MUSIC

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

Strut follow up their hugely successful Marshall Allen-curated ‘In The Orbit Of Ra’ compilation with a newly curated set from the immense 125 LP back catalogue of jazz maverick, DIY philosopher and self-professed member of an “angel race”, Sun Ra. ‘To Those Of Earth... And Other Worlds’ is a hand- picked selection from BBC 6Music DJ Gilles Peterson, long-time champion of Ra’s music and the UK’s leading tastemaker for jazz-based sounds. It serves as perhaps the best introduction yet to the music of Sun Ra for a whole new generation of converts.

Sun Ra was a one-off in the history of jazz. As author Robert L. Campbell describes, “He claimed to be the last of the swing band leaders, yet dosed classic songs with LSD. He wrote poetry about the “coming space age” and claimed to be a citizen of Saturn. He dressed himself and his band in gold-lamé and lectured on the Creator’s message to the cruel and deceitful Earthman. He named himself after an Egyptian God. Was this guy for real? Sun Ra was very much for real.”

For the CD version, Peterson picks personal favourites, classics and unreleased tracks and weaves them into a flowing piece across 2CDs, showcasing the incredible variety of Ra’s work. Alongside the familiar tones of ‘Love In Outer Space’, the modal classic ‘Sleeping Beauty’ and a heavy version of ‘We Travel The Spaceways’, he brings in the off-kilter 1950s doo-wop of ‘Dreaming’, a 45 given to him personally by the late John Peel, alongside an unreleased 1987 bossa take on ‘Astro Black’, the experimental dub ambience of ‘Adventure-Equation’ and the defiant anthem, ‘Blackman’.

The first new studio album by the Ethio jazz pioneer in over 25 years features intricate new compositions alongside funky workouts. Includes the cinematic instrumental ‘Green Africa’ and the slinky jazz cut, ‘The Way To Nice’.

Vibraphone and keyboard player, master arranger and bandleader, Mulatu Astatke is one of the all-time greats of Ethiopian music and the creator of his own original music form, Ethio jazz. Through the acclaimed Ethiopiques album series and through featuring on the soundtrack to the Jim Jarmusch film Broken Flowers, his music has belatedly reached a global audience and a new, younger generation of fans. In November of last year, he recorded an inspired new album with London psych jazz band The Heliocentrics for Strut’s ‘Inspiration Information’ studio collaboration series. Now, Strut are proud to present, for the first time anywhere, the definitive Mulatu career retrospective covering his landmark ‘60s and ‘70s recordings. Mulatu is a true pioneer of African music. He was the first Ethiopian musician of his generation to travel extensively and to record abroad – he studied in the UK in Wales and at Trinity College Of Music in London, cutting his teeth on the buoyant London jazz scene of the early ‘60s. He became the first African student to attend Harvard and he lived and recorded in New York, developing a unique sound that fused Western jazz with traditional Ethiopian melodies. As Mulatu says, “it took a long time to get the balance, to let the colours and the feelings of the Ethiopian modes shine through.” Returning to ‘Swinging Addis’ during the late ’60s, he became a pivotal figure, arranging for many of the country’s top vocalists and developing rich, dense textures in his own music during the final years of Selassie’s reign and the mid-‘70s rule of the Derg Communist military junta. Tracing the progression of his Ethio jazz experiments with full access to all of the labels for whom he recorded, Mulatu Astatke: New York-Addis-London is the essential Mulatu. Covering his first recordings in the UK during 1965, his groundbreaking fusions for the small Worthy label in New York and his key ‘70s recordings back in Addis on Amha, Phillips and Axum, the album features comprehensive sleeve notes by Miles Cleret, boss of the excellent Soundway Records imprint, and rare, previously unseen photos from Mulatu’s personal archive.

Nigeria 70: Lagos Jump, another essential box of West African dynamite with the emphasis firmly on the dancefloor. From the heavy jazz of Peter King to Bola Johnson’s scratchy Afro funk and the rolling grooves of juju legend Sir Shina Peters, the album captures a rich and unique era in West African music.

"...a brilliant panorama of the country's popular music in the 1970s"

January 2nd, 2023. Aside from being the second of a new year, it was a pretty ordinary night at ETA in Los Angeles, where guitarist Jeff Parker - alongside his ETA IVtet with saxophonist Josh Johnson, bassist Anna Butterss, and drummer Jay Bellerose - had been holding down a regular Monday gig since 2016. At the time, nobody knew it was the first gig of the last year that ETA would be open for business.

Over seven years of holding down that residency, Parker’s ETA ensemble evolved from a band that played mostly standards into a group known for its transcendent, long-form (sometimes stretching out for 45 minutes or more) journeys into innovative, often uncharted territories of groove-oriented, painterly, polyrhythmic, minimalist and mantric improvised music.

With that musical growth, the crowds for Parker and his band at ETA grew across the years too. What started as a sparse gathering of weeknight drinkers, friends, family, and Chicago expats (coming to get a shot of nostalgia for the atmospheres Parker used to create at Rodan across the ‘00s and early ‘10s) grew into a Los Angeles nightlife staple with a packed house and a line down the block for every show.

By January 2023 interest in Parker’s music was stronger than ever, coming off successes with the December 2021 International Anthem/Nonesuch release of Forfolks – a collection of solo guitar works – and the October 2022 Eremite release of Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy, a double LP chronicling the ETA IVtet’s distinct, expansive approach to improvisation across four side-length tracks recorded and mixed live by engineer Bryce Gonzales.

Mondays introduced the world to the ETA IVtet’s signature sound with a gathering of unnamed recordings from dates between 2019 and 2021. Parker’s new ETA IVtet offering stays true to that formula in some ways – as he returns to Gonzales’s archive of analog captures to gather four long recordings totalling around 80 minutes – while zooming in on a more particular moment in his journey. The Way Out of Easy provides us a macro-lens view of the ever-refining, infinite organic essence of the ensemble as they stretch out across a single night of soundmaking on January 2nd, 2023.

The engineer Gonzales is well known for the high-end audio gear he builds as Highland Dynamics, and even designed a custom mixer to be able to record the ETA IVtet, specifically, while only taking up a single space at the bar. In his liner notes for The Way Out of Easy, he colors his process and approach: “There are many different ways to make recordings and they all have their place. But for this band, the most important thing to consider is: not doing anything to get in the way of what they are saying to each other.” He refers to the simple schematic he used for capturing these performances – “basically only 4 level controls for one microphone per player” – which allows us an incredibly pure, honest, transparent and transporting experience of the music as it unfolds and is created in real time.

The set begins with an extended take on Parker’s composition “Freakadelic” – a tune he originally recorded for his 2012 Delmark release Bright Light in Winter. The B-side piece “Late Autumn” finds Parker swaying in alliterative, arpeggiating cycles, using just a few plucked notes as he lays the compositional foundation. At first it almost sounds like an echo of the humble tunes he wrote alone with his guitar on Forfolks, but in this space his ensemble joins him to help build a beautifully multi-textured, gently-shifting four-dimensional construction out of a simple idea. On “Easy Way Out,” Butterss’s bobbing bass line leads, paddling the ensemble into a placid expanse of tender psychedelia while Bellerose dusts off the drums like an archaeologist unearthing ancient artifacts.

It had become customary for the IVtet to end their shows every week with a standard or a tune – a practice that Parker embraced for wanting to give the audience something warm and familiar to take home after a long night of taking them out on creative limbs. Some of Parker’s more common calls were “This Guy’s In Love With You” by Burt Bacharach, “1974 Blues” by Eddie Harris, or “Peace” by Horace Silver. In this set, the IVtet closes not with a familiar song, but a familiar sound in the form of a dub/reggae groove (given the name “Chrome Dome” by Parker in post), developing spontaneously out of lyrical ad libs by Johnson on solo saxophone.

In early December of 2023, ETA co-owner Ryan Julio was forced to make a sudden announcement that the venue would permanently shutter at the end of the year. On December 23rd, Parker and the band played at ETA for the last time.

On July 22nd, 2024, the ETA IVtet gathered to perform together for the first time since then, playing for a sold-out crowd of several hundred listeners – a smiling Ryan Julio among them – at Zebulon in Los Angeles. Gonzales was there, recording with his compact analog setup just behind the band on stage. The space may be gone but its spirit lives and the music moves forward into new vessels.

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

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

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

Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda’s devotion to spirituality was the central purpose of the final four decades of her life, an often-overlooked awakening that largely took shape during her four-year marriage to John Coltrane and after his 1967 death. By 1983, Alice had established the 48-acre Sai Anantam Ashram outside of Los Angeles. She quietly began recording music from the ashram, releasing it within her spiritual community in the form of private press cassette tapes. On May 5, Luaka Bop will release the first-ever compilation of recordings from this period, making these songs available to the wider public for the first time. Entitled ‘World Spirituality Classics, Volume 1: The Ecstatic Music of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda,’ the release is the first installment in a planned series of spiritual music from around the globe; curated, compiled and distributed by Luaka Bop.
This powerful, largely unheard body of work finds Alice singing for the first time in her recorded catalog, which dates back to 1963 and includes appearances on six John Coltrane albums, alongside Charlie Haden and McCoy Tyner, and 14 albums as bandleader starting with her Impulse! debut in 1967 with ‘A Monastic Trio.’ The songs featured on the Luaka Bop release have been culled from the four cassettes that Alice recorded and released between 1982 and 1995: ‘Turiya Sings,’ ‘Divine Songs,’ ‘Infinite Chants,’ and ‘Glorious Chants.’ The digital, cassette and CD release will feature eight songs. The double-vinyl edition features two additional songs, “Krishna Japaye” from 1990’s ‘Infinite Chants, and the previously unreleased “Rama Katha” from a separate ‘Turiya Sings’ recording session.
Luaka Bop teamed with Alice’s children to find the original master tapes in the Coltrane archive. The recordings were prepared for re-mastering by the legendary engineer Baker Bigsby (Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, John Coltrane), who had overseen the original sessions in the 80s and 90s. The compilation showcases a diverse array of recordings in addition to Alice’s first vocal work: solo performances on her harp, small ensembles, and a 24-piece vocal choir. The release is dotted with eastern percussion, synthesizers, organs and strings, making for a mesmerizing, even otherworldly, listen. Alice was inspired by Vedic devotional songs from India and Nepal, adding her own music sensibility to the mix with original melodies and sophisticated song structures. She never lost her ability to draw from the bebop, blues and old-time spirituals of her Detroit youth, fusing a Western upbringing with Eastern classicism. In all, these recordings amount to a largely untold chapter in the life story of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda.
In addition to the recordings, GRAMMY-winning music historian Ashley Kahn has written extensive liner notes on the collection. The package also includes a series of interviews with those who knew Alice best, conducted by Dublab’s Mark “Frosty” McNeill, and an as-told-to interview between musician Surya Botofasina (who was raised on Alice’s ashram) and journalist Andy Beta. 2017 marks what would have been Alice’s 80th year of life, as well as the 10th anniversary of her passing. Alice will be celebrated at events throughout the United States, Europe and South America in the coming year. With this in mind, the time is right to bring this meaningful piece of Turiyasangitananda’s legacy into focus.

Gilles Peterson presents International Anthem is a Deluxe Double LP compilation chronicling the infamous London-based radio host, DJ, label head, curator and cultural impresario's long-standing affinity for and interaction with artists and music from the Chicago-born record label International Anthem. The tracks on this compilation were chosen by Peterson via an extensive review of track lists from his broadcasts on BBC 6 Music, Worldwide FM, and various syndicated radio programs. The compilation also includes a previously unreleased track recorded live on the Peterson-founded online radio station Worldwide FM. The RSD exclusive 2LP is on "Frozen Lake Michigan" colored vinyl. This album is released via International Anthem as part of their "IA11" series of releases and events – where the label celebrates their eleventh year of existence by looking back on their first ten years while establishing new standards for the next ten years.

Pressed for Record Store Day 2025 for "Frozen Lake Michigan" Color 140g 2 x LP, in a heavyweight UV-Gloss jacket, with 12"x12" insert booklet, with IA OBI Strip & printed poly-lined inner sleeves.

Different Rooms is a collection of songs and musical motifs we composed, edited, and collaged in the weeks between late 2024 and early 2025. Most of the recorded material was performed during that editing process, except for live performances taken from improvisations we recorded with Jeff Parker and Josh Johnson some time in 2023.

In our typical process, much of our material is collaged and combines moments of live improvisation, field recordings, and in-studio experimentation. This record, however, marks an evolution in our approach to studio production.

Our studios are side-by-side. When we were writing this album, you might have found us tracking viola stacks in one studio while, in the other, we were writing through-composed themes and rearranging the material. Granular synthesis and tape manipulation are key tools we use to create variation and movement in a composition. This process often yields surprising results, capturing the emotion but expressing it in unexpected ways. It feels essential that we embrace a bit of chance.

In contrast to our first album, Recordings from the Åland Islands, we wanted this music to feel very present. Where Recordings was intended to transport you to another place, Different Rooms is meant to meet you where you are. It’s a decidedly urban album. The field recordings were captured on train platforms, in city streets, in rooms at home, and intentionally paint a quotidian sonic image, blurring the line between what you hear in your own environment and what is on the record.

The song cycle is set in palindromic sequence, figuratively, with certain pieces (reflected) by a reprised or recurring motif that is often reimagined with new instrumentation.

The sonic and temporal abstraction between what is performed in real-time versus what is recorded, manipulated, and collaged reinforces our intent to collect the works under the title Different Rooms, which literally expresses the way the material was recorded in different rooms while reminding us that our shared experience of present time is also one that is asynchronous, historied, and complex.

Riding the ripples of their debut single “Escalator” (which BBC’s Gilles Peterson called “a winner,” and Supreme Standards’ Tina Edwards likened to “Radiohead on a Jazz trip”), Chicago collective Resavoir return with their first full length effort. The self-titled album presents a juicy suite of elegantly-orchestrated lo-fi jazz instrumentals germinated from home recording experiments by the group’s producer/arranger Will Miller.

Applying a compositional approach attributable to his experience producing hip-hop beats as much as his studies at Oberlin Conservatory, Miller built melodic sketches on foundations of samples & loops before bringing pieces to the group for collective development. After integrating recordings of the full band into his home-produced impressions (not unlike IARC predecessors Jeff Parker and Makaya McCraven), he over-dubbed another dozen friends into the mix (including Brandee Younger, Sen Morimoto, Carter Lang, Knox Fortune and Macie Stewart) before finalizing the arrangements.

In Miller’s modest editing room, Resavoir grew from experiment into epic opus recalling the lush, psychedelic soul jazz orchestrations of David Axelrod & Charles Stepney… but in the sampled-laden style of Yesterday’s New Quintet, Broadcast, or Thundercat, with a lyrical affinity for minimalism & texturalism, like trumpeter/composers Jon Hassell & Justin Walter.

An addendum to Makaya McCraven's critically-acclaimed 2018 release Universal Beings, which The New York Times said "affirms the drummer and beatsmith's position as a major figure in creative music," Universal Beings E&F Sides presents fourteen new pieces of organic beat music cut from the original sessions, prepared and produced by Makaya as a soundtrack to the Universal Beings documentary film.

Directed by Mark Pallman, the Universal Beings documentary follows Makaya to Los Angeles, Chicago, London and New York City for a behind the scenes look into the making of the artists breakthrough album, taking the viewer through the story of Makaya's life, his process and the community of musicians that helped bring this project to life. The Universal Beings documentary and Universal Beings E&F Sides album release July 31st 2020.

Named one of the best albums of 2018 by The New York Times, Rolling Stone, NPR, Stereogum, Billboard, SPIN, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, and more, Universal Beings was recorded at four sessions in New York, Chicago, London and Los Angeles, and features some of the best "new" jazz players from those hot bed cities: Brandee Younger, Tomeka Reid, Dezron Douglas, Joel Ross, Shabaka Hutchings, Junius Paul, Nubya Garcia, Daniel Casimir, Ashley Henry, Josh Johnson, Jeff Parker, Anna Butters, Carlos Niño and Miguel-Atwood Ferguson - all of whom feature on Universal Beings E&F Sides.

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

Ambre Ciel is a composer and singer who hails from Montreal, Canada and is a purveyor of dreamy, expansive, spacious music that draws influence from contemporary classical influenced artists, as well as the impressionist world and American minimalists.

Ambre who sings in both English and her native French, hails from a family of singers and artists, “I started my journey learning violin at six and began experimenting with pedal effects and looping melodies later on”. University followed with a focus on composition and recording. “That’s when I started exploring composing and songwriting more deeply—both the world of sounds in itself and songs built mostly with layers of violin and voice. It was also during this time that I returned to my ‘first’ instrument, the piano, which opened more harmonic possibilities.”

Her debut album still, there is the sea, represents a beginning, a first and imperfect attempt to create this other world that was living in her mind. She has crafted a beautifully refined album making a lot of space for strings arrangements and other acoustic instruments, as well as her own beautiful voice.

“Phi-Psonics is a spiritual exploration of being together and connecting,” says acoustic bassist Seth Ford-Young of the immersive project he initiated in East Los Angeles in 2016. For his third long-player under the Phi-Psonics banner, Ford-Young marshalled a series of live recordings at Healing Force Of The Universe records in Pasadena, sculpting fourteen tracks, largely composed in the moment with a fluctuating cast of players, which wonderfully transmit his ideals of community and inner peace.
Ford-Young says of Expanding to One..."We live in increasingly dark times and while I intend our music to be a balm to those who connect with it, I also want the context of our musical conversations to include the outer as much as our inner worlds. The music we make doesn’t exist in a vacuum and the backdrop of injustice and tragedy in our world has to be part of our music.”
 

Performers:
Seth Ford-Young - acoustic bass, percussion
Sylvain Carton - tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone, flute, alto flute, bamboo flute, percussion
Randal Fisher - tenor saxophone, flute
Mitchell Yoshida - Wurlitzer 140b electric piano
Zach Tenorio - Wurlitzer 200a electric piano
Gary Fukushima - Wurlitzer 140b electric piano
Dylan Day - guitar
Dave Harrington - guitar
Rocco DeLuca - pedal steel guitar
Minta Spencer - harp
Sheila Govindarajan - Voice
Spencer Zahn - acoustic bass
Josh Collazo - drums
Jay Bellerose - drums, percussion
Mathias Künzli - percussion

Produced by Seth Ford-Young
Recorded February 7, 21 March 6, 20, April 3,17 - 2024
Live at Healing Force of the Universe Records, Pasadena California
Engineered by Seth Ford-Young
Mixed by Seth Ford-Young

Trumpeter, bandleader and composer Matthew Halsall announces landmark new album An Ever Changing View, an expansive, immaculately conceived project which presents Halsall’s signature blend of jazz, electronica, global and spiritual jazz influences. An Ever Changing View will be released on September 8th on Gondwana Records (the label Halsall founded 15 years ago) ahead of a landmark show at The Royal Albert Hall in London on September 21st and UK and EU tour dates. Halsall who has been hailed as one of the leading figures of the UK jazz renaissance has never seen himself as part of any one sound or scene: he builds his own sonic universe instead. An Ever Changing View finds him at his most experimental yet, once again expanding his sound and production techniques to create his unique brand of deeply meditative music. During the album's creation, he was staying in both a beautiful architect’s house with breath-taking sea views and a striking modernist house, where he composed what he saw “like a landscape painting”. In these new environments, Halsall wanted to capture “the feeling of openness and escapism” and to approach making music again from scratch. “I hit the reset button and wanted to have complete musical freedom,” he says. “It was a real exploration of sound.” An Ever Changing View comes in a package as striking as the music, with handmade fonts designed by Ian Anderson of The Designers Republic and the specially commissioned tapestry by artist Sara Kelly is a stunning and harmonious complement to the record's sound.

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

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

FFO: Jimi Tenor, Meridian Brothers, The Comet Is Coming, The Mauskovic Dance Band, Sun Ra Arkestra, Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids

Psychedelic dub, Afro-Latin rhythms and cosmic grooves come together on La Chooma’s self-titled debut for Batov Records. Drawing on Moroccan Gnawa, Colombian cumbia, Afrobeat, Jamaica dub & roots, and cosmic jazz, the six-piece ensemble create deep, hypnotic music rooted in global traditions and shaped for contemporary dancefloors.

Having already captivated local audiences with their hypnotic, organic live performances, La Chooma – now a six-piece ensemble – have been steadily building an international following. Initial singles “Magic Plant” and “Huachuma” earned support from tastemakers including BBC Radio 6 Music’s Deb Grant and Tom Ravenscroft.

“Magic Plant” distills the band’s signature blend of hypnotic grooves, lush percussion and woozy synths, like Jimi Tenor lost in the Colombian Amazon. A dreamlike, dub-infused trip driven by organic rhythm and cosmic textures. “Huachuma” picks up the thread, fusing Afrobeat percussion, swirling basslines and psychedelic flourishes into a hallucinogenic jam made for a tropical dancefloor.

“High Grow” conjures images of The X-Files set in Addis Ababa, with Ethio-jazz-style synths dancing and tripping across a relentless Mulatu-inspired bassline and Afrobeat drums, all drenched in foreboding dub delay. Perfect for dark, smoke-filled rooms in the small hours.

Like the lost child of Idris Ackamoor & The Pyramids and The Comet Is Coming, “Lonely” hits like a sledgehammer of cosmic synth funk and intense Afro-rock drums, riding an acoustic bassline that breaks into a frenetic solo after a minute. The drums constantly threaten to overwhelm, but open up for the spiraling synths to peak half way through the track.

“Cozumel” follows seamlessly, moving to a slightly slower groove built on a deep electric bassline and irresistible four-to-the-floor Afro-Latin rhythms. Synths rise in harmony with the haunting call of the hand-carved Egyptian kawala flute as the energy builds in the third minute before the tension finally releases. There’s something in the music’s spiritual core and soulful presence that recalls the groundbreaking work of Jamaican legends Count Ossie and Cedric Brooks, who fused jazz with Rastafari drumming.

La Chooma draw dotted lines across time and space, finding hidden connections and shared frequencies, pulling threads together into a sound that hypnotises the mind and moves the body.

Ten years. Ten years of listening, searching, digging, sharing. Ten years of putting out records we felt mattered—because they told a story. Of a place, a moment, an impulse. Ten years of believing that music, especially the kind that doesn’t fit into any box, deserves more than just attention: it deserves care, time, and deep listening.

Bongo Joe started in Geneva, in a shop that became a label, in a city far more complex than it first appears. Beneath its polished banking façade, Geneva is layered and unpredictable. Beneath the luxury storefronts, the UN buildings, and the watch boutiques, thrives a unique scene shaped by migration, cultural collisions, political struggle, and dissonant sound. It’s here that we learned to improvise, adapt, and stay independent.

This is where the label was born—above all, to put music back at the center, in a time when everything moves too fast, gets monetized, sliced up, and repackaged. In that landscape, we believe a label should remain a space for curation, for storytelling, for quiet resistance — a place where we suggest rather than impose.

Over the past ten years, we’ve built a singular catalogue — a mosaic of archival revivals, contemporary projects, and unexpected encounters. Three main threads have shaped it.

First, the compilation of music from the past. Not to claim it, but to keep it moving. To shed light on forgotten repertoires, marginal histories, musical legacies too rich to be overlooked. To help them exist again, with dignity, and reconnect with new listeners who might never have had access otherwise.

Second, international collaborations. From Geneva, we’ve woven bonds with artists from all over the world — groups from Istanbul, Buenos Aires, London, Baku, Bogotá, Lilongwe, Les Gonaïves, or Amsterdam. Records crafted with love and boldness, in collaboration with like-minded labels, passionate curators, and artists who share our spirit. That international dimension makes us proud — it proves that you can create, exchange, and share sound sincerely, even from a city not exactly known as a musical capital.

And then there’s our local scene. Geneva, always. Because it’s where we live, where we grew up, and where we still believe in a city with a unique voice — full of friction, contradictions, and underground energy. We’ve supported projects from experimental circuits, squats, and clubs. Through our sub-label Les Disques Magnétiques, we’ve expanded the spectrum without losing the thread: defending the margins, giving space to those who don’t fit anywhere else.

Bongo Joe is also a musician. The label takes its name from George “Bongo Joe” Coleman (1923–1999), a street percussionist from Texas who stayed true to his independence for over thirty years. Turning down the offers of formal venues, he chose instead to play in the streets — banging out rhythms on an oil drum with raw charisma. His only album, recorded in 1968 in San Antonio, remains one of our most cherished records. Reissued by our friends at Mississippi Records, it carries a DIY spirit, radical freedom, and lyrical boldness far ahead of its time — a guiding light that continues to inspire us.

Bongo Joe is also a collective story. It’s about people. A team that grew over the years: from Cyril and Vincent at the helm to a tight-knit crew — Juliette, Quentin, Margot, Laurent, Baptiste. Together, we’ve kept this strange, handmade machine running. We’ve hand-stamped sleeves, lost test pressings, pressed the wrong masters on CD, found test pressings again, chased down funding, hauled stacks of records to the post office by bike, crossed our fingers for pressings to arrive on time, cursed at customs delays, botched digital releases, and felt a thrill watching “our” bands play on the stages of major festivals and the most forward-thinking clubs. We’ve been through chaos and joy. Together, we’ve made it this far. And with nearly 150 records in the catalogue, we look back on the road travelled with a mix of pride and disbelief.

This compilation isn’t a summary. It’s not a best of. It’s a trace. A selection among many possible ones. A snapshot of what we’ve tried to do since 2015: believe in music as connection, as memory, as compass. Thank you to everyone who’s supported, followed, or inspired us. Thanks to the institutions who’ve backed us. Thanks to our longtime partners: bookers, fellow labels, record stores, publicists, distributors, printers, engravers, pressing plants, sound engineers, photographers, designers. And most of all, thank you to the artists — without whom none of this would mean anything.

Ten years is a little, and a lot. We’re not done yet.

‘She who loves silence’.

Founder of KUMP and Meth.O tapes, Lyon’s Marc-Étienne Guibert (AKA Gil.Barte) awakens his new Mert Seger moniker for a shadowy Plaque excursion. Nine slow burners strike from the murk with venomous precision.

"High Contrast used to work in a record shop in Cardiff called Catapult Records. We lived on the other side of the city, but were always in there buying vinyl. Tough Guys Can’t Dance was everywhere, and If We Ever was the anthem. Ahead of summer this year we put together our own version just for fun, and the reaction was so wild, we ended up playing it in every set. Big thanks to High Contrast for this one. It means a lot to us" - OVERMONO

This album is a solo album by SINKICHI, the label owner of MATSUNOMI TO SENSO REC. It is a collection of field recordings made during the lockdown of the COVID19, live to 2 track recordings of improvised performances with hardware equipment, and modular synthesizer performances on the holy mountains and spiritual rivers. Please enjoy. SINKICHI A pioneer ambient DJ in Japan who has been playing at many rave parties since the early 90's. He has participated in many bands such as SOFT, AOA, Based on kyoto, and Churashima Navigator.He has also worked as a mastering engineer on vinyl mastering for 17853 Records and Crosspoint label.

Musically, first of all, 1991's second album, "loveless," was more advanced and unexpected than anything else released at the time. Kevin Shields and band thoroughly pursued a sound based on pure sensuality, resulting in a work that overwhelmed the listener's senses. 1990's representative work was hailed as a perfect masterpiece that pushed the possibilities of studio recording to the limit, and has been featured on The Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds" and It has been hailed as a milestone on par with The Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds," Miles Davis' "In A Silent Way," and Stevie Wonder's "Innervisions.

Japanese obi included.
Mastered from 1/2" analog tape using Studer A80 VU-PRE and Neumann VMS 80
180g vinyl weight
Standard gatefold outer sleeve
Six 300 x 300 mm art prints enclosed
Includes DL code (24-bit | 16-bit | mp3)