Pop & Rock News

Unique Soul Jazz Records' Record Store Day seven-inch box set which brings together a stunning five-single/ ten track selection of mind-blowingly groovy selection of African, Latin, Jazz and Funk music from the Congo. Absolutely killer and essential tracks (mostly unknown) from the masters of the vibrant Congo scene in the 1960s - featuring the groups Franco & OK Jazz, Rock-A-Mambo, African Jazz, African Fiesta and more. Roots African meets Dizzy Gillespie, James Brown, Ray Barretto & more. The bomb!

This unique box-set edition is only available as a one-off pressing especially for Record Store Day 2018.
 

Previously unreleased live and studio sessions from 1969/70. Transeuropean Jazz by Bruno Spoerri's and Hans Kennel's sextet and octet "Jazz Rock Experience" from Zurich. Deep brew of electrified Jazz-Funk, spiritual sounds, folk music from Eastern Europe and free improvisation. Original material plus vibrant versions of Leadbelly, James Brown and Eddie Harris, featuring a.o. Spoerri (el-ts and ss), Kennel (tp), Dave Lee (el-pi, clavinet and vibes), Raffael Waeber (g), Jonas Haefeli (fl and perc), Freddy Meier (ts), Hans Foletti (b) and Kenny Schmidt (d). Comes with unseen photos and new sleeve notes by Bruno Spoerri

- Four Flies Records keep on researching Alessandro Alessandroni's limitless archive, compiling this time an LP of tracks

composed between 1972-1978

- All the tracks were previously unreleased and are presented here for the first time - a truly 'Lost & Found' treasure that sees the light for the first time!

- After the incredible success of Afro Discoteca (Four Flies Records, 2017), Pierpaolo De Sanctis compiles a 15-tracks LP of forgotten soundtracks and library music treasures from the Italian Maestro

- Jazz, Disco, Electronic music - there's no genre Alessandroni hasn't explored - this compilation testifying the incredible diversity of his production and immense musical mind

On 30thMarch, Wah Wah 45s will release ORANGE WHIP, the new album by their latest signing, Honeyfeet. The outfit, who have received praise from the likes of The Guardian, have also set festivals alight up and down the country with their unique melange of sounds.

For the last couple of years the Honeyfeet (who name from a line in the Blues Brothers film) have been a conduit for the ideas and expressions of an exotic mixture of Manchester based musicians. This genre-defying band incorporate styles including jazz, folk and hip hop into their music. Someone once called it Folk-Hop and Barrelhouse-pop, and that's just vague enough to make sense.

The band are fronted by Ríoghnach Connolly - also known for her work with Real World artists Afro Celt Sound System and The Breath - "a remarkable singer and flautist who...can ease from Irish traditional influences to soul" (The Guardian). The line up is completed by Rik Warren (vocals/harmonica), Gus Fairbairn (tenor sax), Biff Roxby (trombone/vocals), Ellis Davies (guitar), Lorien Edwards (bass guitar), John Ellis (keyboards) and David Schlechtriemen (drums).

ORANGE WHIP finds the band at their most incredibly diverse. Opening with recent single Sinner (received radio play from the likes of 6 Music and BBC Manchester), which showcases Ríoghnach's extraordinary agile and emotive voice, the album moves with dizzying swagger on songs covering a wide range of subjects. Quickball tells the story of being so infatuated with someone you want to eat them, while Whatever You Do addresses the fear-mongering of the press over folk-hop and oom-pah, and Demons deals with love and redemption on a blast of harmonica-driven country, sung by Rik Warren.

Rik also takes lead vocal on a re-working of Robert Johnson's Love in Vain, a song showing Honeyfeet's more reflective side, his Skip James-esque drawl bringing an eerie quality to the lyrics about a doomed relationship. The band reshape the progression too, swinging the tune slowly and creating a little underground blues club in the midst of the recording.

Elsewhere the band go all New Orleanian on Colonel Hathi's Trunk Juice, a sinister tale inspired by trombonist Biff Roxby's horn riff recalling one of the elephants of The Jungle Book. Further showcasing their virtuosity, on one of the album's best moments - especially the nuanced vocal performance by Ríoghnach, who was raised on Irish folk - on Hunt and Gather the band do their own take on prog-folk, with a flute and cello melody running alongside a brass counterpoint.

Ríoghnach turns in another incredible vocal on the album's final track - future single Meet Me On The Corner. With a pounding beat, it is one of the album's main highlights. Guitar and brass propels Ríoghnach to sing lyrics that could be straight out of the playground, but suggest something deeper, possibly mystical even, in it's demands for a dalliance on the street. It closes the album on a high note, for a band who have that rare ability to distil all their disparate influences, while always sounding like their unique selves.

ORANGE WHIP heralds the sound of a remarkable band going overground.

Yemenite-Jazz legend Tsvia Abarbanel, celebrated on this much anticipated 12" by Fortuna Records. Including two previously unreleased tracks! Throbbing spiritual jazz touched by ancient Yemenite tradition, these 1970 recordings are amongst the rarest of the rare. Until now! Privately pressed by Tsvia in 1970, this was the first ever attempt at combining traditional Yemenite compositions with Funk and Jazz. Two tracks were previously reissued on a long out-of-stock 7" by Fortuna, now gloriously re-released with two other never-before-heard tracks! Essential.

Im April 1985, 2 Jahre vor seinem viel zu frühen Ableben, nahmen Buddy Rich und seine Band ein Konzert im One Pass Productions' King Street Studio in San Francisco auf.
Es wurde vermutet, dass Buddy Rich: The Lost Tapes ein Opfer der Flammen geworden sei.
Die Produzenten entdeckten die Mastertapes 1990 und restaurierten den Sound des letzten aufgenommenen Konzerts von Buddy Rich aus dem Jahr 1985. Als einer der größten Jazz Drummer aller Zeiten spielte Rich mit Größen wie Tommy Dorsey, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Ventura, Louis Armstrong und Gene Krupa. Er war ein gerne gesehener Gast in TV Shows wie der 'Tonight Show' mit Johnny Carson, der Mike Douglas Show, der Dick Cavett Show und der Merv Griffin Show. Rich spielte auch für die Präsidenten Roosevelt, Kennedy und Reagan und hatte zudem die Ehre, vor der Queen von England aufzutreten.

For the first time Nicolas Repac's album Swing-Swing, originally out in 2004, is released on vinyl LP!

He has a reputation as a musician's musician, a talented Jack-of-all-Trades as much at ease playing the guitar alongside his old accomplice, French songwriter Arthur H, as he is when tinkering with all kinds of machines by instinct, and creating made-to-measure contexts for instrumentalists like Michel Portal. Everyone knew he had a secret garden, the song' world of a composer and performer who was difficult to categorize, a world not only lyrical but also dark and full of tender melancholy, not to mention easily surrealist (his first record of songs, La vile', which was released on the Indigo label in 1997, has a sequel in preparation in the form of a new opus, Lovni'.) But, once again,
Nicolas Repac had a surprise in store, because he has turned up where no one was expecting him: Swing Swing is a record as magnificent as it is difficult to place, with electro ramblings around jazz (its subjects and virtues, its spirit and memory), wanderings that are playful, light, fluid in gesture and crammed with ideas, discoveries and intuition, they are at once naive and instinctive (Repac is an erudite amateur, the Ferdinand Cheval of the already-established world of electronic music), and extremely elaborate in their crushed samples, hallucinatory, rhythmic whirls and sensual, dreamlike atmospheres.

* 180 gram audiophile vinyl
* PVC protective sleeve
* Music arranged by Ralph Burns
* Featuring "On Broadway" by George Benson
* Limited edition of 1.000 individually numbered copies on silver vinyl

All That Jazz is the 1979 movie, directed by choreographer Bob Fosse, in which he tells his semi-autobiographical life story as the womanizing, drug-using dancer. The music arranged by Ralph Burns won an Academy Award for Best Music and it features "On Broadway" by George Benson which won a Grammy Award for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance in 1979.

The movie stars Roy Scheider as Joe Gideon, the choreographer and dancer attempting to put on a new Broadway show while simultaneously directing a feature film about a stand-up comedian. Using drugs, chain-smoking, sleeping with his dancers leads to an open-heart surgery and he becomes aware of his mortality.

The first pressing of All That Jazz is a limited edition of 1.000 numbered copies on silver vinyl.

Repress

Peter Zummo (born 1948) is an American composer and musician. He plays the trombone, valve trombone, euphonium, synthesizer, other electronic instruments, and also sings. He is associated with the postminimalist and Downtown aesthetics, and he describes his music as "minimalism plus a whole lot more." He's well-known for his work with Arthur Russell.
"In this project for Optimo, the listener can hear that my musical food pyramid has musicians at top, or maybe they are at the bottom. In any case, they are important. That is why, from track to track, I selected
segments in which one player or another is featured in the take. Some may think that we musicians do multiple takes to get the perfect performance, but I like to find the special interactions lurking in each excursion. Different players came forward in each of the takes, which were recorded in the studios Seaside Lounge and Headroom, in Brooklyn, and live in performances at Cube Cinema, in Bristol, U.K., as well as in Long Island City and on Staten Island, New York.
In order to escape the tyranny of the lyric, I am exploring in this release the possibilities of nonsensical and non-emotional lyrics. These kinds of lyrics bring the singing voices into the mix without an overweening message. The tracks include open-form compositions in which the duration was not specified."

Für die Aufnahmen arbeitete Dave Holland erneut mit Saxophonist Evan Parker, einem langjährigen Freund aus ihren gemeinsamen frühen Jahren in London.
Craig Taborn am Piano und Ches Smith an den Percussions waren ebenfalls mit von der Partie.
Neben den klassischen Quartett Improvisationen gibt es auch die verschiedensten Kombination als Duo oder Trio zu hören. Die Gruppe nahm auch zwei Kompositionen von Smith und eine von Holland auf.
Das Resultat sind 23 Stücke tiefgehende, vielschichtige Konversationen zwischen den Musikern, von denen ein Teil zum ersten Mal miteinander interagiert haben.

"It could be argued that this is one of the greatest rock n' roll records of all time! Straight from Zambia, we have My Ancestors. A tough rock and roll masterpiece like no other. Over ridden Fuzz guitars, pop melodies and even a Black Sabbath-esque number. Comes in an old school "tip on" cover. Must be heard to be believed."

Sly & Robbie join forces with Norwegian jazz innovator Nils Petter Molvaer,with lvind Aarset adding guitars and Vladislav Delay electronics and additional percussion, rounding off a record steeped in reggae and chill Nordic jazz

Reissue of the rare 70's folk-jazz record from Toronto based artist Beverly Glenn-Copeland previously released on the Canadian GRT imprint. Comes in a heavy tip-on sleeve. More info soon.

It Could Happen to You was originally released in 1958 and follows the similar style of his previous vocal records in which he updates old standards to a contemporary cool jazz setting. Unlike previous releases by 1958 Baker's voice had reached a stunning maturity and his trumpet playing is also at a near peak in quality. The song selection is impeccable and everything about this record just oozes coolness. One of the finest releases in Chet Baker's storied career.

15 dead, 15 funerals, 16 funeral processions, 1 procession with no dead, 5 churches, 1 cemetery, 1 wake. 15 hours of recorded sounds are condensed into a vivid sound portrait depicting the way funerals and burials are lived in the Caribbean island of Haiti.

Recorded in Port au Prince by sound artist Félix Blume in early December 2016, Death in Haiti plunges the listener into a world of pain, loss and solemn celebration as each funeral comprises of its own live jazz band as well as a plethora of characters like the joker (le blaguer) who cracks jokes and tales about the recently deceased.

A beautiful document of a thriving tradition, a counterpart or updated version of those famous Dirge Jazz records such as the New Orleans' Eureka Brass Band on Folkways.

* 180 gram audiophile vinyl
* Insert
* Printed inner sleeves
* Gatefold sleeve
* Remastered audio

Travelling Without Moving (1996) intentionally offers more of what Jamiroquai does best: highly addictive funky grooves with a social consciousness that is matched by front man Jay Kay's charisma. The third effort of Jamiroquai was carried by an inventive video for "Virtual Insanity", the album's flagship song.

Pressed on two heavy weight champions packed in a gatefold sleeve, Travelling Without Moving is finally available on vinyl again, this time with remastered audio for maximum aural pleasure!

Ltd. edition of 500 numbered copies on clear vinyl

The legendary French painter and sculptor Jean Dubuffet exalted naivety and spontaneity in visual art, and his brazenly experimental recordings on Musical Experiences evince the same spirit through sound. He once reflected, "Certain unexpected windfalls ... come of improvising on an instrument one doesn't really know how to use."

Dubuffet, who famously founded the art brut (or outsider art) movement, began making music in the early 1960s with avant-garde figure Asger Jorn. With no training, they played a range of instruments: saxophone, bassoon, detuned piano, hurdy-gurdy, cabrette, bombarde and so on. Soon, Dubuffet reserved a room in his home for making music and bought two tape-recorders in order to manually edit the results. He wrote fondly of the recordings' crudeness and the sense that they "had no beginning and no end but were simply extracts taken haphazardly from a ceaseless and ever-flowing score."

Dubuffet's discography begins in 1961 with the release Expériences Musicales, a six 10-inch record set produced in an edition of fifty with original artwork and lithographed sleeves. Musical Experiences, compiled by composer Ilhan Mimaroglu and released in 1973 on his Finnadar imprint, collects eight of the twenty pieces on the much sought-after Expériences Musicales.

First-time vinyl reissue. Limited edition of 500 numbered copies on clear vinyl.

"It's kind of a double bluff calling it the National Jazz Trio Of Scotland," says Bill Wells of a group that is famously neither a jazz band or a trio. "I was trying to be kind of perverse about it, calling it jazz and then deliberately not having anything that actually related to jazz." On their latest album, Standards Vol. IV, the National Jazz Trio continue their engagement with classic and outsider pop traditions, subtly building on their characteristic blend of beguiling melodies and spare arrangements. There is even, dare we say it, a hint of jazz. "For this record, I've opened it out," explains Wells. "There are drums on it, which I haven't really had before, even though they're sampled drums, and there are bits of improvisation like with the viola on 'Passing By' and 'A Quiet Life'. That's the first time there's ever been anything resembling improvisation on a National Jazz Trio album. I wanted something in there that was improvised and quite out there, very out there as it happened." That latter track also features a sampled irruption of big band jazz, as if Wells is transmitting live from a New Orleans second line, Dictaphone in hand.

These oblique visions of jazz aside, the album's most striking development is its focus on a single lead vocalist in Kate Sudgen. This is the first in a proposed series of albums to feature one singer from the NJTOS, with Gerard Black and Aby Vulliamy to follow. Wells is full of praise for Sudgen's beautifully unaffected voice. "It's just a case of her being a brilliant singer. I feel that she's underrated. She's as good as people like Liz Fraser. It's almost like her voice sounds like it's double tracked without it being double tracked, like Gerry Rafferty or Robert Wyatt. There's a graininess to it."

As Wells notes, Sudgen does not have a conventionally powerful voice, but her understated approach has a real emotional pull. "I suppose I like things to be very plain. I do like people who can hit notes, but I can't stand most jazz singers because they over-sing. I think sometimes the more emotional you are, the less emotion you convey. With Kate, it's very deliberate, it's all very considered, and in a way people like that are the best jazz singers. It might sound quite casual, but there's a lot of thought behind it."

This decade has seen a flurry activity from Wells. In 2012, he won the inaugural Scottish Album Of The Year award for Everything's Getting Older, a collaboration with Arab Strap's Aidan Moffat. In 2011 he released Lemondale, recorded with Japan-based musicians including Jim O'Rourke and Saya of Tenniscoats. Four years later, he assembled a stellar cast of musicians including Annette Peacock and Yo La Tengo for Nursery Rhymes, an exploration of the darker side of childrens' songs.

Wells' penchant for détournement and bittersweet irony crops up throughout Standards Vol. IV. Take "Tinnitus Lullaby", where Sudgen softly sings of "a never ending ringing" to "save your soul from sleep" over the melancholy twinkling of a music box like synth. The song is accompanied by an animated video from artist and singer-songwriter Marry Waterson, which for Wells recalls the DIY weirdness of 1970s British childrens' television. "She's got quite a dark sense of humour," says Wells. "I actually laughed out loud when I saw it because it so captured the mood. She's just one of these people who's so supremely talented."

'Anticipated Sentence' makes a wry reference to the Sinatra standard 'I've Got The World On A String', a song Wells dislikes intensely. "It's by Harold Arlen (and Ted Kohler) who is one of the great songwriters, but it's this relentlessly happy thing and I just think 'Shut up!'" As Wells explains, some of his greatest influences are things he hates. "I think a lot of people are the same, you know, 'that annoys me so much I have to react.' I quite like the idea of taking the piss out of it in a relatively subtle way." In Wells' song Kohler's cheerful refrain of "What a world, what a life!" is twisted into something altogether darker, with the string around the protagonist's finger becoming a noose around their neck.

Such juxtapositions can also serve to bring light to darkness. 'Move' is a vivid portrait of depression, where the protagonist spends all day in bed, listening to the sounds of helicopters buzzing overhead. Yet Wells animates the song with bossa nova guitar and clave rhythms, creating an effect that is, depending how you read it, ironic or uplifting. "It appears as a bit of a joke, but in fact it's what actually made the song work for me, because I'd been working on it for a while and I couldn't quite get the chorus to come out. And then I realised that if I put that kind of Latin rhythm on it, which is obviously in complete contradiction to the lyric, it actually made it work."

In addition to the ten Wells originals and a new version of the Aidan Moffat collaboration 'Far From You', Standards Vol. IV features a cover of Richard Youngs' 'Summer "Summer's Edge" from the latters's 2005 masterpiece Summer Wanderer. Wells has known Youngs since the 1990s, when they worked together with Future Pilot AKA. "There's a few people for whom you can justifiably use the word genius and I think Richard is one," he declares. "Again it was to do with Kate's voice and that song suited her voice so well. It's actually quite a radical reinterpretation. The original is a capella, so it gave me that space in which I could do something that was very much my own." The National Jazz Trio's version taps into the uncanny pastoralism of the original, with Sudgen's clear reading of the melody set against Wells' glistening keyboard samples. "It's one of my signature sounds," Wells adds. It comes from a sample library he and Vulliamy recorded with Teenage Fanclub's Norman Blake a few years ago. "They're all natural sounds, but they've been mutated. We've been using them on all the albums. I want something to sound like it's my own, so that's as close to making my own instrument as I can get. I like the fact that even though it's on a computer it's not going to be too precise." That human quality shines through Standards Vol. IV, an album characterised by its gorgeous blend of sophistication and vulnerability.

Stewart Smith

For Gérard Marais, guitarist with Dharma (the quintet), from this third album (in fact he replaced Gérard Coppéré, one of the two saxophonists present on the first album), Albert Ayler's instruction to play your own music was the detonator. This did not fall on deaf ears, and was particularly appropriate as it would have been difficult, even for a musician attracted to free jazz, to make something of his own from the esthetic and political direction taken by Cecil Taylor, Archie Shepp or Sun Ra. What could be summarised as ethnic differences. The quest was to find one's own music, whatever the more or less apparent roots.
For, at the beginning of the 1970s, Gérard Marais and his comrades in the Dharma Quintet were overwhelmed by electric period Miles Davis. Not the band with Pete Cosey, which was still gestating, but the one fascinated by electronic keyboards and the famous Fender Rhodes which added so much to the atmosphere of In A Silent Way.
From the beginning of Dharma, but without ever copying anyone, Patricio Villarroel played the role of Chick Corea with Miles Davis. While Gérard Marais whose fulgurant playing dynamised the group, was at the level of John McLaughlin, or Sonny Sharrock at the same period. Another important soloist, alto saxophonist Jeff Sicard was as inventive as Byard Lancaster, Noah Howard, Gary Bartz, Marion Brown or Sonny Simmons. It's difficult to do any better!
Questioned by a critic, years after the group split, Gérard Marais insisted on it being an idea born of the seventies, which seemed the only creative way to enable written music and improvisation to co-exist. This was a philosophy that he would continue to develop within Michel Portal's group, on Splendid Yzlment, but also in a great duo with Joseph Dejean (of Full Moon Ensemble), and yet again in a trio led by drummer Stu Martin, with two guitars the other being Claude Barthélemy.
The Dharma Quintet, made their mark, appearing under the letter D, between Dedalus and Dies Irae, on the list of major influences created in 1979 by Nurse With Wound.

Do your own music!' was Albert Ayler's advice, received loud and clear in France! Cohelmec Ensemble, Workshop de Lyon and the Dharma Quintet, three groups close in spirit, which would each illustrate in their own way a local principle: to get some distance from American free jazz. As far as Dharma is concerned, the community-based approach was put in place to escape (they stated) from any academism (the musicians lived together, rehearsed endlessly together, and collectively purchased the necessary material together). This may draw comparisons with the l'A.A.C.M. with whom the group felt a certain affinity, but they were also influenced by Gong, in spite of a deep admiration for Anthony Braxton who they met in Paris at the beginning of the 1970s! The events of May 68 were fresh, and protest was still in the air: no leadership structure was possible, and personnel could change with each recording (on Archipel, a new drummer makes an appearance, however, there is no recorded trace of the group with Jean Querlier and François Méchali).
Like its predecessor End Starting, Archipel is a constructed album, mixing free rock and European free jazz in a series of collective explosions based on abrupt and contrasting improvisations. For much of the time, piano, guitar and saxophone intertwine over intense rhythms, with everything and anything being electrified. Retrospectively, such remarkable timbral combinations, evoking sometimes the freer passages of Cinemascope by Joachim Kühn with Toto Blanke, make the demise of Dharma in 1974, even more regrettable. Their modernity has nothing to envy of the later advances of Paul Bley with guitar (Pat Metheny, John Scofield), or of Om on Rautionaha (for the alliance of Urs Leimgruber/Christy Doran), Patricio Villarroel's electric piano adding a nonetheless surprisingly singular touch to Dharma, inherited of course from Chick Corea's work with Miles Davis. This is without mentioning a kind of incisive violence when things speeded up, which was unique to the Dharma Quintet, or a sound as dense as that of On The Corner by Miles Davis, or Stark Reality, John Abercrombie's group from around the same period. Who else could seem approximately close to the Dharma Quintet at the same time Emergency, a quintet which had played and recorded in France, including, among others, Glenn Spearman on saxophone, Boulou Ferré on guitar and Takashi Kako on electric piano. Masabumi Kikuchi in Japan also deserves a mention.
Along with the Cohelmec Ensemble, the Workshop de Lyon, the Full Moon Ensemble, Perception, Armonicord or the Michel Portal Unit, the Dharma Quintet stand out as one of the most important examples of free jazz as it was played in France at the beginning of the 1970s.

Disk Union Japan and 180g team up for an exceptional release with Brazilian legend Hermeto Pascoal's 2017 album No Mundo Dos Sons, his first recording with his band in 15 years, now available for the first time in gatefold double vinyl edition!

Wide ranging and eclectic, Pascoal is known as "The Wizard" because he can extract a sound from anything. While one cannot always be sure exactly what instrument in his arsenal he is deploying at any particular point in time, the results are marvelous, defying easy (or any) categorization. The 18 tracks, each of which have their own distinct personality and character, include elements of traditional jazz, Brazilian jazz, traditional Brazilian music, pop, African, symphonic element, as well as music from Pascoal's cerebrum. All are imbued with Pascoal's tools of the trade - whistles, screams, scales, keyboard, kettles, spoons, squeeze toys, children's voices, prepared piano and geese calls.

Band members - whose ranks include such standouts as João Paulo Ramos Barbosa ("Jota P") and Itiberê Zwarg - add Brazil's pandeiro, surdo, caixa, apitos, bonecos and agogos, as well as more conventional Western instruments such as soprano and tenor saxophones, flute, electric piano, electric bass and other instruments. Musicians and genres such as Terry Riley, Frank Zappa, Weather Report, Javanese gamelan and Indonesian kulintang, Philip Glass and others come to mind, but there is no real overlap: Pascoal has his own special brew.

No Mundo Dos Sons (released in 2017 on 2xCD format in Brazil, on Selo Sesc) is Pascoal's first recording with his band in 15 years. He recently told Brazil's Anoticia that "My music is not commercial, it's not like selling bananas or soap. I'm not in a hurry to record. My whole life is to do shows... I have a frightening amount of music, almost 9,000 compositions on paper. But do not confuse quantity with quality, see I always worry about quality."

Harry S. Pariser - All About Jazz, October 12, 2017.

Personnel: Hermeto Pascoal: percussion, piano, Ajurinhã Zwarg: drums, Itiberê Zwarg: bass, Fabio Pascoal: percussion, Jota P.: woodwinds, André Marques: piano.

About 180g:

180g is a music agency providing vinyl pressing, distribution and licensing services specialised in the Japanese market. Its strong knowledge of the Japanese music scene and industry allows 180g to bring top quality solutions to the various international labels it is working with, for their development in Japan, and to Japanese labels for their development outside of the country. In addition, 180g runs its own record label.


About Disk Union:

Disk Union Japan is a retailer and music label who specializes in the distribution of vinyl, CD, and music DVD to Japanese listeners. Disk Union Tokyo has been founded in 1969 and is one of the finest music and audio dealers and distributors in Japan. Its strong position allows Disk Union to successfully market the independent labels in the country. Its A&R department takes pride in providing Japanese music lovers with the freshest independent sound from all over the world.

Named after the tenor saxophone, actually, Jimi Tenor is not just Jimi Tenor - he's as well Jimi Keys, Jimi Flute, Jimi Vox and Jimi Composer. Yeah, he is, as a multi-instrumentalist and music master in general, all of this! But wait: Active since the mid-80's he's also Jimi Legend. And if you overlook his whole oeuvre then finally you will find out that on top of all of this he's Jimi Genius.


Quantum Connection is Jimi's contribution to the recent Kraut-Life craze of the Berlin underground. Kraut-Life is the brand-new hybrid of Ghanaian Highlife and German - here extended to Northern Europe, as Finnish kitchen is also kraut-based - romantic melancholy. A heavy and driving Highlife beat (yeah, it's not Afro-Beat), screaming psychedelic sound-fragments and a sung desire for a subatomic love affair makes the song another undoubted original by Jimi.

My Mind Will Travel (Teen Party Edit) is a heavily danceable edit of the epic eight minutes version of that piece, which you can hear on Jimi's upcoming full-length album Order Of Nothingness, released on Philophon this June. For Jimi, the physical world seems to be limited: but he is confident that his mind can dive deeply and boarder less in the mystery of our micro- and macro-cosmo.

Quartetto Moderno is going through Italian jazz scene foregoing a new feeling which implies a cool aesthetic so much connected with European culture. Italian jazz music issued between the late '50s throughout the '60s is gaining attention elsewhere but in Italy. Numbers and numbers of excellent recordings - from Basso Valdambrini's to Quartetto di Lucca's, from Giorgio Azzolini's to Eraldo Volontè's - are now in great demand! They are the fruit of a musical research sustained by stylistic choices showing undoubtedly Italian roots, which is the right humus for Quartetto Moderno. Refined sounds, modal impulses combined with elaborate harmonic series and romantic melodies represent the natural, modern continuation of that artistic period and mood.

New edition of this very rare deep spiritual jazz album first released as a private-press album in 1969 on flautist Lloyd McNeill's own Asha Record label in Washington, DC. First reissued on Soul Jazz Records' Universal Sound sub-label in 2011 (long deleted) and now available newly digitally remastered on Soul Jazz Records main label in a limited edition of 1000 copies worldwide.

Lloyd McNeill is an African-American flautist, painter, poet, and photographer born in Washington, D.C., in 1935. His multi-disciplinary creative life led to encounters and friendships with Nina Simone, Picasso, Eric Dolphy, Nana Vasconceles and other legendary cultural figures.

McNeill grew up through the era of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and his life and work is a reflection of those ideals. 'Asha' was the debut album by the Lloyd McNeill Quartet released on his own private-press record label, echoing the Civil Rights and African-American themes of the era - black economic empowerment and self-sufficiency - as well as a beautiful spirituality to the music. In the mid-1960s he moved to France where he became friends with Picasso, working with a number of émigré-jazz musicians whilst living in Paris.

In the late 1960s he taught jazz and painting workshops at the New Thing Art and Architecture Center in Washington. In the 1970s he travelled throughout Brazil and West Africa studying music and taught music anthropology in the US.

This album is released as a limited-edition 1000-copies worldwide LP (+ download code), and limited-edition 1000-copies worldwide CD edition and also as a digital album on Soul Jazz Records.

This album is released in conjunction with the album Lloyd McNeill - Washington Suite (1970) which was released last month also on Soul Jazz Records.