two worlds; A Paradise In The Hold is a bold fusion that reveals its riches more with each rewarding listen. “It’s another step in my evolution of making music,” says Ahmed. “There’s so much beauty in Bahraini music. I hope this album gives people a flavour of how vibrant its culture is.” 

In the Fall of 2022, Phil Cook found himself living alone in a small home at the edge of field and forest in North Carolina’s Piedmont. For most of Cook’s life he lived near the hearts of the towns he had called home, near the groan of traffic and hubbub of coffee shops. Such close quarters helped make the gregarious Cook a prolific collaborator, from co-founding Megafaun to working with The Blind Boys of Alabama, Bon Iver, Hiss Golden Messenger, and endless others. But Cook’s closest neighbor now was a trailhead, so he went and listened, enraptured first by the stillness and then by the manifold birds. He began leaving his windowsill slightly cracked each night, so that the dawn chorus greeted him. Cook began recording these tangled bird songs, and he slowly joined them. With the sun finally high, Cook would listen to the day’s recordings and improvise in real time on the instrument that remains the first and most steadfast love of his musical life, the piano. When Cook left that cabin after a year, he moved into a home of his own in Durham, with plenty of space for his two boys to play and for something he’d never actually owned—a proper piano. Over the next several months, Cook spent untold hours drilling down on these pieces. During lessons with the Southern gospel great Chuckey Robinson, the pianist had challenged Cook to sustain fewer notes, to stop clouding and crowding his melodies by using the instrument’s pedals as crutches. His music suddenly had more clarity, with the sounds and the feelings they ferried given more room to function. Cook dug into the danger and delight, into the idea that we twist our bodies into knots trying to understand what is best for our hearts. In April 2024 Cook returned to Wisconsin’s Chippewa Valley where he was raised. His lifelong friend and bandmate, Justin Vernon, had just finished an overhaul of April Base, the studio compound where Cook has worked on more than a dozen records during the last 15 years. Cook asked Vernon to produce Appalachia Borealis as simply as possible—merely to listen and offer feedback in two extended afternoon sessions, to talk about the right takes and make sure that they’d captured the heart. It, of course, got more complicated, as they experimented with the process. Vernon would add or subtract the bird songs to Cook’s headphones, seeing how they impacted his playing. Or they would route his notes through a massive reverb chamber, Cook responding in gossamer improvisations. Appalachia Borealis is a deeply poignant and personal set of 11 piano meditations, built with the emotional range of a full and open existence. Inspired by those windowsill improvisations, it reflects not only the turmoil and sadness of a fraught time for Cook but also the hope, light, and joy of looking for the other side. You can sometimes still hear the birds whose tune and time helped to inspire so many of these songs. Even when they’re not within earshot, their essence remains.

After nearly two years, Okonski returns with Entrance Music — an album that finds the trio at the height of their improvisational prowess and celebrating the spontaneous and meditative. On the heels of 2023’s debut Magnolia, pianist and leader Steve Okonski has reconvened long-time musical collaborators (Durand Jones and the Indications bandmate Aaron Frazer on drums and bassist Michael Isvara “Ish” Montgomery) for another session in the spirit of artists like the Bad Plus, Gerald Clayton, and The Breathing Effect. Ultimately Entrance Music serves as an invitation to early hours, where songs linger in the doorway, announcing their presence before returning to the air, in a meticulous drift into the next.

Recorded over a five day session, Entrance Music was one of the first albums committed to tape at Portage Lounge, Terry Cole’s studio in Loveland, OH. “It was a new setup, but with Terry behind the dials it was very familiar,” says Okonski. “I can’t emphasize enough how much Terry feels like a fourth member [of the band] because of the space he’s curating, the energy he is bringing, and the production ideas.” The energy and sound created with the Colemine labelhead at the helm makes for a listening experience equally at home with ECM or Stones Throw catalogs.

From the rippling notes of the pastoral opener, “October,” Entrance Music is lush with anticipation, both band and listener feeling the tension in the tranquility — where the interplay of jazz improvisation and boom bap beats never shortchanges the musicianship but the talent is ever in service of the song.

While the band does not play together as often as they would like, not much time is needed for the three to lock in. Montgomery’s bass opening to “Passing Through” bends and moves with a singular meditative grace before piano and percussion joins the daylight filling a room with breath and light. If Magnolia resonated with last calls and late nights, Entrance Music counters with early mornings and first cups of coffee.

Whereas much of the debut resonates with his time in New York, Entrance Music “feels a little less ‘on the streets at 2 A.M.’ and a little more nature-based…a little more ethereal,” says Okonski. “It’s definitely age, environment, and family — all of that does come through in the music.” <iframe style="border: 0; width: 350px; height: 439px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=3410800866/size=large/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=333333/artwork=none/transparent=true/" seamless><a href="https://okonski.bandcamp.com/album/entrance-music">Entrance Music by Okonski</a></iframe>

This is a rare and lovely gem of an EP by an indie pop/folk artist influenced by jazz and MPB. It is a work that fully demonstrates the soul-cleansing freshness of jazz and the poetic and soft sensibility that is omnipresent in indie music, as well as the cuteness of the Japanese lyrics.

ADRIAN YOUNGE PRESENTS DELFONICS is quintessential sweet-soul from The Delfonics lead vocalist William Hart produced by Adrian Younge. From the very beginning, it was Younge’s intention to create an old-school Delfonics vibe but offer a very hip-hop-informed perspective. There are distinguishing musical elements that Delfonics fans will recognize, like the electric sitar guitar, the French horn, string arrangements, and the tympani. Recorded and mixed by Adrian Younge at Linear Labs, the preeminent analog studio of Los Angeles, CA.

14 years in the making, “Les Jardins Mystiques Vol.1” comprises 52 tracks / 3.5 hours of music composed, arranged and produced by Miguel with contributions from 50+ friends including Kamasi Washington, Thundercat, DOMi & JD Beck, Jeff Parker, Carlos Niño, Austin Peralta, Bennie Maupin, Gabe Noel, Jamael Dean, Jamire Williams, Burniss Travis II, Deantoni Parks, Josh Johnson, Marcus Gilmore and many more. 

Based in his hometown of Los Angeles, Miguel is one of the preeminent musicians, orchestrators, arrangers and composers of our time. “Les Jardins Mystiques Vol.1” is his long-awaited inaugural album. It presents us with a passionate statement of intent, a labor of love, and a realm of beautiful possibilities. 

“Les Jardins Mystiques” is a project that throws open and shares Miguel’s musical universe. It took shape over a dozen years, largely self-funded by Miguel, and showcasing his distinctly elegant musicianship (on violin, viola, cello and keyboards among other instruments) alongside his free-spirited dialogues with more than 50 instrumentalists. Volume 1 is the first in a planned triptych, which will collectively comprise ten-and-a-half-hours of original, refreshingly expansive music. Miguel connected with his guest musicians in versatile ways: through convivial studio dialogues; over remote communication during the pandemic era; and via the energy of live performances at LA venues including Del Monte Speakeasy (the gorgeously invigorating, piano-led “Dream Dance”) and Bluewhale (including “Ano Yo” with vivacious alto from Devin Daniels, and the cosmic harmonies of “Cho Oyu”). Bennie Maupin, the legendary US multi-reedist whose repertoire includes Miles Davis’s fusion opus Bitches Brew, plays bass clarinet on the entrancing opening number, “Kiseki”. 

“Les Jardins Mystiques” reflects Miguel’s ethos that music is a natural, vitally unaffected life force. The titles across Volume 1’s tracks draw from international languages and traditions, including Spanish, Swahili, Sanskrit, Ancient Greek, Japanese and Hebrew, as well as the Buddhist practice that has been key to Miguel’s life since his twenties (“It’s very joyous and very hard, because it says that there’s no retirement age in human revolution,” he says). The tracks contrast in length, from “Zarra”’s vivid burst of analogue synths to the alluringly chilled melody of “Kairos (Amor Fati)”, yet there’s a gloriously unconstrained flow throughout, and each piece seems to unfurl and blossom into its own wondrous world. 

The blissfully radiant “Airavata” derives its title from the white elephant who carries the Hindu deity Indra: a divine being associated with elemental forces. It features Miguel on electric guitar (recorded then reversed to mesmerizing effect) and acoustic violin/viola, alongside bassist Gabe Noel and cellist Peter Jacobson. The stirring “Tzedakah” alludes to a Hebrew and Arabic concept of philanthropy and righteousness, and incorporates soulful bouzouki and oud within its multi-instrumental whirl. The vividly emotive piano melody “Mångata” is inspired by a Swedish word that describes the moon’s undulating reflection on water. 

“To me, playing music in any kind of setting is like swimming in an ocean of sounds and emotions and vibrations,” he says. “It’s the combination of all these different rivers, right? Western European classical music is an intense love and passion of mine; all the different genres within jazz music are a joy to practice and have given my life so much meaning; electronic music, world music, and all these different things I’ve been exploring all these years.” 

“I just want to be an enabler for magic and empowerment, everyone and everything. I believe in people… and I think that this is a very benevolent multiverse we’re living in. I feel like everything has infinite worth. That’s why I tried to have the diversity of tracks on there; every one is a mystical garden, in my opinion.” 

What does hell look like? The introduction of Toy Machine skateboard's seminal 1996 video Welcome to Hell with its pulsing overlay of the Stars and Stripes on top footage of police officers, businessmen, and fast food service workers, would appear to paint hell as the mirage of American exceptionalism. A thick, centuries-spanning unreality that may not outwardly trade in fire and brimstone, but if you turn your nose to the wind, you'll smell sulphur.What comes after that scene, born of — or despite — those apparent depictions of damnation, would become a cultural touchstone: skateboarding performed at the highest level, composed and displayed in a fashion that would influence and endear audiences for decades to come. Welcome to Hell features a unique and progressive patchwork of skateboarders, most of which would become icons in their world, and helped redefine what the modern skateboarding video could be.A young Joseph Shabason felt that impact. The acclaimed musician hit rewind on his VHS copy of Welcome to Hell hundreds of times in his youth, each watch as thrilling as the last. That invigorating, improvisational, full-body experience of skateboarding is one that Shabason likens to jazz, where a shared language exists between the wheels and woodwinds. The way the skateboarder and musician command that language is what distinguishes them, adding definition to the mercurial concept of "style." This connection becomes most apparent in collaboration; ensembles of skaters and musicians are a noisy, creative bunch. Reflecting on this relationship and the Toy Machine classic would ultimately lead Shabason to wonder: what does hell sound like?The answer was a concept album that, like his previous records, lives in the personal. One that, much like skateboarding itself, would push him to try something new: rescoring Welcome to Hell. The video's original soundtrack served as a musical awakening for many — an active, aggressive mix of songs from bands like The Misfits, Black Sabbath, and Sonic Youth. Here, you'll find that recontextualized, softened, yet no less energizing. Over the album's ten songs, Shabason plays with the angular and ambient, exploring large group melodies that move forward with the on-screen action, shifting the mood in subtle and substantial ways that reframe our understanding of this culture-defining skate video and the skateboarders in it.In Shabason's "Hell," quintessential "East Coast powerhouse," Mike Maldonado is backed by a sharp, driving modal composition that calls back to 1970s Miles Davis, the melodic sensibilities of Azimuth, and stands as a fascinating complement to Maldonado's hard-charging on-board approach. The debut of Elissa Steamer, a pioneer decades ahead of her time, is given fresh spirit with an off-kilter funk. Brian Anderson, whose virtuosic section was originally guided by a dour Pink Floyd track, now flies across the screen in jazzy fits and starts, punctuated by the joyous wail of Shabason's saxophone. Nowhere does the fluid and improvisational intersection of skateboarding and jazz meet and swell than with Donny Barley. His easy, instinctual cool flecked with tinkling synths and bass lines that echo the natural power of Barley’s abilities.Shabason then creates what could be rightly considered an audio portrait of Ed Templeton. The celebrated visual artist, photographer, and founder of Toy Machine cuts a distinct profile, which Shabason distills with a throbbing, slanted rhythm and an eerie layering of feedback and pressuring keys. The "curtains" section in Welcome to Hell belongs to Jamie Thomas, whose career-defining performance here would set the stage for a decades-spanning career and a level of influence in skateboarding that is still felt today. Shabason meets Thomas' epic with a commanding, angular rhythm that builds and flows with the momentum of his skateboarding. Airy group melodies mingle with a wonked-out vibraphone and tight percussion that lets loose in florid bursts before devolving into a finishing sequence of muscular improvisation — a fittingly bold interpretation of the work of one of skateboarding's most daring practitioners.Finally, as if ending with his thesis statement, the last song of Shabason's Welcome to Hell is a calming vocal harmony that lies atop the video's infamous "bail section." A horrific collection of skateboarders falling and twisting themselves into agonizing, unnatural shapes — a Hieronymous Bosch captured on VHS. It's the culmination of the unexpected made whole. Shabason's album a provocative reimagining that instills a new sense of awe in the 27-year-old classic, prompting the question first posed by the original: what if hell was a place you wanted to return to again and again?

Real people music recorded at a Quaker Boarding school in the mid-'70s. Mixing soft psych, vocal jazz, and sunshine soul, Shira Small and her high school music teacher Lars Clutterham created a peerless artifact of outsider magic. Imagination, wonder, the existential dread of Vietnam and math class and getting caught smoking weed in Nixon's America… it's all here. Is your life alright?

Thoughts of You, as a phrase, might immediately associate one with feelings of love, endearment, fantasy or even obsession. These are the very sentiments that lay as cornerstones in Salvator Dragatto’s debut LP for Colemine Records. The allure and drama of black & white photography have always played a vital role in how Salvator (aka Joseph Reina) not only views the world but how he hears music. Parallels in film processing to his own recording methods started becoming more and more apparent as the record was being formed; Limitations in exposures rivaling limitations in tracks. Film grain and dust sediments rivaling tape hiss and dirty EQ pots. What most would consider to be imperfections, Dragatto leaned into and found inspiration. This record is an homage to the likes of André Kertész, Robert Frank, Jean-Luc Godard and René Groebli, who’s works have impacted Dragatto’s world so greatly both visually and sonically. Thoughts of You is an unabashed reflection of the noir. From the powerful thematic horn lines to the gentlest string passages, this record is a collection of themes and vignettes that explore the emotions set upon by black and white imagery.

Elis and Tom is a bossa nova album, released in 1974, recorded by Brazilian singer Elis Regina and singer-songwriter Antônio Carlos Jobim. Recorded over a 16-day period at MGM Studios in Los Angeles, California, the album was an old wish of Regina, who always wanted to record a full album of Jobim's songs with him. This finally came true in 1974, when Elis was celebrating her 10th anniversary as an artist of Philips Records. The label approved the project as a gift for her.