MUSIC

Eric Ghost is well named as he is indeed a mystery man. A contemporary (and best friend) of 1960's Funky Jazzman Jeremy Steig his self published Private Press albums are much coveted and difficult to obtain and command high prices. This Psychedelic Jazz masterpiece was recorded in 1975 and features Dave Valentin bassist Lincoln Goines in his studio debut as well as Jim McGilveray who went on to record with Paul Horn and The Cult. If you're a fan of The Blues Project "Flute Thing", Paul Horn's more esoteric offerings or indeed the aforementioned Jeremy Steig then this album is for you. The music is intense and demands your attention, it's both Funky and Spiritual from the first note of "Orangeland" to the last notes of the Eastern influenced "Bizarre Bazaar". Eric was involved with the Counter Culture from his time in Morocco in the early 1960's (while serving in the US Army, kind of like a Hip Elvis) until shortly after this album was recorded when under his real name, Richard Barth Sanders he was convicted of LSD Manufacture (he invented the blotting paper method of LSD distribution so could be entitled to say he was the world's first Acid Jazzer) and sentenced to 7 years in a Federal Prison. The album is re-issued with the original cover artwork with the correct track order for the first time.

First time release on vinyl of the breathtaking songs Patty Waters recorded with engineer Steve Atkins in 1970 at the Coast Recordings studio, together with the unreleased single ‘My One And Only Love’ and a recorded live session at Lone Mountain College in 1974. The album ‘You Loved Me’ is the missing link between her two groundbreaking pioneering and highly acclaimed ESP-Disk records from the end of the 60’s and her post 90’s releases. The missing link between the radical ingenue of the 1960s and her late 90’s songs wherein she expressed the resolution of all of her life’s moments through mature readings of traditional songs and jazz standards. This album aims to provide that missing link and to finally complete the picture of her storied recording career. In what would have been her third LP, the ‘You Loved Me’ album serves as the inverse of Patty’s debut. While her debut “Sings” concerned itself with themes of heartbreak, loneliness and yearning, there’s an abundance of love, joy and togetherness on “You Loved Me”. Or in Patty’s own words: “I was a young girl alone at age 19, I was longing for love and dreaming of how wonderful love could be“ On ‘You Loved Me’ Patty Waters velvet voice captures this longing for love, straight from her soul to your heart. Crossing the border of avant garde jazz entering a strange zone, somewhere between spiritual jazz, early folk vibes on the songs on the A-side while the 14 minute composition ‘Touched By Rodin In A Paris Museum’ on the B-side is (dixit David Stubbs for Uncut in 2004) a brilliant extended showcase for the uneasy Cageian minimalism of her piano playing. 'You Loved Me’ proves also again why Albert Ayler introduced her to ESP-Disk president Bernard Stollman, why Miles Davis was impressed by her and why she can count Patti Smith and Yoko Ono (to name a few) amongst her fans.

Tags: Experimental, Electronic, Electroacoustic, Free, Improv, ambient, psychedelic, South Indian, Devotional Seljuk Rustum is a Kochi (Cochin) based arts practitioner originally from Kannur, Kerala. He is a painter, musician, curator, producer, recording engineer and the founder and current Creative Director of performance space, Forplay Society. As a musician he plays alto saxophone, guitar, percussion and synthesizer with several bands and an expanding collective of like minded artists. Being a self-taught musician, his sound work is an extension of his visual work and his music is a mixture of joyful noise and simple naive melodies. Seljuk has performed and recorded with artists such as Otomo Yoshihide, Senyawa, Hada Benedito Mateo, Eiko Ishibashi, Mitsuaki Matsumoto, Pisitakun, Yuen Chee Wai, Dharma, DJ Sniff, Maximilian Glass, Duncan Bruce, Hilary Jeffery and Hayden Chisholm. He has also worked with many theatre practitioners & performance artists in India making music for theatre as well as curating shows & workshops with actors and performers from around India. The recordings on Cardboard Castles were made at Seljuk's studio in Kochi between 2016 and 2021 and were mostly instant compositions and single take recordings created in collaboration with a number of fellow travellers who've passed through the studio. At the inception of the album's creation Seljuk sought to reflect on what freedom means and what the musical limitations of this are, and how his involvement as a free improviser might project fixed ideas onto a listener. He wanted to use an improvisational approach that focussed on presenting ideas with a beauty inherent in their sound, coalescing these into song form. Cardboard Castles is the resulting album and application of these concepts. We at Hive Mind feel privileged to have worked with Seljuk to bring you these deeply personal and highly idiosyncratic works which really do defy easy description. Ranging from strange and wonky electronic improvisations, gentle acoustic instrumentals such as the lush opener with the input of the Cochin String Orchestra, through experiments in traditional Indian song, this album will keep you guessing. Everything appears touched with a mischievous sense of playfulness that's maybe reflected in the face of the grinning camel that adorns the sleeve. We're sure you'll agree there's plenty to delight the listener on this strange dream of an album, Seljuk's first to receive a physical release. The CD version comes in a gatefold card digisleeve in an edition of 250 copies

Carlos Niño & Friends, who are familiar with our store as a signboard act of , which is a major sacred place of the LA underground presided over by Matthewdavid. A compilation of sound sources from previously analog-released works, compiled into a cassette, to create a best-of cassette-like work. The title "Assortment for Susan's" is dedicated to their dear friend and collaborator Justin Hansin. A total of 4 tracks of ultra-high-quality new age and contemporary jazz, including sound sources with the participation of gorgeous people such as Laraaji and Ariel Karma! Limited to 200 copies.

Don Cherry (1936-1995), one of the true giants in the history of spiritual jazz, released his masterpiece on the hallowed Blue Note label in 1969. This is the last of the three albums he released from Blue Note. This is the last of the three albums released from Blue Note. From the very beginning, the band rushed forward with tremendous energy and tremendous toughness. Recorded on November 11, 1966, with sleeve notes by Ornette Coleman. Limited to 300 copies on clear vinyl.

In process of stocking* This release presents one of John Coltrane's last preserved live performances ever. Taped in Philadelphia with excellent sound quality, this set presents Coltrane playing probably the freest version of Naima, along with readings of two more of his compositions: Crescent and a powerful version of Leo. Coltrane died shortly after this performance at the age of 40 on July 11, 1967.

Xochimoki - celebrated American ethnomusicologist Jim Berenholtz and Aztec descendant / wisdom keeper Mazatl Galindo - traverse millenia with career compendium Temple Of The New Sun, an album recorded in New Mexico in the mid 1980’s but tracing a lineage back thousands of years. Xochimoki summon feathered gods and animal spirits. They incant mythological folktales of celestial glory and supernatural dread. Their songs are sung in Pre-Columbian Central and South American languages, including Nahuatl, Maya, Purepecha and Quechua. And much of their music was written at ancient ceremonial sites, in rituals and meditations, in communion with the spirits that rest there. There is an inherent sense of storytelling, of the peoples of the jungle and the earth living through this music. Xochimoki self-released two cassettes, soundtracked the Albuquerque Museum’s touring exhibition MAYA: Treasures of an Ancient Civilization, and created several discs’ worth of further soundtrack music elsewhere before moving on to new and individual projects. Phantom Limb’s hand-curated reissue album The Temple Of The New Sun collects key works from their broad history, newly remastered and now available for the first time on vinyl.

"Max Brown" is the first single from Jeff Parker's forthcoming full length album, which will be released LP/CD/Digital in January 2020 via a new partnership between International Anthem and Nonesuch Records.

Reissue of the legendary 5-track first LP (plus 2 bonus tracks) from horn wizard & original underground FM radio DJ Young, featuring soprano sax, clarinet, and electronically-processed bass clarinet. An enjoyable outing from a neglected musician. Cosmic afro mimimal electronic winds recorded in 1970s San Francisco.

eremite presents the definitive vinyl edition of the most legendary private press underground jazz album of the 1970s. There’s not another record on the planet that sounds even remotely like vibraphonist Khan Jamal's eccentric, one-of-a-kind masterpiece, Drum Dance To The Motherland. In its improbable fusion of free jazz expressionism, black psychedelia, & full-on dub production techniques, Drum Dance remains a bracingly powerful outsider statement forty-five years after it was recorded live at the Catacombs Club in Philadelphia, 1972. Comparisons to Sun Ra, King Tubby, Phil Cohran & BYG/Actuel merely hint at the cosmic otherness conjured by The Khan Jamal Creative Arts Ensemble & by sound engineer Mario Falana's real-time enhancements. Originally issued by Jamal in 1973 in an edition of three hundred copies on ‘Dogtown’ records, Drum Dance To The Motherland was effectively a myth until eremite’s 2005 CD reissue. eremite’s LP edition has been a long time coming. With the master tapes long vanished, the audio was transferred on the pneumatic Rockport table at Sony Music's 54th street studio from a minty copy of the original LP, manually de-clicked, & remastered on Sony's vintage outboard tube EQs by Ben Young & Andreas K. Myer. The LP is pressed on premium audiophile quality vinyl by RTI from a Kevin Gray lacquer. Alan Sherry at Siwa Studios screenprinted by hand every component of the package: the screenprinted labels & heavyweight stoughton laserdisc jackets reproduce exactly the artwork of the original Dogtown release. A screenprinted insert with Ed Hazell's detailed telling of Drum Dance's incredible history & eremite's signature retro-audiophile screenprinted dust sleeves are unique to this edition. 999 copies. Jesus. Forget what you know. Every now and then, a record comes along that sneaks up on you and punches you in the back in the head so hard, it sends you reeling for days. This is one of them. Recorded live in 1972, this holy grail private press album by vibraphonist Khan Jamal probably qualifies as a "jazz" record, but not as this world knows it, as it sounds like it was recorded in a spaceship, an echo chamber, and a cave all at once, which makes it virtually impossible to put a timestamp on. The dubbed-out percussion intro of "Cosmic Echoes" sounds like Sun Ra overseeing an Aggrovators session, yet strangely contemporary, and it only gets more inspired and unfathomable from there. The extended free jazz shocks (complete with recording engineer's mystery effects!) and cosmic black psychedelia dreamed up by this underground Philly collective explores outsider worlds that Actuel never knew existed, and emits a kind of smoke ESP-Disk never had a whiff of. Drumdance to the Motherland will render a majority of your record collection somewhat useless, but you're going to want to take that gamble. Utterly unique and essential document from way left of center. --[AK], Othermusic Vibraphonist Khan Jamal has been around since the mid-1960s, and his Drumdance to the Motherland--recorded in 1972 Philadelphia, released this year on Michael Ehlers' flawless Eremite label--reveals an ensemble approach to rhythm calisthenics on par with anything Sun Ra, Beaver Harris, or Sam Rivers cooked up. This 12-minute beast is a percussion smorgasbord, with any number of the quintet's members--Jamal, bassist Billy Mills, guitarist Monnette Sudler, and percussionists Alex Ellison and Dwight James--taking on the sidewinding pulse and bending, twisting, and reinventing its magic to his will. Dig: Jamal's vibes solo seven minutes into this jam is just as third-eye jubilant as anything Konono No. 1 has kicked out. --Bret Mccabe, Baltimore City Paper Online In all my perambulations during these decades of record hunting, i have never seen a copy of khan jamal's drumdance to the motherland. it's so rare that i'd never even heard of it, despite liking jamal & generally looking for unusual 1970s free-jazz. &, despite the fact that it has now been lovingly reissued, i still have no idea what the record looks like. so, let's get extra geeky & talk about record covers. when eremite repackaged drumdance, they put a nice new image on it. the original issue, on the microscopic dogtown label from philadelphia, came with individually designed covers, a probable nod to jamal's then-fellow philadelphians in sun ra's arkestra, who regularly decorated records by hand, often just before a big gig. there's more than just the cover about drumdance that's ra-esque. wave upon wave of tape delay recalls the ra lps, nearly a decade earlier on which drummer tommy 'bugs' hunter first accidently put the microphone into the wrong jack & discovered the supernatural, spaced-out powers of over-driven echo. jamal's is a fantastic record, with funky grooves & maniacal blowing periodically reflected in the funhouse mirror of slapback. jamal's vibraphone & marimba are, in some sections, featured in an unfettered & undistorted way. it's a real treat, as is monnette sudler's aggressive guitar. an absolutely unique lp, drumdance is testament to the liberating powers of the underground, the shared do-it-yourself mentality that links fringe jazz & punk. hats off to eremite for dredging it up, even with its new visage. --John Corbett, Downbeat Originally released on obscure Philadelphia label Dogtown, Drumdance to the Motherland has long been a sought after collector's item of early 70s underground free jazz. Literally underground: it was recorded in a basement coffeehouse in October 1972, & features Jamal on vibraphone, marimba & clarinet, Alex Ellison & Dwight James on drums, percussion & clarinet, Billy Mills on bass & Fender bass, & Monnette Sudler on guitar & percussion. Titles like "Drum Dance" indicate there is plenty of deep African groove on offer, but thanks to the input of sound engineer Mario Falana, whose use of reverb is so outstandingly musical he deserves to be listed as a group member in his own right, the album sounds nothing like any of the other extended riff workouts that appeared in the early 70s when the major labels tried to move in on free jazz. On "Inner Peace," the combination of Mill's loping bass riff, Sudler's cool bluesy guitar licks -more Montgomery than McLaughlin-- & the kind of raucous shrieking clarinet Arthur Doyle would be proud of is truly striking. & in Falana's hands, the gently cycling riffs of "Breath of Life" sound not so much spaced out as otherworldly --even without the kind of chemical stimulation one suspects helped inspire The Creative Arts Ensemble & their producer, you wouldn't be surprised if someone told you this was a mid-90s release on Thrill Jockey beamed back through time. --Dan Warburton, The Wirepiece! Legendary new remastering specifications such as and . Pressed from Kevin Gray's lacquer discs to audiophile quality records at RTI.

-Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy-, x2 LPs of long-form, lyrical, groove-based free improv by acclaimed guitarist & composer Jeff Parker's ETA IVtet is at last here. Recorded live at ETA (referencing David Foster Wallace), a bar in LA’s Highland Park neighborhood with just enough space in the back for Parker, drummer Jay Bellerose, bassist Anna Butterss, & alto saxophonist Josh Johnson to convene in extraordinarily depthful & exploratory music making. Gleaned for the stoniest side-length cuts from 10+ hours of vivid two-track recordings made between 2019 & 2021 by Bryce Gonzales, -Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy- is a darkly glowing séance of an album, brimming over with the hypnotic, the melodic, & patience & grace in its own beautiful strangeness. Room-tone, electric fields, environment, ceiling echo, live recording, Mondays, Los Angeles. Jeff Parker's first double album & first live album, -Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy- belongs in the lineage of such canonical live double albums recorded on the West Coast as Lee Morgan’s -Live at the Lighthouse-, Miles Davis' -In Person Friday & Saturday Night at the Blackhawk, San Francisco- & -Black Beauty-, & John Coltrane's -Live in Seattle-. While the IVtet sometimes plays standards &, including on this recording, original compositions, it is as previously stated largely a free improv group —just not in the genre meaning of the term. The music is more free composition than free improvisation, more blending than discordant. It’s tensile, yet spacious & relaxed. Clearly all four musicians have spent significant time in the planetary system known as jazz, but relationships to other musics, across many scenes & eras —dub & Dilla, primary source psychedelia, ambient & drone— suffuse the proceedings. listening to playbacks Parker remarked, humorously & not, “we sound like the Byrds” (to certain ears, the Clarence White-era Byrds, who really stretched it). A fundamental of all great ensembles, whether basketball teams or bands, is the ability of each member to move fluidly & fluently in & out of lead & supportive roles. Building on the communicative pathways they’ve established in Parker’s -The New Breed- project, Parker & Johnson maintain a constant dialogue of lead & support. Their sampled & looped phrases move continuously thru the music, layered & alive, adding depth & texture & pattern, evoking birds in formation, sea creatures drifting below the photic zone. Or, the two musicians simulate those processes by entwining their terse, clear-lined playing in real-time. The stop/start flow of Bellerose, too, simulates the sampler, recalling drum parts in Parker’s beat-driven projects. Mostly Bellerose's animated phraseologies deliver the inimitable instantaneous feel of live creative drumming. The range of tonal colors he conjures from his extremely vintage battery of drums & shakers —as distinctive a sonic signature as we have in contemporary acoustic drumming— bring almost folkloric qualities to the aesthetic currency of the IVtet's language. A wonderful revelation in this band is the playing of Anna Butterss. The strength, judiciousness & humility with which she navigates the bass position both ground & lift upward the egalitarian group sound. As the IVtet's grooves flow & clip, loop & repeat, the ensemble elements reconfigure, a terrarium of musical cultivation growing under controlled variables, a tight experiment of harmony & intuition, deep focus & freedom. For all its varied sonic personality, -Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy- scans immediately & unmistakably as music coming from Jeff Parker‘s unique sound world. Generous in spirit, trenchant & disciplined in execution, Parker’s music has an earned respect for itself & for its place in history that transmutes through the musical event into the listener. Many moods & shapes of heart & mind will find utility & hope in a music that combines the autonomy & the community we collectively long to see take hold in our world, in substance & in staying power. On the personal tip, this was always my favorite gig to hit, a lifeline of the eremite records Santa Barbara years. Mondays southbound on the 101, driving away from tasks & screens & illness, an hour later ordering a double tequila neat at the bar with the band three feet away, knowing i was in good hands, knowing it would be back around on another Monday. To encounter life at scales beyond the human body is the collective dance of music & the beholding of its beauty, together. —Michael Ehlers & Zac Brenner Pressed on premium audiophile-quality 120 gram vinyl at RTI from Kevin Gray / Cohearent Audio lacquers. Mastered by Joe Lizzi, Triple Point Records, Queens, NY. First eremite edition of 1799 copies. First 400 direct order LPs come with eremite’s signature retro-audiophile inner-sleeves, hand screen-printed by Alan Sherry, Siwa Studios, northern New Mexico. CD edition & EU x2LP edition available thru our EU partner, Aguirre records, Belgium. Jeff Parker synthesizes jazz and hip-hop with an appealingly light touch. The longtime Tortoiseguitarist has a silken, clean-cut tone, yet his production takes more cues from DJ Premier than it does from a classic mid-century jazz sound. In the early ’00s, when Madlib ushered a boom-bap sensibility into the hallowed halls of the jazz label Blue Note, Parker conducted his own experiments in genre-mashing in the Chicago group Isotope 217, dragging jaunty hip-hop rhythms into the far reaches of computerized abstraction. More recently, Parker enlivened quantized beats and chopped-up samples with live instrumentation, both as leader of the New Breed and sideman to Makaya McCraven. Inverting rap’s longtime reverence for jazz, Parker has gradually codified a new language for the so-called “American art form” with a vocabulary gleaned from the United States’ next great contribution to the musical universe. Parker’s latest, the live double LP Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy, was largely recorded in 2019, while his star as a solo artist was steeply ascending. Capturing a few intimate evenings with drummer Jay Bellerose, bassist Anna Butterss, and New Breed saxophonist Josh Johnson at ETA, a cozy Los Angeles cocktail bar, the record anticipates his 2020 opus with the New Breed, Suite for Max Brown. Yet Mondays amounts to something novel in 2022: It lays out long-form spiritual jazz, knotty melodies, and effortless solos over a slow-moving foundation as consistent as an 808. The results are as mesmerizing as a luxurious, beatific ambient record—yet at the same time, it’s clear that all of this is happening within the inherently messy confines of an improvisatory concert. Across four side-long tracks, each spanning about 20 minutes, Parker and Johnson trade ostinatos, mesh together, split again into polyrhythmic call-and-response. Butterss commands the pocket with a photonegative of their lead lines, often freed from rhythmic responsibilities by the drums’ relentlessness. Bellerose exhibits a Neu!-like sense of consistency, just screwed down a whole bunch of BPMs. His kit sounds as dusty as an old sample, and his hypnotic rhythms evoke humanizers of the drum machine such as J Dilla or RZA. You could spend the album’s 84-minute runtime listening only to the beats; every shift in pattern queues a new movement in the compositions, beaming a timeframe from the bottom up. Bellerose’s sensitive, reactive playing, though, is unmistakably live. We can practically see the sweat beading on his arm when he holds steady on a ride cymbal for minutes on end, or plays a shaker for a whole LP side. He begins the understated opener “2019-07-08 I” with feather-soft brush swirls, but on the second cut, he sets Mondays’ stride, as a simple bell pattern builds into a leisurely rhythmic stroll. Thirteen minutes in, the mood breaks. Bellerose hits some heavy quarter notes on his hi-hat; Butterss leans into a fat bassline; saxophone arpeggios, probably looped, float in front of us like smoke rings lingering in the air. It’s a glorious moment, punctuated by clinking glasses and a distant “whoo!” so perfectly placed we become aware of not only the setting, but also the supple knob-turns of engineer Bryce Gonzales in post-production. Anyone who’s heard great improvisation at a bar in the company of both jazzheads and puzzled onlookers knows this dynamic—for some, the music was incidental. Others experienced a revelation. Lodged in this familiar situation is the question of what such “ambient jazz” means to accomplish—whether it wants to occupy the center of our consciousnesses, or resign itself to the background. The record’s perpetual soloing offers an answer. Never screechy, grating, or aggressive, each performance is nonetheless highly individual. Even when the quartet settles into an extended groove, a spotlight shines on Johnson, Butterss, and Parker in turn, steadily illuminating a perpetual sense of invention. Their interplay feels almost traditional, suggesting bandstand trade-offs of yore, yet the open-ended structure of their jams keeps it unconventional. Mondays works in layers: Its metronomic rhythms pacify, but the performers and their idiosyncratic expressions offer ample material to those interested in hearing young luminaries and seasoned vets swap ideas within a group. In 2020, Johnson dropped his first record under his own name, the excellent, daringly melodic Freedom Exercise, while Butterss’ recent debut as bandleader, Activities, is one of the most exciting, undersung jazz releases of 2022. Akin to Parker’s early experiments with Tortoise and Chicago Underground, Johnson and Butterss’ recordings both revel in electronic textures, and each features the other as a collaborator. Mondays captures them as their mature playing styles gain sea legs atop the rudder of Parker’s guitar. The only track recorded after the pandemic began, closer “2021-04-28” sculpts the record’s loping structure, giving retrospective shape to the preceding hour of ambience. In the middle of the song, Parker’s guitar slows to a yawn; the drums pipe down. After a couple minutes of drone, Bellerose slips back into the mix alongside a precisely phrased guitar line strummed on the upper frets, punctuated by saxophone accents that exclaim with the force of an eager hype man. Beginning with a murmur, the album ends with a bracing statement, a passage so articulated that it actually feels spoken. Mondays drifts with unhurried purpose through genres and ideas, imprinted with the passage of time. The deliberate, thumping clock of its drumbeat keeps duration in mind, and, as with so many live albums, we’re reminded of how circumstances have changed since the sessions were recorded. Truly, life is different than it was in 2019—and not just in terms of world politics, climate change, the threat of disease, or the reality that making a living in music is harder than ever. Seemingly catalyzed by COVID-19’s deadly, isolating scourge, jazz has transformed, hybridized, and weakened tired arguments for musical stratification and fundamentalism. Even calling Mondays a “live” album is a simplification, considering how Parker and other top jazz brains have increasingly availed themselves of the studio—including, in a sparing yet dramatic way, on Mondays. Near the end of the first track, the tape slows abruptly. The plane of the song opens to another dimension: This set, Parker seems to be saying, can be manipulated with the ease of a vinyl platter beneath a DJ’s fingers. Parker’s latest may be his first live album, but it’s also the product of a mad scientist, cackling over a mixing board. Time is dilated, curated, edited, and intercut, and the very live-ness of a concert recording turns fascinatingly, fruitfully convoluted—even when the artists responsible are four players participating in the age-old custom of jamming together in a room. --Daneil Felsenthal, Pitchfork, 8.4 Best New Music Turn to Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy and you’re in another world. Recorded live (it’s apparently Parker’s first live record) between 2019 and 2021 at a bar in Los Angeles’ Highland Park neighborhood that’s named for the principal setting of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest(and Parker’s ETA 4tet named, in turn, for the room). As producer Michael Ehlers points out in a press sheet, It is “largely a free improv group —just not in the genre meaning of the term.” Mondays… will include all the things that free improvisation leaves out, modes, melodies, key centres and regular (though often multiple) rhythms; in effect, the musicians are free to include the conventionally excluded. It’s a kind of perfect opposite of Eastside Romp – clear tunes rarely define a piece, there’s no solo order, actually few solos, no formal beginnings or endings – instead substituting the extended jam for the tight knit composition. It’s a two-LP set, each side an excerpt from a long collective improvisation, a kind of electronic jazz version of hypnotic minimalism with Parker and saxophonist Josh Johnson both employing loops to build up interlocking rhythmic patterns and a kind of floating, layered timelessness, while bassist Anna Butterss and drummer/ percussionist Jay Bellerose lay down pliable fundamentals. Often and delightfully, it answers this listener’s specific auditory needs, a bright shifting soundscape that can begin in mid-phrase and eventually fade away, not beginning, not ending, like Heaven’s Muzak or the abstract decorative art of the Alhambra. It can sound at times like, fifty years on, Grant Green has added his clear lines to the kind of work that over 50 years ago filtered from Terry Riley to musicians from jazz, rock and minimalism. Though the tunes are described as excerpts, we often have what seem to be beginnings, the faint sound of background conversation and noise ceding to the music in the first few seconds, but the “beginnings” sound tentative, like proposals or suggestions. The most explicit tune here is the slow, loping line passed back and forth between Parker and Johnson that initiates Side C, 2019 May-05-19, the earliest recording here. The music is a constant that doesn’t mind omitting its beginnings and ends, but it’s also, in the same way, an organism, a kind of music that many of us are always inside and that is always inside us. All kinds of music stimulate us in all kinds of ways, but for this listener, Jeff Parker’s ETA Quartet happily raises a fundamental question: what is comfort music, what are its components, and could there be a universal comfort music? Or is comfort music a universal element in what we may listen for in sound? Modality, rhythmic and melodic figures/motifs, drone, compound relationships and, too, a shifting mosaic that cannot be encapsulated? The thing is, any music we seek out is, in our seeking, a comfort, whether it’s a need for structures so complex that we might lose ourselves in mapping them, or music so random, we are freed of all specificity, but something that may have healing properties. This is not just bar music, but music for a bar named for art that further echoes in the band’s abbreviated name. Socialization is enshrined here. There’s another crucial fiction, too, maybe closer, The Scope, the bar in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 with its “strictly electronic music policy”. Consider, too, the social roots reverberating in the distant musical ancestry, that Riley session with John Cale, Church of Anthrax, among many … or the healing music of the Gnawa … or the Master Musicians of Jajouka with Ornette Coleman on Dancing in Your Head. And that which is most “natural” to us in the early decades of the 21st century? … Jamming, looping, drones…So perhaps an ideal musical state might be a regular Monday night session with guitar, saxophone, loops, bass and drums…the guitarist and saxophonist using loops, expanding the palette and multiplying the reach of time, repeating oneself with the possibility of mutation or constancy. In some long ago, perfect insight into a burgeoning age of filming and recording, Jay Gatsby remarked, “Can’t repeat the past? Why, of course you can!” We might even repeat the present or the future.

-Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy-, x2 LPs of long-form, lyrical, groove-based free improv by acclaimed guitarist & composer Jeff Parker's ETA IVtet is at last here. Recorded live at ETA (referencing David Foster Wallace), a bar in LA’s Highland Park neighborhood with just enough space in the back for Parker, drummer Jay Bellerose, bassist Anna Butterss, & alto saxophonist Josh Johnson to convene in extraordinarily depthful & exploratory music making. Gleaned for the stoniest side-length cuts from 10+ hours of vivid two-track recordings made between 2019 & 2021 by Bryce Gonzales, -Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy- is a darkly glowing séance of an album, brimming over with the hypnotic, the melodic, & patience & grace in its own beautiful strangeness. Room-tone, electric fields, environment, ceiling echo, live recording, Mondays, Los Angeles. Jeff Parker's first double album & first live album, -Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy- belongs in the lineage of such canonical live double albums recorded on the West Coast as Lee Morgan’s -Live at the Lighthouse-, Miles Davis' -In Person Friday & Saturday Night at the Blackhawk, San Francisco- & -Black Beauty-, & John Coltrane's -Live in Seattle-. While the IVtet sometimes plays standards &, including on this recording, original compositions, it is as previously stated largely a free improv group —just not in the genre meaning of the term. The music is more free composition than free improvisation, more blending than discordant. It’s tensile, yet spacious & relaxed. Clearly all four musicians have spent significant time in the planetary system known as jazz, but relationships to other musics, across many scenes & eras —dub & Dilla, primary source psychedelia, ambient & drone— suffuse the proceedings. listening to playbacks Parker remarked, humorously & not, “we sound like the Byrds” (to certain ears, the Clarence White-era Byrds, who really stretched it). A fundamental of all great ensembles, whether basketball teams or bands, is the ability of each member to move fluidly & fluently in & out of lead & supportive roles. Building on the communicative pathways they’ve established in Parker’s -The New Breed- project, Parker & Johnson maintain a constant dialogue of lead & support. Their sampled & looped phrases move continuously thru the music, layered & alive, adding depth & texture & pattern, evoking birds in formation, sea creatures drifting below the photic zone. Or, the two musicians simulate those processes by entwining their terse, clear-lined playing in real-time. The stop/start flow of Bellerose, too, simulates the sampler, recalling drum parts in Parker’s beat-driven projects. Mostly Bellerose's animated phraseologies deliver the inimitable instantaneous feel of live creative drumming. The range of tonal colors he conjures from his extremely vintage battery of drums & shakers —as distinctive a sonic signature as we have in contemporary acoustic drumming— bring almost folkloric qualities to the aesthetic currency of the IVtet's language. A wonderful revelation in this band is the playing of Anna Butterss. The strength, judiciousness & humility with which she navigates the bass position both ground & lift upward the egalitarian group sound. As the IVtet's grooves flow & clip, loop & repeat, the ensemble elements reconfigure, a terrarium of musical cultivation growing under controlled variables, a tight experiment of harmony & intuition, deep focus & freedom. For all its varied sonic personality, -Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy- scans immediately & unmistakably as music coming from Jeff Parker‘s unique sound world. Generous in spirit, trenchant & disciplined in execution, Parker’s music has an earned respect for itself & for its place in history that transmutes through the musical event into the listener. Many moods & shapes of heart & mind will find utility & hope in a music that combines the autonomy & the community we collectively long to see take hold in our world, in substance & in staying power. On the personal tip, this was always my favorite gig to hit, a lifeline of the eremite records Santa Barbara years. Mondays southbound on the 101, driving away from tasks & screens & illness, an hour later ordering a double tequila neat at the bar with the band three feet away, knowing i was in good hands, knowing it would be back around on another Monday. To encounter life at scales beyond the human body is the collective dance of music & the beholding of its beauty, together. —Michael Ehlers & Zac Brenner Pressed on premium audiophile-quality 120 gram vinyl at RTI from Kevin Gray / Cohearent Audio lacquers. Mastered by Joe Lizzi, Triple Point Records, Queens, NY. First eremite edition of 1799 copies. First 400 direct order LPs come with eremite’s signature retro-audiophile inner-sleeves, hand screen-printed by Alan Sherry, Siwa Studios, northern New Mexico. CD edition & EU x2LP edition available thru our EU partner, Aguirre records, Belgium. Jeff Parker synthesizes jazz and hip-hop with an appealingly light touch. The longtime Tortoiseguitarist has a silken, clean-cut tone, yet his production takes more cues from DJ Premier than it does from a classic mid-century jazz sound. In the early ’00s, when Madlib ushered a boom-bap sensibility into the hallowed halls of the jazz label Blue Note, Parker conducted his own experiments in genre-mashing in the Chicago group Isotope 217, dragging jaunty hip-hop rhythms into the far reaches of computerized abstraction. More recently, Parker enlivened quantized beats and chopped-up samples with live instrumentation, both as leader of the New Breed and sideman to Makaya McCraven. Inverting rap’s longtime reverence for jazz, Parker has gradually codified a new language for the so-called “American art form” with a vocabulary gleaned from the United States’ next great contribution to the musical universe. Parker’s latest, the live double LP Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy, was largely recorded in 2019, while his star as a solo artist was steeply ascending. Capturing a few intimate evenings with drummer Jay Bellerose, bassist Anna Butterss, and New Breed saxophonist Josh Johnson at ETA, a cozy Los Angeles cocktail bar, the record anticipates his 2020 opus with the New Breed, Suite for Max Brown. Yet Mondays amounts to something novel in 2022: It lays out long-form spiritual jazz, knotty melodies, and effortless solos over a slow-moving foundation as consistent as an 808. The results are as mesmerizing as a luxurious, beatific ambient record—yet at the same time, it’s clear that all of this is happening within the inherently messy confines of an improvisatory concert. Across four side-long tracks, each spanning about 20 minutes, Parker and Johnson trade ostinatos, mesh together, split again into polyrhythmic call-and-response. Butterss commands the pocket with a photonegative of their lead lines, often freed from rhythmic responsibilities by the drums’ relentlessness. Bellerose exhibits a Neu!-like sense of consistency, just screwed down a whole bunch of BPMs. His kit sounds as dusty as an old sample, and his hypnotic rhythms evoke humanizers of the drum machine such as J Dilla or RZA. You could spend the album’s 84-minute runtime listening only to the beats; every shift in pattern queues a new movement in the compositions, beaming a timeframe from the bottom up. Bellerose’s sensitive, reactive playing, though, is unmistakably live. We can practically see the sweat beading on his arm when he holds steady on a ride cymbal for minutes on end, or plays a shaker for a whole LP side. He begins the understated opener “2019-07-08 I” with feather-soft brush swirls, but on the second cut, he sets Mondays’ stride, as a simple bell pattern builds into a leisurely rhythmic stroll. Thirteen minutes in, the mood breaks. Bellerose hits some heavy quarter notes on his hi-hat; Butterss leans into a fat bassline; saxophone arpeggios, probably looped, float in front of us like smoke rings lingering in the air. It’s a glorious moment, punctuated by clinking glasses and a distant “whoo!” so perfectly placed we become aware of not only the setting, but also the supple knob-turns of engineer Bryce Gonzales in post-production. Anyone who’s heard great improvisation at a bar in the company of both jazzheads and puzzled onlookers knows this dynamic—for some, the music was incidental. Others experienced a revelation. Lodged in this familiar situation is the question of what such “ambient jazz” means to accomplish—whether it wants to occupy the center of our consciousnesses, or resign itself to the background. The record’s perpetual soloing offers an answer. Never screechy, grating, or aggressive, each performance is nonetheless highly individual. Even when the quartet settles into an extended groove, a spotlight shines on Johnson, Butterss, and Parker in turn, steadily illuminating a perpetual sense of invention. Their interplay feels almost traditional, suggesting bandstand trade-offs of yore, yet the open-ended structure of their jams keeps it unconventional. Mondays works in layers: Its metronomic rhythms pacify, but the performers and their idiosyncratic expressions offer ample material to those interested in hearing young luminaries and seasoned vets swap ideas within a group. In 2020, Johnson dropped his first record under his own name, the excellent, daringly melodic Freedom Exercise, while Butterss’ recent debut as bandleader, Activities, is one of the most exciting, undersung jazz releases of 2022. Akin to Parker’s early experiments with Tortoise and Chicago Underground, Johnson and Butterss’ recordings both revel in electronic textures, and each features the other as a collaborator. Mondays captures them as their mature playing styles gain sea legs atop the rudder of Parker’s guitar. The only track recorded after the pandemic began, closer “2021-04-28” sculpts the record’s loping structure, giving retrospective shape to the preceding hour of ambience. In the middle of the song, Parker’s guitar slows to a yawn; the drums pipe down. After a couple minutes of drone, Bellerose slips back into the mix alongside a precisely phrased guitar line strummed on the upper frets, punctuated by saxophone accents that exclaim with the force of an eager hype man. Beginning with a murmur, the album ends with a bracing statement, a passage so articulated that it actually feels spoken. Mondays drifts with unhurried purpose through genres and ideas, imprinted with the passage of time. The deliberate, thumping clock of its drumbeat keeps duration in mind, and, as with so many live albums, we’re reminded of how circumstances have changed since the sessions were recorded. Truly, life is different than it was in 2019—and not just in terms of world politics, climate change, the threat of disease, or the reality that making a living in music is harder than ever. Seemingly catalyzed by COVID-19’s deadly, isolating scourge, jazz has transformed, hybridized, and weakened tired arguments for musical stratification and fundamentalism. Even calling Mondays a “live” album is a simplification, considering how Parker and other top jazz brains have increasingly availed themselves of the studio—including, in a sparing yet dramatic way, on Mondays. Near the end of the first track, the tape slows abruptly. The plane of the song opens to another dimension: This set, Parker seems to be saying, can be manipulated with the ease of a vinyl platter beneath a DJ’s fingers. Parker’s latest may be his first live album, but it’s also the product of a mad scientist, cackling over a mixing board. Time is dilated, curated, edited, and intercut, and the very live-ness of a concert recording turns fascinatingly, fruitfully convoluted—even when the artists responsible are four players participating in the age-old custom of jamming together in a room. --Daneil Felsenthal, Pitchfork, 8.4 Best New Music Turn to Mondays at The Enfield Tennis Academy and you’re in another world. Recorded live (it’s apparently Parker’s first live record) between 2019 and 2021 at a bar in Los Angeles’ Highland Park neighborhood that’s named for the principal setting of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest(and Parker’s ETA 4tet named, in turn, for the room). As producer Michael Ehlers points out in a press sheet, It is “largely a free improv group —just not in the genre meaning of the term.” Mondays… will include all the things that free improvisation leaves out, modes, melodies, key centres and regular (though often multiple) rhythms; in effect, the musicians are free to include the conventionally excluded. It’s a kind of perfect opposite of Eastside Romp – clear tunes rarely define a piece, there’s no solo order, actually few solos, no formal beginnings or endings – instead substituting the extended jam for the tight knit composition. It’s a two-LP set, each side an excerpt from a long collective improvisation, a kind of electronic jazz version of hypnotic minimalism with Parker and saxophonist Josh Johnson both employing loops to build up interlocking rhythmic patterns and a kind of floating, layered timelessness, while bassist Anna Butterss and drummer/ percussionist Jay Bellerose lay down pliable fundamentals. Often and delightfully, it answers this listener’s specific auditory needs, a bright shifting soundscape that can begin in mid-phrase and eventually fade away, not beginning, not ending, like Heaven’s Muzak or the abstract decorative art of the Alhambra. It can sound at times like, fifty years on, Grant Green has added his clear lines to the kind of work that over 50 years ago filtered from Terry Riley to musicians from jazz, rock and minimalism. Though the tunes are described as excerpts, we often have what seem to be beginnings, the faint sound of background conversation and noise ceding to the music in the first few seconds, but the “beginnings” sound tentative, like proposals or suggestions. The most explicit tune here is the slow, loping line passed back and forth between Parker and Johnson that initiates Side C, 2019 May-05-19, the earliest recording here. The music is a constant that doesn’t mind omitting its beginnings and ends, but it’s also, in the same way, an organism, a kind of music that many of us are always inside and that is always inside us. All kinds of music stimulate us in all kinds of ways, but for this listener, Jeff Parker’s ETA Quartet happily raises a fundamental question: what is comfort music, what are its components, and could there be a universal comfort music? Or is comfort music a universal element in what we may listen for in sound? Modality, rhythmic and melodic figures/motifs, drone, compound relationships and, too, a shifting mosaic that cannot be encapsulated? The thing is, any music we seek out is, in our seeking, a comfort, whether it’s a need for structures so complex that we might lose ourselves in mapping them, or music so random, we are freed of all specificity, but something that may have healing properties. This is not just bar music, but music for a bar named for art that further echoes in the band’s abbreviated name. Socialization is enshrined here. There’s another crucial fiction, too, maybe closer, The Scope, the bar in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49 with its “strictly electronic music policy”. Consider, too, the social roots reverberating in the distant musical ancestry, that Riley session with John Cale, Church of Anthrax, among many … or the healing music of the Gnawa … or the Master Musicians of Jajouka with Ornette Coleman on Dancing in Your Head. And that which is most “natural” to us in the early decades of the 21st century? … Jamming, looping, drones…So perhaps an ideal musical state might be a regular Monday night session with guitar, saxophone, loops, bass and drums…the guitarist and saxophonist using loops, expanding the palette and multiplying the reach of time, repeating oneself with the possibility of mutation or constancy. In some long ago, perfect insight into a burgeoning age of filming and recording, Jay Gatsby remarked, “Can’t repeat the past? Why, of course you can!” We might even repeat the present or the future.

Matthew Halsall - Changing Earth A sublime meditative EP on limited 12”, CD, DL and streaming Design by Ian Anderson of The Designers Republic Matthew Halsall shares the 'Changing Earth' EP – another exquisite and spiritual four track offering. The title track Changing Earth is a soulful, elevating groover featuring sublime work from the whole band but especially, Matt Cliffe on flute and Maddie Herbert on harp. Positive Activity is one of Halsall’s most charming compositions, built round a hypnotic bassline from Gavin Barras it’s melody is plaintive but also uplifting and hopeful and harpist Herbert again shines brightly here. Yogic Flying is another soulful, uplifting tune as Halsall and percussionist Jack McCarthy take us on a transcendental journey upwards. Finally our journey inwards and upwards takes us to Upper Space, a quintessentially Halsall tune built around glistening harp and a sublime, soulful sanctuary elevated through beautiful work from the whole band but especially saxophonist Matt Cliffe. Changing Earth features Matthew Halsall trumpet and electronics, Matt Cliffe flute & saxophone, Maddie Herbert harp, Liviu Gheorghe piano, Gavin Barras, bass, Alan Taylor drums and Jack McCarthy percussion. Changing Earth is produced by Matthew Halsall and Daniel Halsall, recorded by Matthew Halsall, mixed by Greg Freeman, mastered by Peter Beckmann of Technology Works and vinyl cut by Norman Nitzsche at Calyx.

Los Angeles artist Eddie Ruscha aka Secret Circuit hooks up with Downtown minimalist Peter Zummo for 'Thinking A View'. The duo take listeners to uncharted meridians of the mind through imaginary zones, realized via synthesizers, keyboards, drum machines, vibes, tapes, and clarinet from Ruscha. Meanwhile, Zummo helps paint these psychedelic Fourth World ambient zones utilizing various wind instruments; trombone, cornet, euphonium, and tuba which takes things into a kinda spiritual jazz realm. He also plays conch shell, plastic funnel horn, didgeridoo, and more. Most certainly recommended for fans of Jon Hassell.

Languoria is a collaboration between Denmark’s Sofie Birch and Poland’s Antonina Nowacka. While Birch describes herself as an ambient musician, Nowacka’s primary instrument is her own voice; they share in common a facility for creating complex, layered work. Birch and Nowacka were first brought together by Unsound to perform at Ephemera Festival in Warsaw as part of a durational overnight performance. Entirely improvised, the music already felt coherent, with Nowacka’s voice weaving effortlessly through Birch’s ambient soundscapes and field recordings, indicating an immediate, deep connection, a meeting of kindred spirits. The artists were reunited at Unsound Kraków to perform a morning show at a 19th-century synagogue. Here, the music took clearer shape, and the audience glimpsed the birth of works that would eventually take the form of individual tracks on Languoria. This past winter, the two artists met in Copenhagen to record the album, completing 11 compositions that feel sacred, almost devotional in character. Fusing the melodicism and gentleness of Birch’s sound practice and the abstract, spiritual vocalisations of Nowacka, the album alludes to the wonders of the natural world while also turning its gaze inwards. “When working together, every small decision was very important, and that’s why such simple compositions can hold so much complexity and depth,” Sofie Birch says of their time in Copenhagen together. Contemplative, meditative and awe-inspiring in equal measure, Languoria is a breathtaking collaborative debut. Together, these artists have uncovered a new dimension of their respective practices, creating music that is difficult to categorise, otherworldly, yet strangely comforting.

Marking the 20th release on Invisible, Inc. is this special limited edition double-vinyl gatefold compilation featuring tracks from some of the most highly respected musicians of the last five decades. The astonishingly diverse palette of styles comes courtesy of renowned ambient innnovator Laraaji, multi-Grammy Award-winning producer and ground-breaking synthesist and sound engineer Malcolm Cecil (in his Tonto's Expanding Head Band guise), Italian 'Cosmic Disco' pioneer and DJ Daniele Baldelli, avantgarde experimentalist K. Leimer, New York electro synth-pop legend Richard Bone (all five of whom have been active since the '70s or earlier) as well as dub techno locked groove aficionados log(m), West Coast psychedelic electronics maestro Secret Circuit, Berlin-based synthesist/composer Eva Geist plus a veritable "who's who" of some of the finest producers of ambient, dub, downtempo, leftfield and experimental electronica ever collected together on a single piece of wax (or two in this case): Baikonour, Sordid Sound System, Causa, Ulysses, Epsilove, Luv*Jam, Higamos Hogamos, Randweg, Bronze Savage, Komodo Kolektif, Bal5000 and Natural Sugars. Eliciting a distinct sense of musical other-worldlyness, the title is perhaps more than just a nod to Philip K Dick's "Blade Runner" and hints at the idea that if these transmissions 'from beyond' are 'lost' they may in essence be more rooted in our distant past than in some science fiction future. Putting needle to record, ancient rhythms and hypnotic mantras merge with synthesized soundscapes and deep basslines to propel us upward from the primeval forest floor into steady orbit before engaging the hyperspace drive on a trajectory deep into the Great Mystery.

From Pacific City Discs, to you the listener, this summer, a DJ mix of fantasy and splash-energy is coming to you in a small edition of vinyl. Fantasy writer/recording artist, Francesco Cavaliere, while visiting his seaside childhood vacation location, was extended an impromptu invitation, to DJ an 80s swimming club. He had this to say about his experience: “I was at Shangri-La and a boy and girl from the bathhouse in silver swimsuits and sand-colored streaks waved me over with a drink and asked me if I would like to DJ the next day during my lesson on the beach at Tana del Pirata! I then and there I laughed but then I accepted (I had nothing at home just my mp3 player and a Nokia with music inside) The next day there was a little wind on the beach and the umbrellas swayed to the left. From the heat they could catch fire, white flames, instead the sea was rough and that wind with very long wrists cheered us up, blowing gaseous clouds in our faces. Perfect for the day ahead. After the first few pieces, I began to see that a group of kids jumped into the adjacent pool trying flips bombs and candle dives. Someone at the bar was playing Altered Beast .. so sipping a drink with ice I imagined DJ werewolf repeating catchy pieces while a kite half cobra half skyscraper inflated above us.” This Impromptu Disc is fresh now, for you to frolic with this summer, while entertaining a daydream in the midst of entering a body of water while witnessing an apparition in the sky.

The title of Tom Skinner’s first release under his own name is a reference to cellist Abdul Wadud’s ultra-rare 1978 solo album ‘By Myself’, which Skinner listened to repeatedly during lockdown. Wadud’s album was privately pressed on his own label, Bisharra, and whilst Skinner’s title uses the more conventional spelling of this common Arabic name, they both have the same intention or meaning: it translates as ‘good news’, or ‘the bringer of good news’.

This is a classic-sounding record that connects backwards to Skinner’s 2017 Hello Skinny collaboration with American composer and Arthur Russell-collaborator Peter Zummo on ‘Watermelon Sun’. It links sideways to Makaya McCraven’s beat maker-inspired treatments of jazz sessions, and it offers a musical bridge to Sons of Kemet’s most meditative moments.

‘Voices of Bishara’ began life when Tom Skinner asked some musician friends to join him for a Played Twice session at London’s Brilliant Corners. The regular event had a simple format: play a classic album in full through their audiophile system and then have an elite ensemble improvise their response. The night in question focused on drummer Tony Williams’ 1964 Blue Note album ‘Life Time’ and the music he and his friends conjured up was so special that it inspired Skinner to write an albums-worth of phenomenal new music.

Skinner, a cellist, a bass player and two saxophonists recorded the results classic album-style, with everyone in the same room. He took the music home and it was put to the side, occasionally coming out for some attention in between Tom’s many other creative projects. This was a slow burn creation, and gradually, a new album began appearing as he embraced the studio recordings and accentuated their sublime idiosyncrasies.

“I took a very liberal approach with the scissors and started going really hard into the edits between instruments. It breathed new life into the music. I was taking my cue from the great disco re-edits, people like Theo Parrish chopping up tunes and looping sections. I’m not a purist. I don’t want to get hung up on the past. It was really empowering to fuck it up a bit, to mess around with the music and see what happened. It felt right”

The result is a tight, hypnotic and unique 31-minutes of music. ‘Voices of Bishara’ is sculpted around timeless and deeply emotional music that contains masses of movement and exceptional harmonic depth and texture. It sweeps and soars through soundworlds, rich in musicality and always anchored by the deep doubling of cello and bass. It also, of course, contains Skinner’s percussive magic – drumming skills that have brought artists from Grace Jones to Jonny Greenwood to request him on their records and tours.

“We’re individual voices, coming together collectively. The idea was that we could collectively bring something more positive to the table. It’s the start of something.”

Tom Skinner and ‘Voices of Bishara’: bringers of good news. 

Matthew Halsall announces The Temple Within – a four track EP on 12", CD, DL and streaming When Matthew Halsall released Salute to the Sun in November 2020, his first new album in five years, he shared the first fruits from an especially fertile period of writing and recording, which also gave birth to the music released here as The Temple Within. The recording sessions featured Halsall's then brand new band of hand-picked local musicians, brought together through weekly rehearsals and a monthly residency at Yes in Manchester, they forged an immersive, communal sound, drawing on spiritual jazz, the heritage of British jazz and progressive world music and electronica influences. Inspired by these monthly sessions, together, they created a body of music that is rooted in Northern England but draws on global inspirations. For Halsall the music on The Temple Within perfectly captures the spirit of those sessions. "I felt really excited by the connection that we were building, both together as a band, but also with the local community. People of all ages and types come to our monthly sessions and the energy of being able to write and rehearse and then perform new music each month is really uplifting. And this music is a perfect case in point. To me it really feels like a perfect pocket of music, a perfect moment. We thought about expanding it to an album, but in the end if just feels right as it is, and we wanted to share that energy of that moment with our wider community, not just people at our shows, but our fans and listeners around the world." The title track, and first single 'The Temple Within' is a darker, heavier tune than anything on Salute to the Sun and has become a firm part of the band's live shows. The enigmatic title is taken from a quote by Alice Coltrane and expands on the idea that your spiritual space is within yourself and not the bricks and mortar of a church or monastery or Ashram. The hard-grooving Earth Fire features beautiful flute work from Matt Cliffe and inspired drums from Alan Taylor, and offers a emotional response to the horrendous bush fires that ravaged Australia. The Eleventh Hour is another dark-toned "banger" with a late-night vibe and with its incessant groove and fiery solos is another track to have found a regular place in the band's sets. Finally, A Japanese Garden in Ethiopia takes it unique flavour from both musical cultures and is one of Halsall's most beautiful wistful compositions. The Temple Within features Matthew Halsall trumpet and electronics, Matt Cliffe flute & saxophone, Maddie Herbert harp, Liviu Gheorghe piano, Gavin Barras, bass, Alan Taylor drums and Jack McCarthy percussion. The Temple Within is produced by Matthew Halsall and Daniel Halsall, recorded by Matthew Halsall, mixed by Greg Freeman, mastered by Peter Beckmann of Technology Works and vinyl cut by Norman Nitzsche at Calyx. The distinctive artwork is by Ian Anderson of The Designers Republic, Join us on this beautiful journey to The Temple Within, the latest chapter in Halsall's ongoing musical voyage of discovery.

Is this recording an environmental activist art statement or ambient spa music? Maybe both? The fourth release from São Paulo label Lugar Alto is not a Brazilian production but it still has strong ties to the country, it is the psychotomimetically heuristic ambience of The Dreambird by Mitar Subotić (Suba) & Goran Vejvoda. The album was produced in Paris in 1987 and 5 years later was the first release by Suba in Brazil as a limited edition CD put out by the Brazilian Catholic label Paulinas COMEP. Listening to The Dreambird is a deeply immersive organic experience. It is ambient music that actually integrates with your environment. Bird calls and shrieks intertwining with lush synth tones, imagine late seventies Tangerine Dream in a tropical hothouse while sliding into a floatation tank located in the Amazon, an environment of rich and strange sounds. The Dreambird harks back to a time when environmental recordings were being discovered as forms of music, as David Toop writes in his book Exotica “... some recordists stuck to the idea of birdsong as music, a notion that is surely as old as music itself”. The album was made while Goran Vejvoda was living in Paris. Relaxed days were spent sitting around, tinkering with sounds, going out, having lunch, coming back and playing some more. Pascal Humbert, bass player from the French band Passion Fodder, joined the duo for a day. Goran had a Japanese field recording CD called Bird Island Seychelles that contained the exotic bird sounds and sea waves used to create the organic textures of the album. Suba left with the 8-track tapes and rough mix cassettes and adapted the music for a sound art installation/happening by the Danube in Novi Sad where The Dreambird was played, climaxing with a laser show. In the early nineties Suba moved to Brazil, and together with André Geraissati, was one of the producers of Nina Maika, an album by the Brazilian musician, Edson Natale. The album was recorded at the COMEP studio, renowned at the time for having one of the best audio production structures found in Brazil. Edson and Suba got on well with the studio crew and in 1992 proposed the simultaneous release of Sol de Inverno, an album by Edson Natale and Alex Braga, and The Dreambird. In return, COMEP provided studio hours for them to use on further projects. Suba used these hours for the production of Memória Mundi (otherwise known as Oharaska), an extensive musical project that he worked on with influential percussionist João Parahyba, but which was never finished. From this project the track “A Fábula”, with the participation of the singer Natália Barros, came out on the compilation from the Music From Memory label, Outro Tempo II. According to João, Suba managed to convince the nuns who ran the label that The Dreambird was a recording for meditation, which may have caused him to adapt the name and “conception” of the album, adding another intriguing facet to this production. The Dreambird was actually only known by that name in Brazil as the record was never actually intended to be public. The names of the tracks released back then were different from those used on this release, which are taken from the masters maintained by Vladimir Ivković. Moreover, the tracks released on the CD in Brazil were shortened and only 4 of the 6 original tracks were on the CD. This release contains the 4 tracks released in Brazil in their original full-length form, plus the two never released tracks that are available exclusively in digital format. Included as a bonus are Goran Vejvoda’s liner notes translated into French, German, Serbian and Portuguese. New artwork, with drawings by Arthur Longo, a French snowboarder and artist, was commissioned for the album and was conceived by the design studio Sometimes Always, who have worked with Lugar Alto since their first release. Mitar Subotić aka Rex Illusivii aka Suba, was born in 1961 in Yugoslavia. A renowned innovator in his home country but is best known in Brazil for his 1999 CD São Paulo Confessions, a hugely important release that effortlessly walked the line between modern MPB and 90s electronica, influencing a whole generation of Brazilian music makers. Tragically, he died just after it was released and could never benefit from its critical acclaim and success. The Dreambird was recorded in Paris one year before “In the moon cage”, a similar project using the pseudonym Rex Illusivi. This was a recording of exuberant synth scapes, ambient guitar and Yugoslavian folk which was awarded the International Fund for Promotion of Culture from UNESCO, and included a three-month scholarship to research Afro-Brazilian rhythms in Brazil. The album was released in 2015 by Ivković’s Offen Music. In 1994 Suba resuscitated his Serbian band, Angel’s Breath, with Milan Mladenović, and it became a psychedelic samba-rock project with a line-up of Brazilian musicians including João Parahyba and Fabio Golfetti, there were also contributions from Taciana Barros and, implausibly, eventual soap-opera star, Marisa Orth. Key track “Metak” is an unlikely mix of burundi drumming, post-punk, electronics and samba. “Wayang”, his global music project from 1995, further demonstrated his work with textures, loops and samples, and was recorded in Wah Wah Studios in São Paulo. This was also released by Offen Music in 2018. The prolific producer and music critic Carlos Eduardo Miranda, described Suba’s appeal best when he said “He came from the other side of the world and understood everything about this mess”. A hugely in-demand producer who was about to become a key player in the internationalization of Brazilian music. Goran Vejvoda is a multimedia artist born in London. After studying music in Belgrade he’s believed to be the guiding hand behind important releases from the early eighties Serbian scene. After moving to Paris he became a guitarist in various bands and worked with renowned comics artist Enki Bilal. Goran has released several solo albums in Japan, "Fruit Cloud" and "Harmonie". Other records include "Mikro-Organizmi" with Rambo Amadeus and "What" with ZerOne. Goran’s writing can be found in magazines such as The Wire and Vibrö. He has exhibited his art since 1981 and has performed at Beaubourg and Palais de Tokyo and participated in the exhibition "Off The Record" at the Musée D'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. More recently he has been working on and showing video art that is a reaction to the covid pandemic, as well as the All Sounds Considered film, which explores the state of sound and silence. It’s challenging to trace the story of this project precisely, very little information is available and what we have are diffused fragments of memory from different actors. So, we return to the initial question: what is The Dreambird? It doesn’t matter if it is either an environmental statement or simply relaxing spa music, what it does is evoke sensations that elevate your mind to a higher and more emotional plane and from there you can travel wherever you like.

Under the presidency of Bradley Zero, London's prestigious label , which has produced numerous masterpieces and is also focusing on contemporary jazz, has collaborated with labelmate Vels Trio keyboard player Jack Stephenson-Oliver. The latest work by SAUL, a collaborative project by producer Barney Whittaker (aka Footshooter). Includes songs featuring guests such as Ezra Collective saxophonist James Mollison and South London MC Natty Wylah. It is a supreme jazz album that blends the vibes of bedroom pop/soul that are familiar to the LA crowd with the energy and blackness of spiritual jazz. In the second half of this year, he will perform with Kamasi Washington, one of the great icons of contemporary jazz, so it's a must-see!SAUL enlist the help of talented friends for their new EP - a feel good, summer-ready soundtrack, bursting with uplifting synths and groove-heavy broken beats SAUL, is a joint project from the minds of Jack Stephenson-Oliver (keys player of fellow Rhythm Section INTL signee, Vels Trio) and producer Barney Whittaker, aka Footshooter. With the success of their individual projects - Vels are soon to embark on a tour across the UK and Europe and Footshooter is growing from strength to strength following releases on Astral Black and Dance Regular - it’s exciting to hear what the duo will think up next. When the two of them get together their jam sessions result in a fusion of jazz and broken beat. Atmospheric keys and synths interweave with programmed drums, laying the perfect ground for the all star cast of featured artists assembled for this record. Collaboration is a key element to the creative output of SAUL, shining a light over individual and collective talents. Their second release, Mutualism, promises a stellar line-up of musical interaction. In the words of Barney, “the feature performances are all very different, the way they worked on the tracks really brought each one to life in a big way”. The project starts with the sounds of sunrise. Opening with The Light, is Allysha Joy, a member of another group on Rhythm Section’s roster, 30/70. She crafts uplifting melodies that move gracefully through bouncy Rhodes chords. This track shines with sun-focused energy and up beat grooves that provide the perfect soundtrack for long summer festival days. On Coalesce, featuring South London MC Natty Wylah, lofty, cloud-like atmospheres are built above classic Moog synths. The hypnotic bass and lead notes are equal parts hopeful, eerie and curious, matching the optimistic promise offered by Wylah’s hook: ‘don’t you want to find somewhere better?’. Subjects flow from party-focused lyrics to poetic streams of consciousness as Natty adopts a dreamy sung delivery by the end of the track. The Ep comes to a serene close with a feature from ‘aden’ - recipient of the 2021 Fred Perry x Nicholas Daley Music Grant. The early image of sunlight may have faded, but the energetic focus of the project never dies. Swirling synths circle around sharp bass stabs, with a driving bassline taking over into the hook. Other major features include the unmistakable tone of Lex Amour. During Flowers, her laid back, spoken style is accompanied by a slowed down G-Funk-inspired instrumental. With an illustrious list of collaborators already to her name (such as Kojey Radical, Wulu, George Riley and Ego Ella Mae) and sell out shows across the country, she makes her lyrical prowess evident. Lex effortlessly switches between rhythmical flows to hypnotic layered melodies - elevating the production to another level in the process. The synergy between producers and vocalists is evident; the collaborations equal far more than the sum of their parts. In ‘Mutualism’ we see Saul’s vision fully come to fruition. The synergy is apparent, the possibilities - endless and the respect - mutual. Aside from the Vocal guest appearance, Mutualism is also packed with instrumental cameos. SAUL turn to Ezra Collective’s sax player James Mollison on the track Can’t Wait. The seasoned five-piece are set to perform alongside the modern day jazz pioneer Kamasi Washington later this year. Mollison shows his range on this song as energy flows from soaring highs to long sustained lows, allowing a hint of dub influence to come to light. SAUL’s newest release signals two musicians at the height of their artistic expression, drawing resources and influences from wherever is inspiring them most. This collaborative methodology produces a sound that is constantly evolving, illuminating new faces and sounds with each project that passes.

Once again Studio Mule dives deep into the music history of Japan, unearthing the multi-colored album “A-Key” by Eiki Nonaka, released as CD only on the short living japanese label Sun & Moon Records in 1995. An album, that uniquely unifies global ethnic music styles, the playfulness of Jazz, innovative electronic soundscapes, and the winding per-sonality of spiritual music. It’s the only solo album of a musician, that is triggering the advanced electrified japanese music culture since the early 1980ees. Eiki Nonaka was part of electronic New Age quartet interiors, releasing the two minimalistic, synth-pop leaning albums “Interior” and “design” in 1982 and 1987. likewise, he was a member of Haruomi Hosono’s band friends of earth, playing, voicing, and tuning the drum machine, guitar, synthesizers, and mi-crophone on their second landmark experimental Pop Electronic album “Sex, Energy and Star”, released Hosono’s outstanding non-standard label in 1986. His one and only solo album “A-Key” features the essence of all his musical journeys until 1995, bringing, as he puts it on his blog http://www.viewz.jp, “all my musical career up to that point designed in sounds that were ringing in my head at that time. It's extremely introspective, but the various mental landscapes of that time are still vibrating fresh and acoustically new.”

Otoroku present the first vinyl reissue of Louis Moholo Octet's Spirits Rejoice!, originally released in 1978 on Ogun Recordings. One of the most legendary free jazz records ever produced, Spirits Rejoice! is a high achievement in the movement of the era as it soars beyond oppression with a raucous and spiritually uplifting surge of movement and melody. Featuring Harry Miller, Johnny Dyani, Keith Tippett, Evan Parker, Nick Evans, Radu Malfatti, and Kenny Wheeler, this is former Blue Note artist Louis Moholo's first album under his own name and is a classic example of the cross-pollination between South African and British players. Mongezi Feza's 'You Ain't Gonna Know Me 'Cos You Think You Know Me" alone is enough to make your life a better place. Made with permission and in association with Ogun Recordings. Features an exact reproduction of the original artwork and liner notes, along with new liner notes from Matthew Wright. Remastered by Giuseppe IIelasi. High gloss sleeve.

This is a great masterpiece that further updates the boundaries of what can only be described as his unique style. As a member of the famous hip-hop crew, Origami, he has been active with Nanorunamonai. In 2021, he released his self-produced full-length album "SHINGANGINGA".