Pop & Rock News

Matthew Halsall unveils new band and announces 'Salute to the Sun'

his new album on Gondwana Records

Limited edition Double Clear vinyl, printed on reverse board with Gold foil artwork plus double printed reverse board inner sleeves including download code. Cover Artwork by Daniel Halsall with design and layout by Ian Anderson of The Designers Republic.

Comes packaged in a resealable, re-usable Polypropylene anti-static, acid-free, crystal clear sleeve for maximum protection.

Composer, trumpeter, producer, DJ and founder of Gondwana Records, Matthew Halsall has always worn many hats. But at the heart of everything that he does Halsall is first and foremost an artist and a musician. A trumpeter whose unflashy, soulful playing radiates a thoughtful beauty and a composer and band-leader who has created his own rich sound world. A sound that draws on the heritage of British jazz, the spiritual jazz of Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, as well as world music and electronica influences, and even modern art and architecture, to create something uniquely his own. A music that is rooted in Northern England but draws on global inspirations.

Salute to the Sun is his first album as a leader since Into Forever (2015) and marks the debut of his new band. A hand-picked ensemble featuring some of Manchester's finest young musicians: Matt Cliffe flute & saxophone, Maddie Herbert harp, Liviu Gheorghe piano, Alan Taylor drums and Jack McCarthy percussion as well as long-time Halsall collaborator, bassist, Gavin Barras who has been at the heart of Halsall's bands for over a decade. For Matthew it was important to have a band based locally and able, pre-Covid, to meet and play each week, and who also performed a sold-out monthly basement session at Yes in Manchester. The album draws energy from these sessions and inspiration from themes and ideas that have inspired Halsall through the years (on albums such as Oneness, Fletcher Moss Park and When the World Was One) ideas of ecology, the environment and harmony with nature.

"I feel Salute to the Sun is a positive earthy album. I wanted to create something playful but also quite primitive, earthy and organic that connected to the sounds in nature. I was listening to lush ambient field recordings of tropical environments such as jungles and rainforests and found myself drawn to percussive atmospheric sounds which replicated what I was hearing (bells / shakers / chimes / rain sticks) and I started to experiment with more wooden percussive instruments such as kalimba and marimba".

Salute to the Sun features lush wholly improvised tunes inspired by ambient rainforest and jungle field recordings, deeply soulful tunes built around hypnotic harp and kalimba patterns, deep Strata-East inspired spiritual jazz grooves and some of Halsall's most beautiful playing and inspiring healing melodies yet recorded.

The album was recorded at the band's weekly sessions, using Halsall's own recording set-up, giving the recordings a relaxed vibe and unforced energy that really lets the music breath. The album is also very much a family affair as Halsall's brother Daniel Halsall, artistic director of Gondwana Records, was an important presence at the sessions and co-produced the album. It is also his memorable artwork that adorns the cover of Salute to the Sun, an album beautifully designed by legendary designer Ian Anderson of The Designers Republic, who also created the covers for the recent archival releases Oneness, Sending My Love and Colour Yes and is one of Halsall's favourite designers. Together Daniel Halsall and Ian Anderson have designed all of Matthew's seven albums to date, so it felt extra-special to bring them together for, Salute to the Sun, an album that Halsall was determined to present in the very best way possible. The album was mixed with another long-time collaborator, George Atkins at 80 Hertz in Manchester, who works tirelessly with Halsall to perfect the sound and was mastered by noted engineer Peter Beckmann who brings an added depth to the sound specially around the bass notes as well as Halsall's trumpet. The magnificent double vinyl was cut as a Half Speed master by Barry Grint at Alchemy Mastering for the best possible analogue experience.

The result is arguably Halsall's most beautiful and complete recording to date, playful, charming and imbued with the warmth of the sun and the energy of life.

12 Sweet jazzy tracks to chill out to.

The most beautiful songs from the rock legend Jimi Hendrix reinterpreted by the jazz scene. A selection of the most beautiful covers from “Purple Haze” to “Little Wing” or “Voodoo Child” with Terez Montcalm, Francis Lockwood Trio, Youn Sun Nah, or the famous song “Hey Joe” covered by Lee Moses…

Tracklisting made by Lionel Eskenazi, a music journalist and a jazz music specialist from jazz magazine.

Tramp Records continues their pilgrimage to the soulful fringes of spiritual jazz and progressive rock and funk with their 3rd and 4th volumes of their "Peace Chant, Raw, Deep and Spiritual Jazz" series, and the world could not be more ready.

As we turn together on this tiny blue ball hanging lonely in space, and as we together face existential threats ranging from climate catastrophe, the rise of brutal authoritarian regimes, the breaking of the industrial storm and the imminent collapse of empire, not to mention the raging covid-19 crisis and the continuing racial and social struggles across the globe, we are thrust into a society-wide grand awakening that has been in the making for a very long time. Of course, our musical teachers have trod this path before us, and have worked out solutions to these problems, the songs of the Peace Chant series ring out loud and clear as our ancestors' proof of concept. They say history repeats herself, maybe it's because we weren't listening the first time. Thanks to Tramp Records, we have been granted another opportunity.

Today, the musical and spiritual truths enshrined within the spiritual jazz diaspora seem to be more and more sought-after, and crucial at a time when we as a society seek higher and farther for those bold truths. With each generation, that truth doesn't change, and the artists featured in the series speak those truths along a continuum that ranges from the late-60s up to the present day.

Volume 4, the second LP opens with a gorgeous and lush Wurlitzer-oriented big band piece that among its many treasures also features the 17-year-old visionary-saxophonist-to-be, Steve Coleman in his alleged first recording! The contributions of Brother Yusuf Salim and Bus Brown, figures who should be very familiar to Tramp Records aficionados, are consecrated here with a live recording of Freedom from one of Brother Yu's last public performances. One of the two European contributions to the comp, Attitude, by Organic Pulse 'onesemble', reads like a double entendre, the word "attitude" meaning simultaneously one's disposition or state of mind, and also one's orientation relative to the horizon. The Peace Chant series continues to touch all the sacred meridians: more devotional music with James Scales & All Stars' Ser-Vi-Tude, trance music of non-dominant traditions with Donn Preston Group's Ghana-Cha!, a modal and blue organ trio offering from Tommy Jones, and closing with a rich and righteous ballad, Quernemoen, from the Wayne Powell Octet.

Peace Chant is the center of the mandala, representing the nucleus of the post-bop, modal jazz, avant-garde, transcendental, spiritual, ethnic, and freedom music universe without necessarily suggesting anything immediately identifiable as any of the above. This is the soundtrack to the raising of human consciousness and the salvation of society's very soul.

We give thanks to Tramp Records for leading our thirsty hearts to this rich fountain.

Hailing from Brussels, Bandler Ching is a creation of musical ideas from composer and saxophonist Ambroos De Schepper. Flawlessly blending contemporary jazz, electronics, hip-hop, noise and global beats, the sound is based around the freedom of expression and improvisation and performed with dazzling conviction.

Swiss jazz bliss! We Release Jazz is very, very, VERY happy to present its sixth release (following Ryo Fukui’s Scenery and Mellow Dream, Le Cercle Rouge’s soundtrack by Eric Demarsan, Stuff Combe 5 + Percussion, and Marc Moulin’s Placebo Live 1971) coming straight from its beloved hometown of Geneva. Boillat Thérace Quintet’s self-titled album is available for the first time since its original limited private pressing in 1974 and comes as a vinyl LP as well as a digipack CD* (with 3 never-heard bonus songs). Full of prolific and inspired local clusters and boosted by the recently launched Montreux Jazz Festival, the Swiss jazz scene was vibrant and inventive in the 1970s, notably in the region surrounding Lake Geneva. This is precisely where jazz activist and brilliant pianist Jean-François Boillat and wind instrument master Raymond Thérace formed their quintet whose dazzling debut album was recorded in 1974. An absolute Lemanic gem of the soul-jazz/modal kind, the self-titled album includes superb covers of Freddie Hubbard’s “Straight Life”, Keith Jarrett’s “In Your Quiet Place”, and Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s “Sweet Fire”, plus groovy original compositions from the Boillat-Thérace crew. Helvetian fun facts: the velvety “1224” is dedicated to Geneva’s public transport line Tram 12, and one exquisitely funky track on the album is named after the famed yet elusive (and locally legendary) Swiss Marmite: “Cenovis”! This is reissued in conjunction with Boillat Thérace Quintet’s My Greatest Love featuring Benny Bailey (1975), also available via We Release Jazz. *The CD version includes 3 bonus tracks (Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and Claude Engel covers), never released before.

Lamunai Records is proud to announce Philosophy Gang, the 1st opus of the Indonesian master Harry Roesli, a sought-after Indonesian album, musically at the crossroads of psychedelic, soul and jazz, lightly tinted with exotic Indonesian sounds. Expect funky brutal drums, mad organ solos, fuzz guitar brillIiantly mixed to softer sounds. Another gem finally reissued!
Political activist, a prominent member of the Tradisi Baru Movement (New Tradition) who emerged in the 1970s, Harry Roesli worked with musicians, poets, playwrights who were commited to experimenting with Indonesian traditional culture.

“Joe McPhee is a legend of modern music, which from the release of the classic "Nation Time" album almost 50 years ago has had an incredibly diverse career that's spanned a wide range of expressions, from jazz and improvised music to experimental and electronic free music. McPhee's life in music could basically be read as a map of leftfield music of our time, but after all these years he refuses to stand still or lock back with any sense of nostalgia.

After 30 years of making electronic music Lasse Marhaug is now synonymous with Norwegian noise music, with hundreds of releases and countless collaborations and projects to his name, including music for film, theatre and dance. In the last ten years he has also made a name as a producer for other artists, including Jenny Hval and Okkyung Lee.

McPhee and Marhaug has known each other since the early 2000s, but only in 2015 did they find time to record together as a duo. The result is "Harmonia Macrocosmica", an album that the two considers a science fiction inspired work. For McPhee it can be read in the linage of his 70s work with John Snyder, as well as collaborations with Pauline Oliveros and the Nihilist Spams Band. Marhaug of course is well versed in this field, but McPhee's sax and voice puts his electronics in a whole new perspective. The pair also found inspiration in early electronic music and vintage science fiction films, with McPhee describing going to the cinema in the 50s as a kid to see "Forbidden Planet" and being blown away by its electronic score as the start of a lifelong love of cosmic music.”

Form is Vision is a collection of music unified by the same vision but not by the same form. It’s the vision making the form, without being influenced by the form itself. Here, visionary electronic artists as Afrikan Sciences and Juju & Jordash meet cross over jazz bands like Hobby Horse and Where is Mr. R?!. The music was compiled by Autre & Two Thou, whose productions here form a bridge across different moods. The result is a synergistic leap away from genre-bound music.

LP,180, 2018 REISSUE - REMASTERED FROM ORIGINAL TAPES, CAREFULLY REPRODUCED ORIGINAL ART

The 'vivid contemporary sounds for a fresh visual image' make up the now canonised Synthesis from Alan Hawkshaw and Brian Bennett. These two greats go deeper than usual on this collection, and the end result is a synth concept record of sorts. Released in 1974, it's an essential companion piece to
their Synthesizer and Percussion LP, released on Themes International Music in the same year.
Like most of our favourite library records, Synthesis has that gloriously funky, 'weird electronic music' vibe without ever being inaccessible. With the awesome ARP Odyssey at the fore, Hawkshaw and Bennett have created a blissed-out soundscape that, whilst laid back in all the right places, somehow remains heavy on the funk. It's a sort of throbbing, proto-G Funk sound and you can fnd it on many of these low-lit basement workouts.
Take the ice-cool 'Alto Glide'. It's a sunset-funk highlight with an electro-fute refrain that conjures those dreamier Dre / DJ Quick instrumentals from '91 to '92.
Stereolab, Koushik (again) and all those Ghost Box artists were clearly listening very closely in the years since. The equally relaxed 'Mermaid' glides efortlessly with soft, shimmering piano, understated percussion and kaleidoscopic synths.
It's a really beautiful piece.With these two soft-focus closing tracks allowing the LP to foat away over the horizon, the preceding ten tracks have a more insistent, neck-snapping rhythm
section to back the synth overload. Highlights include the head-nod funk of 'Getting It Together' and the synth break in 'The Executive', which informed classic video game soundtracks.
For once Be With really is stuck for words to describe just how good this record is.
Best just to listen. As with all ten re-issues, the audio for Synthesis comes from the original analogue tapes and has been remastered for vinyl by Be With regular Simon Francis. We've taken the same care with the sleeves, handing the reproduction duties over to Richard Robinson, the current custodian of KPM's brand identity.

Relentless Apparel Wax never misses a beat and is back at it with APLWAX003, the 3rd chapter of the saga. The release is made up of 3 tracks, 3 distinct parts of the same engine, 3 proper dance floor bangers. The EP kicks off with a compelling broken-jazzy beat, with its groovy breakdown and reprises and its funky vocals it's that one track you'll need to shazam on the spot. The 2nd tune will have you right away when you'll hear those tribal rhythmics and hypnotic vocals that drive it till the end while the 3rd is the typical one you'd call a "peak time track"; that tune you drop when the ballroom has warmed up enough and is ready to finally step u

Dilla, Pete rock , Primo samples jazz funk breaks.
Galaxy samples Breaks

Dynamite cuts has another Roy ayers 7” releases, this time, a collaboration with Wayne Henderson. Both of these tracks have never been on 7” before. A side is a laid back groove with hip-hop feel.
The B-side “For Real” a little known cover version of the Flowers Anthem, which sell for £2k+. So that Make this release a gem of a find.

HUGE STUDIO ONE 12” SINGLE!

Two fantastic tracks from one of Jamaica's finest ever vocal groups, these heavy hitting anthems were recorded for the legendary Studio One label in the early 70's. Surprisingly both tracks have never been released as singles, previously only appearing on two different
rare and long deleted Jamaican LPs. Cut super loud on a 12" single and housed in a heavyweight card Studio One sleeve, these won't be around for long – very limited edition 1000 copies worldwide!

Josey Rebelle is the deserving recipient of many accolades and awards, though heraccomplishments are, as with all great artists, unquantifiable. Just as herstyle doesn’t fit neatly into a few-word package, Josey In Space combines classic and current sensibilities with a selection of exclusive and elusivemusic to elevate this mix beyond the ephemeral to the eternal.

Drawing from a kaleidoscope of deeply felt and understood sounds, Josey studies and collocates history as well as directing it's course.

With her sets on the air & in the club, Josey urges you to listen close to the story, to feel the energetic shifts in style, sound, speed, mix; up, down, rough and smooth.

Josey’s sets are motivated by the ineffable and inevitable dance, mess and sweat oflife: “eclectic,” an oft-applied catchall, just scrapes the surface of this scope and vividness.

The reciprocal relationship between radio and club DJing are integral to Josey’s practice. Joining Rinse FM in 2011 with a covert 3-5 am Thursday slot, her now venerated weekly Sunday show delivers a universe in two hours, filled with selections from across the spectrum - house and techno, breaks, jazz, soul and analogous electronic music, to start- and carries the voices of emerging artists & their communities.

Evincing a lifelong commitment to ravenous, compulsory listening, and encouraging this in others, Josey furthers a localized lineage
tracing back to the golden era of Londonpirate radio.

Plenty of lore is out there about Josey’s journey as a club DJ with a glinting reputation the world over. Her style is broadly and essentially UK (especially from a US vantage), in content and mixing. But she doesn’t simply follow a school; her methods are always responsive to the track at hand. Josey lets “the tunes speak – or shout, or whisper – for themselves giving them space to breathe.” Within this framework she allows tracks with both complementary and dissonant elements to meet, run over each other, break apart, or just brush each other by.

Josey in Space reflects this finesse and versatility across twenty selections, a number of which will see their digital debut inside and outside of Josey’s mix as standalone cuts. DJ Marcelle’s outre dub clatter bookends the plot, featuring up-and-comers of club sound like rRoxymore, AFRODEUTSCHE and Molinaro alongside consistent innovators like Titonton Duvante, Nubian Mindz, Hieroglyphic Being, Uschi Classen and Robert Owens.

Tenesha The Wordsmith’s afro-futurist visioning and poetic eulogy “I Dream So Loud” invokes a healing mantra at the outset, and emphasizes an imaginative resilience embedded in the unequivocally black history of dance music. Moving knowledgeably through this unfolding history, Josey in Space celebrates US house- and techno history along with UK soulful bass, breaks and beyond as in Loraine James’ “Glitch Bitch,” or the second-to-last tenderly offered “Praises” from Lex Amor.

On the 12” Version, fouressential tracks are lifted from the mix for DJready use: Fotomachine’s spectral techno transporter “BBoy”; the warm, broken-beat sashay of Shy One’s “Route II Romeos”; Access 58’s 1999 instigator “Jazz Drama”; and the uplifting jungle tune “Dance Of The Sarooes (Nookie Remix)” from Rogue Unit.

Available as a track-focused 12”, mixed CD & mixed, - unmixed digital version, Josey in Space is the second outing in a new "Beats in Space" series celebrating dancemusic’s form & informality- and the selectors guiding it's evolution.

Here comes Experiment, new album by French quartet band,
TRIBEQA, affirming their special sound mixing elements of Afro,
Jazz and Hip-Hop together.

At a point in time when Johnny Winter had only recently recovered from past addictions and blues giant Muddy Waters had faced a decline in his career with illness and the collapse of Chess records in 1975, it was Steve Paul of Blue Sky records who would appear as saviour to both musicians. The results of his investment soon paid off and Winter's childhood dream to play alongside his hero Muddy waters was soon realised. Waters' comeback album was a return to his original Chicago sound. Its raw, expressive feel harked back to his Chess Records days, and the outstanding musicianship and intimate exuberance exceeded all expectations, earning Waters a Grammy in the process.
The Hard Again tour combined the respected powerhouse of Waters, Winter and Cotton with musicians from the Hard Again sessions. Hard Again cast a further four albums with Blue Sky before Waters would leave in 1983. Although this particular collaboration was short-lived, it has provided blues fans a rare opportunity to indulge in the work of two hugely important musical figures whose respect for each other is evidently unflinching.

Jackie Brown is proud to have Italian jazz wizard Marcello Claudio Cassanelli on board. Marcello a jazz pianist, with master degree in jazz music at the G.B. Martini Conservatory, had a successful and well know contemporary jazz album « Overtour » from 2018, for which was well received from both audience and critics, such as Jazzit magazine.

Marcello, along with Antonio Rapa on drums and Blake C.S. Franchetto on the bass, recorded a jazz-funk EP for Jackie Brown, with strong influences of house and disco music. It's a five track EP, with A side tracks « Welcome » and « Shark » sound like IDs from Theo Parish funk and disco sets. B side holds three tracks, with slower tempo, but with swing and groove perfect for sunset chill.

From the legendary Omicron label secret archives, one of the rarest and nearly impossible to find album signed by Piero Umiliani. Gli italiani e l'industria is the soundtrack of a mysterious TV documentary by Romolo Marcellini broadcasted in 1967, and never appeared again from then, which was focused on virtue and vice of Italian post-economic boom industrialization. The music perfectly reflects the contrasts of the Italian society of that period, equally divided by consumerism and alienation, with a number of tracks deliberately easy-jazz and pop-beat on the one hand (with gorgeous ballads for vibraphone, like Natascia or Negozi alla moda, and killer organ tracks, like Music Box, later reused in some movies of the 70s, as Aragosta a colazione), and on the other with a bounce of compositions ultra-jazz, close to free jazz, with electronics and avant-garde solutions that Umiliani will explore completely in the further years (it is not by chance that 3 of those tracks are also included nine years after in a new library Umiliani's LP named Atmospheres). An essential album of easy-listening and experimental sound, necessary to

comprehend the richness of a genius of Italian soundtracks.

Kobe Session was a special improvisational performance created by Jeff Mills for the Exhibitionist 2 DVD project. Along with 3 other musicians, with a limited amount of preparation and rehearsal time, their objective was to create, shape and perform ompositions in front of a live audience setting. Debuting in Tokyo, Sept 18 2015 at Terrada Warehouse during TodaysArt JP, this live recordings was captured in Kobe, Japan the following night on September 19th 2015 at Kobe Art Village Center.High quality record series: 180g vinyl 48k 32bit, Mastered for High Fidelity Sounds, Pure virgin vinyl

Unearthed by The Mighty Zaf for BBE Music, Into A New Journey by Ambiance is an impossibly rare and sought-after private label spiritual jazz masterpiece from 1982 with Latin, Brazilian and Afro overtones. Ambiance was the ‘nom de guerre’ of an ever-shifting jazz collective headed up by Nigeria-born, LA-tutored multi- instrumentalist, arranger, producer and photographer Daoud Abubakar Balewa. Balewa studied composition and jazz improvisation at the feet of innovators such as Frank Mitchell (Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers), Jackie McLean (Blue Note) and other masters from the golden Blue Note era. Although he favoured alto, soprano and tenor, he was equally happy on flute, keyboards, and Latin and Brazilian percussion. What’s more, he had the knack of using musicians who were bold enough to welcome being part of such multi-faceted sessions: guitarist Jim Lum’s flexibility suits the theme of this album perfectly, as does prolific Japanese soul-jazz drummer Danny Yamamoto; the stunning Hawaiian pianist Kino Cornwell (Yamamoto’s colleague from funk-fusion supergroup Hiroshima); and the wonderful Jean Carn-like tones of Daoud’s wife, jazz vocalist Monife Balewa. From the band’s reading of Joe Henderson’s modal masterpiece Black Narcissus, through the deep multicultural percussive jazz-dance workout that is the title track, and on to the three-octave vocal embellishments of Monife, on her own composition Something Better as well as on the Chick Correa fusion classic 500 Miles High, nothing here is generic, nothing taken for granted, nothing comfortable or predictable. All of the half-dozen or so albums recorded and released by Daoud and Ambiance during just six years of frantic creativity between 1979 and 1986 are well worth seeking out, but in BBE Music’s opinion Into A New Journey is the pinnacle: spiritual jazz worthy of the very best practitioners of the genre, by an obscure group of ludicrously talented artists on a tiny, self-financed indie label with an equally tiny promo budget: that’s what great jazz is all about.

Bowman Trio returns with a strong double-sider 7". The trio delivers their trademark loft jazz with remarkable energy and swing on "The Chase (Version 1)" and "The Hillary Step". Both are fresh studio cuts which serve as tasters of the Helsinki trio's new music in anticipation of their second full-length expected to be released in 2019.

The 7" vinyl version comes with beautiful "old-school" heat-pressed label and generic brown sleeve.

Chameleon Collective is an Anglo-Portuguese creative hub, formed in 2015, which takes its inspiration from the late 70s jazz influenced pop music of west coast America, paying tribute to the music and vibes of Steely Dan, The Crusaders, Herb Albert, Joni Mitchell, Sergio Mendes, George Duke and Miles Davis.

The album 1979 is our musical homage to all things LA West Coast during the late 70s. Born from a love of bands and producers from an era perhaps defined by Steely Dan and their work with Roger (The Immortal) Nichols, it is influenced by the orchestrations of Sergio Mendes and Herb Albert and the emotional intensity of Joni Mitchell.

Each of us having a long history in recording of our own, we sought out analogue-based studios where microphones still mattered and based our songs on open chord structures that enabled each musician to add their own layer of unique harmony. After the initial scratch pad sessions jamming on piano and bass to create the building blocks from which we assembled each song’s structure. Some are based around the normal verse, chorus, verse chorus format but others, such as After You, evolved to become longer, more free-form pieces.


To ensure each of us was free to react to each other’s performances as they were added, the first performance to be recorded and defined was Gary O’Toole on drums, bringing his unique blend of technique and creativity to each song’s rhythm part. Next came Jed’s piano and organ. His original Hammond, recorded in the studio of Portuguese legend Rui Veloso, colours the music of the album in warm and unique shades while the piano offers also many highlights. Scott Garland was next with his brass parts and wonderful solo’s alongside Matt Holland’s incredible trumpet – inspired by the 70’s work of Tom Scott and Michael Brecker – in a brass section that flows like liquid gold throughout the sound of the album.

We needed a very particular kind of feel and groove from the guitars – and we had the good fortune to have the talents of Tim Froud and Ronnie Johnson weaving incredible solos and rhythm grooves into each arrangement that were somehow as tight as they were loose.



But the really unique moment for us was first hearing the songs sung by fellow Chameleon Maria Leon, recorded with a special vintage microphone Neumann U67 after our early writing sessions in which she wrote and sang each song lyric almost simultaneously, before seamlessly layering up her voice in banks of backing vocals where desired.



Finally… The mixing!

After a four-year journey working away at each song until we at last reached a point where we knew it was finished as a recording, we had the grace of Andy Bradfield to mix it. Crafted in layers of sound, the final arrangements and details blended together in a magnificent yet transparent way.



Have a look at the unique artwork that Digital artist Claire Stone at Jump Design has created to accompany each song – we have written much more about the inspiration behind each song and how we went about recording it.



We hope you enjoy listening as much as we did making it!

Freed from the personal vaults of Francois Tusques himself, the previously unreleased come the recordings from the La Chasse Au Snark (The Hunting Of The Snark) sessions. Featuring a stellar all-star cast of the crème de la crème for French avant-garde and free jazz musicians including Bernard Vitet, Beb Guérin, Daniel Laloux, Jean Frenay, Jean Vern, Michel Kurylo, Annick Astier, Lambert Terbrack, Jacques Thollot, Aldo Romano and Noel Mcghie.

To complete the package Finders Keepers have officially licenced a number of illustrations by none other than Tove Jansson, the creator of Moomin Valley and its magical inhabitants, who was comissioned in 1959 to illustrate a Swedish edition of Lewis Carroll’s miniature masterpiece.

In 1967, 1968 and 1969 most of my works were happenings loosely based on Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting Of The Snark, a not-so-cryptic poem that, to my mind, gave clues to free the theatre in the same way the “new music” had freed jazz. It never made it to record and I gave up on the idea when I met Sunny Murray and Alan Silva when they arrived in Paris in the summer of ‘69. Few concert venues would have anything to do with us but we didn’t want that kind of connection with the public – famous or not (Jacques Higelin joined on occasion!) – which more often than not would join us on stage to bang percussion, sing, dance, freak out. Our favorite part was when we shut down the lights near the end, silently left the stage, and when the light went on for the curtain... The public had formally taken our place.

Galleries, museums and art/theatre/dance festivals, on the other hand, were open to this early multimedia event – complete with films, masks and early electronic devices (Bernard Vitet, the trumpet player, brought an early portable reverb system to the proceedings). The reels and cassettes we rescued from my basement are rather evasively labelled and the following data is far from precise. The core group was me on piano, Bernard Vitet on trumpet and electronic treatments, Beb Guérin on double bass, Daniel Laloux (who later had tremendous success in film, theatre and voice acting) as MC, Jean Frenay and Jean Vern (who did the artwork for le nouveau jazz) on saxophones, Michel Kurylo, Annick Astier, Lambert Terbrack and my then wife Françoise Tusques “singing” and “acting”, so to say. Jacques Thollot, Aldo Romano and later Noel Mcghie were on drums.

I know for sure side A is a studio recording carried out in august 1968 by the comité action musique, an activist group of artists and engineers aiming to reclaim the means of production from the “record industry”. The line-up is me, Vitet, Guérin, Laloux, Frenay, Vern, Astier, Françoise Tusques, no drums (everyone doubling on percussion), and Michel Portal on bass clarinet and saxophone as guest. Side C is a montage of the surviving bits of the happenings that took place at La Vieille Grille between August 1967 – March 1968 (sometimes on a daily basis in ‘68!), the museum of modern art during the May ‘68 demonstrations, and the Biennale Of Paris in February 1969. Sides B and D are less theatre oriented and may have been recorded either at the American center in October 1968, the international students center in November 1968 (Barre Phillips on bass and Barney Wilen on sax guested on these dates but I’m not able to confirm they are on the tapes), or in the winter and spring of 1969. However, the cassette for side b only read “Snark 1969”...

The name of the group (it changed every time it ventured out), the title of the concerts and accordingly the cuts on these LPs were all lifted randomly from Lewis Carroll’s poems and novels. Back then, I described what we did in this way: “Composers, directors, writers, band leaders, those people are vampires sucking the blood of musicians and actors. They are byproducts of the current state of our society. Yet, someone who has something to convey needs performers... Unless a cultural revolution happens soon, I think it’s impossible to overcome those contradictions. Therefore, I wish that this rendition of the hunting of the Snark would be the last ever rendition of any work of art, and that the next stage of evolution is that any individual craving for expression will have the physical and intellectual means to create without constraints, to freely associate with others, without bearing the weight of so-called geniuses and nobodies. We want to bring to the stage the same revolution that happened in jazz with the new music.

Francois Tusques

Kate NV is the project of Russia-born recording artist, songwriter, and producer Kate Shilonosova. Best known in her hometown of Moscow as the lead singer and founder of the post-punk garage band Glintshake, Kate NV is also a performer in the experimental Moscow Scratch Orchestra and releases music under an alternate alias, NV. "Room for the Moon" is Kate NV's third album and second for RVNG Intl. "Room for the Moon" was inspired by memories of 70s/80s Russian and Japanese pop music and movies. The album finds Kate NV singing in Russian, French, and English. She collaborated with musicians Jenya Gorbunov (bass guitar), Vladimir Luchanskiy (saxophone), Quinn Oulton (bass guitar, saxophone), Nami Sato (Japanese Narration), and Marco Passarani (marimba). "Music knows what she wants," says Kate NV. On "Room for the Moon", the lyrical follow up to the buoyant minimalism of 2018's "FOR", NV follows this muse in fluid expression, harmonizing her lunar lullabies with a starry compositional choreography. NV says, "I always let music express herself without pressure, and with or without voice."

Following their sublime 2019 collaboration, “Sakla Beni”, production king Kutiman and Turkish songstress Melike Sahin reunite on Anatolian psych anthem, “Elmi Tut (Hold My Hand)”. And a simple revival this is not. The Turkish & Middle Eastern psych sound of Erkin Koray, Baris Manco, Selda Bağcan, Omar Khorshid & Aris San is brought bang up to date with swathes of hallucinatory synths, filtered basslines, hard-as-nail drum breaks and Kutiman’s magic touch.

Having met in Istanbul in 2017, Şahin and Kutiman rapidly developed a beautiful chemistry. Şahin’s striking voice inspired Kutiman to create a genuine yet modern Anatolian psych sound and the resulting 2019 single, “Sakla Beni”, became a global hit, championed by BBC Radio 6 Music’s Lauren Laverne. Meanwhile, the modern Anatolian sounds of bands such as the Netherlands-based Altın Gün and the contemporary Middle Eastern-influenced psych of Khruangbin, have taken the world by storm. Kutiman and Şahin’s follow-up is destined to win even more hearts!

We are very proud to present THIS IS TECHNO JAZZ. VOL 1, a genre defining collection of music from artists coming from the jazz and techno scenes like Distant Echoes, TUN, Tensal, Mattia Prete, VSK, Fabrizio Rat, Gianluca Petrella, Flat Maze, Luigi Ranghino, Wrong Assessment, Irakli, Key Clef and more. Together, these contemporary innovators perfectly define the label's vision for jazz and techno fusions.

This label is all about drawing on the rich heritage of two of the most visionary and experimental genes in music: jazz and techno. Taking inspiration from the freeform creative nature of those two musical worlds, artists on the label mix tradition with modernity, improvisation with experimentation, and create a new sound known as techno-jazz. THIS IS TECHNO JAZZ. VOL I will showcase these ideas across 11 tracks (10 tracks in vinyl limited edition to be released in September).

Dystopian label associate and Out-er co-owner Distant Echoes opens up with 'Faction 200' featuring Gianni Denitto on sax. It is a cosmic adventure with freeform sax lines driving above rippling synths and broken beats. Milan based Wrong Assessment has built up a fine discography over the last five years, releasing his moody techno on the likes of Planet Rhythm and Dynamic Reflection. His deeply hypnotic sounds here feature the experimental jazz quartet Gamapawa, with swirling pads drifting about to make a mysterious atmosphere as distant trumpets bleed in and out of the mix and walking bass recalls the atmosphere of 70's jazz fusion. Heavy and industrial sound designer and audio engineer VSK then remixes the Torino Unlimited Noise trio's 'Jason' into a loopy, glitchy, unresolved bit of deep techno with thoughtful jazz chords and plenty of dubby bass weight.

Tensal is next and links with Torino Unlimited Noise for 'Devourer of Senses', a straight-ahead slice of linear techno that is powerful but also intriguing thanks to the off-grid keys, increasingly intense synths and dark sax motifs. Lecce's techno dreamer and forward thinking DJ, promoter and producer Mattia Prete offers 'Burning Man' Ft. Israeli pianist Uri Gincel and Berlin based experimental guitar player Daniel Calvi. It's a cavernous and absorbing track with freeform jazz drums and heavy drones that zones you out. Dreamy and abstract techno man Chevel can make all forms of techno, and here remixes Antares Mates's 'Movimento 2' into an experimental track with bright synths, sharp sax phrases and melodic rain over a jittery beat that suspends you in the cosmos. Producer and piano player Fabrizio Rat and brilliant trombone player Gianluca Petrella are another accomplished Italian pair and their 'Turn' is an elastic deep techno track designed to melt your mind with its dancing hi hats and increasingly manic trombone hits.





Irakli & Daniel Calvi's contribution is a dark and menacing piece with sci-fi synths that make for a turbulent intergalactic soundtrack, and 'Petardo Boy' by producer Stefano Mori and pianist Uri Gincel aka Flat Maze (who released their Dick Dunker EP on this label last year) is a tender and intimate techno cut with gentle keys and a sense of playfulness in the wonky chords. Last of all, synth magician Key Clef and piano legend Luigi Ranghino are label regulars who close things out with 'Piano Movimento 1', which layers up intricate phrases of jazz piano, evolving echos of drum machines and surging bass. It's poetic, intense, and thrilling.

The digital edition of the release includes also a bonus tracks by Finnish duo Aki Himanen on trumpet and electronics, and Aleksi Kinnunen on drums. “Dystopian morning jam” is an hypnotic progression of tight drum textures and dreamy trumpet phrases which slowly build up to a powerful final musical catharsis.

This is a collection of avant-garde music that breathes new life into both jazz, and techno, with fantastic results.

Gondwana Records are delighted to announce the 6th release of our '7" Series', our first ever 7" vinyl collection series. Featuring bespoke artwork from Gondwana Records designer Daniel Halsall, cut at Calyx in Berlin, and manufactured at Optimal. This one is limited to strictly 300 copies and housed in a reverse board printed sleeve with classic 'dinked' centre holes.

The release also comes with a limited edition postcard

Dwight Trible and Matthew Halsall first met by chance at a festival in South Africa. Dwight sat in with Matt's band for an impromtu jam and a friendship was born. The result was Dwight's 2017 recording for Gondwana Records, Inspirations, produced by and featuring Matthew Halsall and members of the Gondwana Orchestra. With the LP long sold -out we've decided to shine a light on the first two tracks from the album. Together they make a glorious, deep, soulful 7" with a timeless message. On Side A we have, Dwight's impassioned take on Bacharach and David's classic What The World Needs Now is Love and on the flip we have a low-slung take on Donny Hathaway and Leroy Hutson's Tryin' Times. Both feel even more relevant now than they did when written. Just 300 copies and no re-press on this one - so don't miss out.

We Jazz Records continues their 7" series with a new release by Oaagaada, a fresh quartet from the rural parts of Southern Finland. "Oag-ada / A Swimming Trip" appears on 30 October and presents the band's ability to create fiery and flowing jazz music with strong avantgarde leanings. Think Art Ensemble Of Chicago on their groovy mode and add a strong DIY mentality, four people in a room creating music in the now. The lows are low and the highs are high, with the trumpet firmly on the red, adding just the right amount of blurriness into the picture. Perhaps it's not "lo-fi jazz" per se, but rather music which is more concerned with other things than the cleanest of hi-fi imagery. This is "real jazz for real people".

The quartet includes Tuure Tammi (trumpet), Sami Pekkola (sax), Tero Kemppainen (bass) and Simo Laihonen (drums). Laihonen has recently appeared on We Jazz Records with Stanley J. Zappa and previously with Black Motor, and more Oaagaada can be heard on the recent "We Jazz Live Plates" album "Lonna 2019".

True to We Jazz style, the 7" single comes with old school heat-pressed labels and a plain brown paper sleeve.

Climate - atmosphere is what we say. Soul with beautiful expression, is what they say in the modern jazz scene in the US. It's a necessary component for good jazz, as well as for swing. But to achieve an organic atmosphere which is therefore vital and alive, a relationship of intentions and views, and a congeniality of thoughts are needed. When Tommasi was in Rome for a few days and had Santucci and Scoppa listen to the latest pieces he had composed, the three musicians ideas, aspirations, and agreement in taste appeared to exist right off the bat, and the idea to do an album together was born almost instantly.

Now, with all things said and done, a certain climate seems to have been achieved, with no lack of a swing enriched with heat and energy. The two horn players, who up until now have played and recorded with a band from Rome, the Modern Jazz gang, have really and fully understood the spirit of the pieces written by Tommasi, and even if it's the first time they have met with the trio of the pianist from Trieste, they demonstrate that they have merged and combined into one, more than anyone had hoped for. The album was recorded by forging ahead and overcoming various obstacles like that of a geographical distance that they were not used to (the horn players reside in Rome, and the others in Turin, Bologna, and Lucca); but now that the project has been achieved rehashing the difficulties that they had to get past in order to finish the piece is no longer important (and nor is it well wished for).

Take Five is probably one of the jazz titles that is best-known to a mass audience. It was composed by Paul Desmond and it appeared on the album Time Out by the Dave Brubeck Quartet.

Pianist Brubeck had studied veterinary medicine before turning to music, and in 1949 he formed an octet, and then in 1951 his famous quartet with Paul Desmond playing saxophone. He signed with Columbia in 1954 and built up an excellent reputation, but in 1959 he became famous around the globe thanks to two titles, Take Five and Blue Rondo à la Turk.

In France, the singer Claude Nougaro made the quartet’s work popular when he wrote the French lyrics for versions of Three to get ready (adapted as Le jazz et la Java) and Blue Rondo a la Turk (with the title A bout de souffle). Dave Brubeck was “quiet man”, far from the legends and excess often linked with jazz: he would spend six decades in a world where life, and jazz, was “cool.”

In the 1960’s when Atlantic, Stax and Motown were at their peak; a little-known label in Norfolk, VA headed up by Noah H. Biggs, called Shiptown, was also giving young kids a chance to perform. Mr Biggs owned many labels locally and viewed many of the releases as a chance to showcase young, talented artists and performers in order to get them placed at larger national record companies. As a result, many of Shiptown’s releases can be extremely hard to track down with most pressings limited to 200 or less.

One of the last releases on Shiptown came in the mid 1970s by The Grooms, a few years before the passing of Mr Biggs. The only single the band ever released consisted of a phenomenal A Side, a mid-tempo funk track with amazing vocals and a killer horn arrangement called ‘Slow Down’. This is a track that’s hard to define - it takes inspiration from so many soulful genres. On the flip is a devastating beat ballad called ‘I Deserve A Little Bit More’. This track builds to a spine tingling crescendo. Raw soul at its best, with a wonderfully gritty mix of tight harmonies and unhinged emotion.

If this one doesn’t move you, check your pulse.

Harlem Pop Trotters is one of the best jazzfunk albums in the French library, and one of the grooviest too. Written & produced by Jean Claude Pierric & François Rolland for Les Tréteaux in the mid ‘70s, this real masterpiece is now reissued on Underdog Records (Janko Nilovic, Martial Solal) in a rare colored edition!

On October 14th 1989, Horace Tapscott, founder of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, performed alongside his close friend and musical partner Michael Session at the Théâtre du Chêne Noir in Avignon, France. This was during a tour in which they traveled across Europe. The duo presented compositions by Leimert Park musicians Jesse Sharps, Nate Morgan and Tapscott himself. The stark instrumentation of this concert led to minimal arrangements of compositions typically performed by much larger ensembles. The result is a one of a kind experience where Tapscott & Session challenged each others abilities and pushed the music to new boundaries. This is the first physical release from The Village, a label dedicated to releasing West Coast spiritual jazz.

Alabaster DePlume is a Manchester UK-born, London-based bandleader, composer, saxophonist, activist and orator.
He's a resident at the legendary London creative hub Total Refreshment Centre, a recording artist for the off-grid Scottish Hebridean island label Lost Map, and now the latest arrival into Chicago-based International Anthem's growing family of progressive musical explorationists.

Anteloper is a duo of psychedelic sonic compatriots starring a pair of raggedy celestial sound warriors: trumpeter jaimie branch and drummer Jason Nazary. These longtime friends and collaborators met as young explorers and consider their electronic duo a continuous experiment into the unknown sonic abyss. Recent results have come back as mind-bendingly abstract head boppers, improvised organisms guided by a unique desire to hear what hasn't been heard before. This is music made of and for the moment, tipping towards the future, moving feet to the new-new beat.

Top drawer cosmic-tinged, timeless jazz funk from Elixia, "Soho Phaze-/Soho Nights",
gets the remastered reissue treatment on "Record Shack".

"Soho Phaze" wasn’t going to be light on the effects was it? "Going heavy on the phaser" would have been an understatement, but what could have sounded like an endlessly swirling soup of effects turned into a breathtaking, intergalactic, early ‘80s jazz funk dream.

On the flip ‘Soho Nights’ keeps the effects subdued letting the squelching synth lines, feverish stabs and pure funk bass do the strutting. Both Sides still do the damage to this day, with DJs such as Nick The Record, Joey Negro, Mark Grusane, Medlar & Faze Action all regularly drawing for the mystique and mastery of this 12" big tip!

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For the third instalment of their record label, Social Joy invites the London based band, Natural Lateral, to step into the records label family with their first LP.. The name "Cogito Ergo Jam" meaning, "I think therefore I jam" sums up its essence and beautifully weaves together different strands of musical roots and forms. Echoing jazz legends like Azymuth, Roy Ayers and Lonnie Liston Smith but always in search of new musical territories, this release takes the listener into a feel-good and fiery sensation of musical freedom. Natural Lateral's tremendous energy in the studio is felt throughout on every track of the LP, giving these recordings a beautifully intimate insight into the phenomenal vision of the band.