MUSIC

Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, Hugh Davies & Jamie Muir's pointillistic classic as The Music Improvisation Company is the latest in Honest Jon's righteous Incus reissue programme, out now in a handsome gatefold 2LP edition. "Though music journalists made a big deal recently about the release of a 1965 rehearsal tape by Derek Bailey’s Joseph Holbrooke trio with Gavin Bryars and Tony Oxley, those early efforts were mere tentative steps along a cliff edge wearing a line safely attached to Coltrane. There’s still a whiff of jazz to Bailey and Parker’s work with the Spontaneous Music Ensemble up to and including 1968’s Karyobin. But with the addition of Jamie Muir — the first great free improvising percussionist who didn’t start out as a jazz drummer — and the way-leftfield electronics of Hugh Davies, the MIC leapt right off that cliff. These six tracks — tight, electric, pointillistic, brilliant, uncompromising and exhilarating — sound like nothing else that came before. In a word, seminal. "The original concepts of vocal and instrumental music are utterly different. The instrumental impulse is not melody in a 'melodious' sense but an agile movement of the hands which seem to be under the control of a brain centre totally different from that which inspires vocal melody. Altogether, instrumental music, with the exception of rudimentary rhythmic percussion, is as a rule a florid, fast and brilliant display of virtuosity... Quick motion is not merely a means to a musical end but almost an end in itself which always connects with the fingers, the wrists and the whole of the body. "The inclusion of the above passage from Curt Sachs' The Wellsprings of Music with this album, the recording of which predates the Music Improvisation Company's only other release, the eponymous ECM outing, indicates a clear intention to stake out territory for European Free Improvisation markedly different from that of the (American) Free Jazz it sprang from. The African-American heritage that led to jazz was melodious, vocal, field holler / church-inflected, and the Germans and the Dutch never made any secret of their affection for it, but British free improvisers in the late 1960s were looking elsewhere. Even so, and though the music press made a big deal a while back about the release of a 1965 rehearsal tape by Derek Bailey's earlier Joseph Holbrooke trio (with Gavin Bryars and Tony Oxley), their early efforts were mere tentative steps along a cliff edge wearing a line safely attached to Coltrane, and there's still a faint but distinct aftertaste of jazz in Bailey and Parker's work with the Spontaneous Music Ensemble up to and including 1968's Karyobin. But with the addition of Jamie Muir - the first great free improvising percussionist who didn't start out as a jazz drummer - and Hugh Davies and his electronics from way out leftfield in the avant garde / experimental world, the MIC leapt right off that cliff. As Nina Hagen screamed later, "1968 is over! Future is Now!" These six tracks – tight, electric, pointillistic, brilliant, uncompromising and exhilarating – sound like nothing else that came before. In a word, seminal."

Bheki Mseleku, who played on Hugh Masekela's masterpiece "Waiting For The Rain," is also featured on this album. South Africa's answer to Chick Corea's Return to Forever and Miles Davis' On the Corner. This is the first analogue reissue of the first album released in 1977 by the legendary Spirits Rejoice collective. A legendary ensemble of South Africa's most talented players, this is a timeless masterpiece that has had a profound impact on the evolution of jazz in South Africa! Gorgeous photos and liner notes by Francis Gooding are posted on the inner sleeve.

Nowadays Arica exists only as the ¡ÆArica Institute¡Ç, a school of spiritual development formed and led by Chilean mystic Oscar Ichazo¡Ähowever, the collective also produced several musical albums in the US (presumably to increase awareness of the school), this resulted in the release of four totally eclectic masterpieces: Arica & Audition (1972), Heaven (1973) and Music In The Nine Rings (2002). ​ Both the Arica school and its musical output had a big influence on some of the most creative minds amongst us, for example: prior to making his film The Holy Mountain, Alejandro Jodorowsky met Ichazo and became intrigued enough by his techniques – essentially a potent blending of esoteric knowledge and methods from around the world – to not only go through the initial intensive course of Arica mind expansion and training but to require the same of the entire cast and crew for the film. This undoubtedly affected the whole movie, and it seems strange that Arica¡Çs music was not used for the soundtrack, an Arica soundtrack could have been pure magic all the way through. ​ The Arica album we are proudly presenting you today (Heaven from 1973) is a total must-have in any collection (originally released on the Just Sunshine Records label in 1973 that was responsible for putting out milestone albums from the likes of Betty Davis, Karen Dalton and Norman Feels). Here on these recordings, you¡Çll find ten tracks that will blow your mind and open your spiritual doors! ​ Heaven has it all¡Äomming drones interchanged with upbeat percussion, acoustic and funky basslines intertwining the melodious threads. The album is full of deep meditational grooves meeting all kinds of polyrhythmic free jazz vibes, atonal keyboards and avant-garde soul-jazz sounds. The unhurried improvisations and subtle manipulation of musical tension makes Heaven an immersive, psychedelic and spiritual masterpiece with a jazz sensibility in its overall structure. The superb use of the sitar and the hypnotic percussion gives it that great cosmic touch that reminds of Alice Coltrane¡Çs work. ​ The whole album was recorded on a midsummer night in NYC¡Äone hundred Arica members, musicians and dancers all gathered at the legendary Electric Lady Studio (home to Jimy Hendrix) and played until dawn. The names of the musicians involved were not given on the record sleeves, credited simply to ¡ÆThe Arica Musicians¡Ç. In a way, though, this mystery suits the remarkable music contained within these resultant grooves – timeless sounds that could have been conjured from and played by the very spirits of the Earth¡Äall this accompanied by notes in the gatefold jacket to guide the listener though his sonic voyage. ​ Tidal Waves Music now proudly presents the first ever vinyl reissue of this fantastic album (originally released in 1973 on Just Sunshine Records). This rare record (original copies tend to go for large amounts on the secondary market) is now finally back available as a limited 180g vinyl edition (500 copies) and comes packaged in a gatefold jacket complete with the original 1973 artwork, photographs and liner notes ​

Wendell Harrison was born in Detroit in 1942 where he began formal jazz studies for piano, clarinet and tenor saxophone. At 14, while still in high school, Harrison started performing & recording professionally with artists such as Marvin Gaye, Grant Green, Sun Ra, Hank Crawford … and many others. In 1971, Harrison began teaching music at Metro Arts (a multi-arts complex for youth) where he also connected with Marcus Belgrave, Harold McKinney and Phil Ranelin…soon after they formed the (now legendary) Afro-centric TRIBE record label and artist collective. TRIBE used the Metro Arts complex as a vehicle to convey a growing black political consciousness. Wendell Harrison also published the very popular TRIBE magazine, a publication dedicated to local and national social and political issues, as well as featuring artistic contributions such as poetry and visual pieces. In 1978 Harrison and McKinney co-founded REBIRTH, a non-profit jazz performance and education organization, in which many notable jazz artists have participated. Around the same time Wendell Harrison also created the WENHA record label and publishing company, which released many of his (now classic) recordings as well as those of other artists, such as Phil Ranelin, Doug Hammond and Reggie Fields (The Real ShooBeeDoo). In the early 1990s, Wendell Harrison was awarded the title of “Jazz Master” by Arts Midwest. This distinction led Harrison to collaborate with fellow honorees and gave him the chance to tour throughout the United States, Middle East and Africa. Even to this day Wendell Harrison’s recordings for the TRIBE, WENHA and REBIRTH labels have a large worldwide fanbase. It is on WENHA that Harrison released the opus: DREAMS OF A LOVE SUPREME (1980), which we are presenting you today. DREAMS OF A LOVE SUPREME is a monster album that features an all-star line-up that includes Phil Ranelin (Freddie Hubbard, Solomon Burke, Mulatu Astakte) on trombone, Harold McKinney (Tribe) on Keyboards and Roy Brooks (Yusef Lateef, Chet Baker, Mingus) on percussion. Although you can hear the 80ies creeping in with a smoother sound, more synths, and disco/R&B vocals… this remains a very spiritual (and soulful) jazz record. The record’s an irresistible blend of soul jazz combined with funky electric instrumentation…a groovy sound which is very much of its time, yet overtly timeless and as relevant today as it was back when it was initially released. Tidal Waves Music now proudly presents the first ever vinyl reissue of ‘Dreams of A Love Supreme’ since its release in 1980. This official reissue is now available as a deluxe 180g BLACK vinyl edition (limited to 500 copies) and comes with an unreleased bonus track.

Highly coveted Hawaiian jazz/soul album. The debut album from Mackey Feary’s solo band after departing seminal contemporary Hawaiian group, Kalapana. This LP reads like a who’s who in the local 70s music scene: Nohelani Cypriano (of “Lihue” cult fame), Azure McCall (of Lemuria), Jimmy Funai (who produced Hal Bradbury’s debut), and Gaylord Holomalia (who now runs the island studio where stars record, incl. Kanye West, Jay-Z, Mariah Carey). Unlike other reissues, this Aloha Got Soul pressing includes the full version of “Powerslide” in all its 7-minute glory. An all-time classic must-have record from the Hawaiian Islands.

In 1997 and 1998, the late great Japanese composer, producer, and DJ Susumu Yokota released two of the most eclectic albums of his decades-long career, Fruits of The Room and Greenpeace. Recorded under his Stevia alias for Tokyo Techno pioneer DJ Miku’s Newstage Records/NS-COM, they were Yokota-san’s homage to the foundational days of club music in Japan. This year, Glossy Mistakes are proud to present the first official vinyl editions of Fruits of The Room and Greenpeace, originally released on CD during the golden days of the format. Packaged in reimagined cover artwork created by the celebrated Japanese visual artist Masaho Anotani, these two albums perfectly capture the diversity at the heart of Yokota-san’s oeuvre. Across Greenpeace sees Yokota-san conjuring up a heady concoction of dusty loops, sampledelic breaks, kraut-rock and psychedelic downbeat. A remarkable listening experience based on the inspired era of a genius. When Yokota-san wrote and produced the music on Fruits of The Room and Greenpeace in 1997, he was reflecting on the broader culture that surrounded dance music in Japan in the early to mid-nineties. It was an era when the psychedelic culture of late sixties America, the afterglow of UK acid house/rave, the new age movement and cyberpunk dovetailed together. Within DJ Miku and Yokota-san’s social circles, the thinking of Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs electrified the air. By 1996, the moment, brilliant and blinding as it was, was over. “We all felt that the rave scene fizzled out,” DJ Miku says. As he puts it, there was a collective feeling around him that it had all become too much. From the calm that followed, DJ Miku, Yokota-san and their open-eared peers made the decision to switch tracks and start from scratch. DJ Miku believes that with his Stevia releases, Fruits of The Room and Greenpeace, Yokota-san wanted to express the sweet and sour nature of the passing of those wild early days and his wish for true peace. “At the time, we saw eye-to-eye, with an implicit understanding of each other,” he explains. “Even now, twenty-five years later, I am confident it was like that.”

With a shared ethos of elevating and amplifying left-field Black music, South London/Jamaica's, cktrl shares his most ambitious work yet, partnering with Errol and Alex Rita's Touching Bass to present 'Robyn'. Collaborating with the likes of Campbell Addy, Duval Timothy, CHILD Studios (Tayo and Ro), Coby Sey, Shirley Tetteh, Purple Ferdinand and photography/creative direction by the iconic Ib Kamara, he has created a vital exploration of contemporary-classical music. Spurred on by the overpowering feelings of heartbreak, 'robyn' impressively creates emotive and heartfelt clarinet and saxophone-led soundscapes about the all-consuming power of love. On the project, cktrl says: “‘Robyn’ at its core is heartbreak and is just really sentimental. It’s a journey of losing a love but it ends with optimism as you find strength to love again.” Born and bred in Lewisham, cktrl aka Bradley Miller is an integral part of London’s pioneering musical underground. One of the only remaining original DJs on NTS, cktrl has previously worked with and played alongside the likes of Sampha, Sango, Kelela and Dean Blunt. Throughout his career to date, cktrl has also been recognised and heralded by fashion and film creators including Ib Kamara (who shot the artwork), Bianca Saunders, Tremaine Emory, Nicholas Daley and Jenn Nkiru who recently secured him a cameo in Beyonce’s ‘Black Is King’.

Morning Trip & Yoga Records are proud to finally reveal one of the ultimate lost masterworks of new age music: Alice Damon’s Windsong. Gently propelled by Damon's haunting breath-of-life vocal winds reminiscent of Joan La Barbara underscored by field recordings and Damon's fretless bass sound calling to mind mid-70 Joni Mitchell, Windsong is traveling music, for the roads or for the skies. Instantly moving, it conjures vistas both romantically familiar and cosmically mysterious — waterfalls and wind, the voice of the earth, as heard through heavenly prisms. Damon attended college in Massachusetts, where she formed and fronted the all-female garage band called The Moppets in the late 60s. The band began to garner national attention, but Damon moved instead to the wilds of northern Vermont to homestead and raise a family. In 1981 or thereabouts she was able to gain use of an early Sony digital home recorder, and created her masterwork, Windsong. But Damon waited until 1990 to release a packaged version of this album, now titled "Windsong II", and sent samples to regional distributors like Vermont’s fabled Silo-Alcazar, where a copy of the album was first discovered, but little evidence exists of a proper commercial release. Alice Damon passed on in 2011 and remained essentially unknown until the landmark I Am The Center: Private Issue New Age In America 1950-1990 first revealed her genius to a wider audience two years later. Now, just in time for the recording's 40th anniversary, Alice Damon's Windsong may at last be heard as one of the most singular, moving and profound examples of new age music's psychedelic essence. Morning Trip & Yoga Records proudly present Windsong.

Moodymann's oeuvre continues to yield new gems on a yearly basis, but sometimes you've got to take it back to the classics. "Forevernevermore" was a landmark when it first landed in 2000, building on the promise of his earlier LPs to deliver an immaculate trip through the dreamiest corners of his idiosyncratic deep house vision. From the incantations of "Meanwhile Back At Home" to the early morning freak haze of "The Set Up", the quintessentially KDJ 'in-the-room' vibe of "The Thief That Stole My Sad Days" to the heavy edit funk of "Tribute" this is gold-standard Detroit house start to finish from one of the best to ever do it.

A masterpiece 4th album released in 2003. Limited clear vinyl edition.

The ‘3000 Volts of Holt’ album was the third in a series of records that launched John Holt into the UK charts in the 1970’s. To say that every home had a copy of a 1000 Volts and many 2000 Volts of Holt might be an overstatement but it certainly felt that way, as all good radio stations and parties seemed to have these tracks on permanent rotation.’3000 Volts of Holt’ was the more roots sounding of the three albums but still carried that sweetened string sound that set these recordings together.

Unreleased high quality recordings of the italian experimental trio Futuro Antico. The sound experience it's a mysterious synergy between the elements of Nature, a magical encounter between different souls but with elective affinity. Maioli’s ancient and ethnic wind instruments are the breath of the Air, Sinigaglia’s electronic spirit produces liquid sequences of the Water, while Dabiré’s african percussions materialize the voice and rhythms of the Earth. The result is a total creative Fire, a foamed core of perceptions and multiple sensory universes of distant memory. The dialogue between archaic and futuristic already investigated in the historic "Dai Primitivi All’Elettronica" sees here another bright episode in this unreleased live, the music recorded on tapes directly by the mixing console is the result of the memorable performance held in Bologna at the festival Isole Del Suono on 17 July 1980. The secret harmony between sounds is complete but at the same time brings out the expressive specificity of the three individual personality: the subtlety of reiterate sonic textures; waterfalls of minimalist piano; Sufi atmospheres supported by sequence of organs that reinterpret the frequencies of harmoniums lost, the solemn gait of an African balaphone absorbed in electronic vortices endless...these are some of the coordinates of a musical and cultural poetics that after years continues to wonder for his source of formal purity and multiplicity of stimuli.

Recorded at the infamous Spahn Ranch in 1970, while their leader Charles Manson was facing trial for the murder of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, The Manson Family Sings is a highly disconcerting listen. Beneath the harmonic brilliance and folksy innocence of these campfire-styled recordings are the hallmarks of Manson's twisted worldview, rendering a dystopian edge to what is otherwise compelling singalongs. Squeaky Frome, Brenda Gold, Gypsy Share and Sandra Blue all feature, with Clem Grogan fronting the beast, the end result being some of the freakiest and troubling songs you are ever likely to encounter.

A breathtaking self-conscious free-jazz masterwork, 'Rise Vision Comin'' summarizes more than 30 years of musical and theoretical/political expression from renowned activist/scholar/free-jazz pioneer Haki R. Standing on the verge of spiritual jazz aesthetic, his music remains timeless & unforgettable after it's longstanding creation. The first album by the group Rise Vision Comin was released in 1976, and features among others Wallace Roney on trumpet, Clarence Seay on bass and Agyei Akoto on saxophone who also served as creative director. It features 9 tracks with the title track, “Rise, Vision, Comin” a great example of the adhesive comradery between instrumentation and Madhubuti’s spoken-word.

This is an analog reissue of the classic live album "Live At The East" by Pharaoh Sanders, a living legend of spiritual jazz in the vein of John Coltrane, released in 1972 on Impulse! The album features some of the band's best performances, including the 20-minute epic "Healing Song" and the two-part "Lumkili".

Alison Statton of Young Marble Giants, an avant-garde / indie pioneer in Wales, has established himself as a masterpiece released from the prestigious Rough Trade in 1982, a band formed with guitarists Simon Booth and Spike. The debut album "La Varieté" has been completely remastered from And is a happy reissue! !! This work is a bold work that breaks the flow of post-punk by incorporating various elements such as bossa nova, afrobeat, and truly original contemporary exotic pop based on jazz! A masterpiece of Neo-acoustic that was highly evaluated by critics at the time of its release and had a great influence on Saint Etienne and Belle and Sebastian, who later became active in the indie world! !! Clear vinyl specifications. Limited to 500 copies.

‘The Syd Barrett of the avant-jazz scene’ British jazz composer, pianist, songwriter, Mike Taylor died tragically young, leaving just two albums as well as co-writes with Ginger Baker for Cream’s Wheels Of Fire album to his name. In 1973, under the direction of Neil Ardley, several of the performers who had worked with him recorded an album of Taylor’s surviving orchestral music, jazz tunes and songs as a memorial to him and to preserve his work as a composer and song writer for posterity. Taken from Ardley’s master tapes, this is their critically-acclaimed tribute to a master of his art by friends and colleagues, themselves representing a cross-section of the cream of modern British jazz talent of the day.

Radiation Roots continues its exploration of Jah Thomas' Midnight Rock label with the releases of this sought after and rare early dancehall album. Recorded at the legendary Channel One Studio, Osbourne and Palmer are two sublime vocalists and they are backed here by The Roots Radics, with Scientist on the mix.

Reissue on vinyl for this classic album originally released in 1978 on Carib Gems. Arranged and produced by Bunny Lee. Delroy Wilson was one of Jamaica's most soulful vocalists, and over a 40-year career the singer unleashed a flood of hits and a multitude of masterpieces. Born in the Kingston neighborhood of Trenchtown, Wilson's phenomenal talent would be his ticket out of the ghetto, and his discovery by producer Coxsone Dodd in 1962 would change the path of Jamaican music.

This is the only album by Darris Carr, the legendary project of Japan's Mick Kahn and Bauhaus' Peter Murphy, which was released in 1984. The album contains seven songs, including the single "The Judgement Is The Mirror", which was recorded on Captain Beefheart's classic album "Trout Mask Replica". The band borrowed its name from a song on Captain Beefheart's classic album "Trout Mask Replica," and the artwork, which features a portion of Maxfield Parrish's famous painting "Dawn," was selected as one of FACT magazine's 20 best goth albums. For this RSD release, the album will be reissued on a limited-edition magenta vinyl with the latest remastering from the original analog tapes.

Ajdin Asllan was born in Leskovik near the present-day southern border of Albania on March 12, 1895. At the age of 30, on July 12, 1925, he married a girl named Emverije, who was one month shy of her 16th birthday, in her native town Korçë, about 80 miles north. He arrived in New York by himself less than a year later on September 20, 1926, and when he filed his Declaration of Intent to become an American citizen in 1928 as a resident of Detroit, he gave his occupation as "musician." Emverije joined him in New York City on July 27, 1931. Asllan appears to have made his first recordings in November 1931 as a clarinetist on four songs issued as 12” discs by Columbia sung in Albanian by K. Duro N. Gerati. In January 1932 he recorded again, this time singing and playing oud on three Columbia 12”s along with several Albanian singers and the violinist Nicola Doneff (born March 21, 1891 Dichin, Bulgaria; died July 19, 1961 New York). In 30s Asllan launched an independent label called Mi-Re (roughly “With New” in Albanian) Rekord primarily to release his own recordings, but it stalled out after about 6 releases. In October 1941 he accompanied a Greek singer and songwriter named G.K. Xenopoulos as an oudist along with the beloved Greek clarinetist Kostas Gadinis and accordionist John Gianaros for the Orthophonic subsidiary of Victor Records run by Tetos Demetriades. The trio of Gadinis, Asllan, and Gianaros cut another four sides for Orthophonic May 1, 1942. Shortly thereafter, Asllan relaunched his label as Me Re with the help of Doneff and then quickly renamed it, more generically, Balkan. Gianaros came in as a business partner, and Balkan released scores of records, some of them seemingly selling thousands of copies in the mid-40s, but Gianaros split angrily with Asllan after just a few years over money problems. By 1947, Doneff had trademarked the Kaliphon label, which drew from much of the same roster of New York musicians of the Greek- and Turkish-speaking performers as Balkan and apparently collaborated in distribution, marketing, and manufacturing into the 1950s, but some business distinction had been drawn. A third label, Metropolitan, was launched and became at catchall for further Greek, Turkish, Armenian, and Ladino material by New York players, but it's not clear who was in charge or how things were divided up. Maybe Metropolitan was started by Asllan as a separate business to dodge the taxman or old creditors? We don’t know. All three labels shared a standard black-on-red color scheme that, it would seem reasonable to guess, was based on the Albanian flag and Asslan’s original, core purpose as an artist and impresario. Adjin and Emverije lived during the 1930s into the 50s first at 143 Norfolk St. and then at 42 Rivington St. (where Asllan opened a record shop), in Manhattan's Lower East Side, where Eastern European Jewish immigrants surrounded the small Albanian community and Turkish-speaking Sephardic Jews, and abutting Little Italy and a strip of Greek coffee houses on Mulberry Street. He worked within a network of primarily Turkish- and Greek-speaking performers in New York and released recordings prolifically made both locally and overseas through the 40s and 50s. He corresponded with his brother Selim (who sings on track 1, side A, later worked on the radio in Tirana and co-founded the National Ensemble of Folk Songs and Dances) back home, who was able to secure masters of Albanian performers recorded in Istanbul and Athens along with performances by Turkish- and Greek-speaking stars including Rosa Eskenazi and Udi Hrant (both of whom subsequently made extended visits to the U.S.) Greeks and Armenians had, even at the low ebb of immigration during the 1940s-50s, substantial immigrant populations in New York and around the country - Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, and many other cities. Those markets kept the Balkan label afloat for nearly 20 years. But Asllan also issued about 40 discs for the Albanian-language market ca. 1945-50 (at which point he retained a 500-series numbering scheme for them, picking up where he’d left off with his Me Ri label a decade earlier), including both folk music of southern Albania and choral music, much of the latter anti-Fascist Communist songs. In addition, three discs were issued as part of Balkan’s Greek series of uncredited musicians from Pogoni and Konitsa, towns about 30 miles south as the crow flies from where Asllan was born. The total Albanian-speaking population in the U.S. at the time was less than 10,000, and many couldn’t afford record players. But despite the small market for Albanian-language songs, he made sure to release discs for his countrymen. It was a time of immense political and social turbulence in both Albania and Greece, and the sense of duty to music is palpable in his work. Balkan’s business model was haphazard. Its numbering system, if one can call it that, indicates a tendency to start a series, then add to it - or not - sporadically, driven largely the question, “can we sell 500 of these? (And if so, can we sell 1000?)” The last Balkan 78s were issued around 1959; a few LP releases appeared around 1960, more than 20 years after Asllan released his first discs. We know he visited his native home and family in 1951, 25 years after having become American. He died in New York in October 1976. He had no children, save the records. ========= We have so far been able to trace a biographical narrative of only one of the other immigrant performer among those who play on this collection, Chaban Arif, who apparently sings on track 9. He was born May 22, 1899 in Berat, Albania, attended school through the second grade, and arrived alone at Ellis Island on November 2, 1920 at the age of 19 under the name Aril Shaban. His intention upon arrival was to meet up with a cousin, Mahomet Hajrules (who, in turn, had arrived only six months earlier under the name Mehemet Airula) in Southbridge, Massachusetts. However, there was a family of four from Shaban’s hometown on the same steamship who were headed to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (via a stop first at the south Philadelphia home of a relative), so Shaban wound up in Pittsburgh. He filed his first papers to become a U.S. citizen in Canton, Ohio in 1925, but he had returned to Albania in June of 1928, where he married an 18 year old woman named Nadire, and by 1931 had returned to Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, where he was working at the Duquesne, Pennsylvania Carnegie steel mill. (When his cousin Mehmet Hajrulla filed his Declaration of Intent to naturalize as a U.S. citizen in 1937, he was a widower living on Braddock Ave. in Pittsburgh and working as a painter.) The 1940 census found Shaban Arif relocated to 55 Clinton St. on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, about seven blocks from Adjin Asllan’s place on Rivington. Arif told the census enumerator that he worked 60 hours a week, 52 weeks a year for $916 a year (about $17,000 a year in today’s money) at the counter of of a restaurant. The man he listed on his WWII draft registration card as his closest contact was named Kardi Braim, who gave his country of origin either as Albania and Macedonia on different documents, had himself worked for a brick manufacturer in Erie County, Pennsylvania in addition to a string of other laboring jobs and worked at the time at Stewart’s Restaurant. It would seem reasonable to guess that both Shaban Arif and Kardi Braim were in Adjin Asllan’s limited social circle of Albanians in the neighborhood in the early 1940s when he recorded on this song. The $1 that the disc cost could have represented three and a half hours of labor at the restaurant. We know nothing else of Shaban Arif’s life except that he died in New York City in September, 1971. (Kardi Braim died in 1978.)

We Release Jazz announce the official reissue of Ryo Fukui's only solo piano album, recorded live, June 4-5, 1994 at The Lutheran Hall in Sapporo. Originally released on CD only by Sapporo Jazz Create in 1994, My Favorite Tune is a beautiful bop adventure which includes two superb compositions that Ryo Fukui wrote as an homage to his beloved Hokkaido region, the fan-favorite "Nord" and "Voyage", a tribute to his mentor Barry Harris ("Nobody's"), alternate versions of his mega classics "Scenery" and "Mellow Dream", and, last but not least, bewitching takes on timeless gems by Sonny Clark and Avery Parrish. My Favorite Tune plays like a cool summer night, full of contemplative notes and deep feelings, with Ryo Fukui baring his heart on the piano and displaying the soulful sophistication he is loved for. A true masterpiece completing his amazing discography. Comes with liner notes by Yusuke Ogawa. Sourced from the original masters. LP version comes on 180 gram vinyl mastered at half speed for full audiophile sound.

The 2022 repress that I'm happy with the rare one. It's a great sound field. French writer Ernest Bergez, who has left his works in famous places such as and , and the French drone band "France", which is also known to recur from the current New Age / minimalist sanctuary . Tanz Mein Herz is a large experimental folk group composed of members Jeremie Sauvage and Alexis Degrenier, a hurdy-gurdy player who is also active in network groups such as Ensemble Minisym and La Tene. A 2029 work consisting of a 2015 session sound source containing exceptional content! A powerful sound source jointly released by and . A mantra-like psychedelic and spiritual drone sound by hurdy-gurdy and bagpipes forms an overwhelming sound field while a strange folk lore of unknown nationality breathes. This is swallowed if you're not careful! Limited to 100 copies only.

Recorded over the course of 4 years during late-night, afterhours sessions at RCA's Studio @ Calle Carlos Maurrás in Madrid (one of Spain's best and bigger studio around that time), it was the result of the duo's interest in unorthodox sound-sources which they manipulated in a sort proto-sampling collage technique based on random tape-loops and best heard in their original percussive studies; their dreamy, surrealist-like lyrical passages or the sort of deep primeval atmospheres first conjured by Cluster or Kraftwerk in the early 70's.The studio as an instrument: pure sound alchemy at work. The Wah Wah edition is the first ever vinyl reissue of this legendary LP reproducing the original gimmick cover, with sound mastered from the original tapes by Eugenio Muñoz, and featuring an insert with photos and info. It is a strictly limited edition of 500 copies only.