Heavy, chilling Channel One.
Horace is in deep; jittery and urgent. Sly is surgically trigger-happy.
Killer.

Pianist James Edward Manuel’s only release; amongst the deepest custom-press jazz recordings of them all.
Jaman studied under greats like Horace Parlan. Gigging on the Buffalo club scene, one of his early trios included the renowned bassist John Heard and drummer Clarence Becton, till both were poached one night by a visiting Jon Hendricks. Other sidemen include Sun Ra Arkestra bassist Juini Booth and Ahmad Jamal regular Sabu Adeyola.
Pressed in tiny quantities by the Mark Records custom service in 1974, and issued with a stock landscape cover, Sweet Heritage presents a soulful mixture of covers and originals. In particular, the flying, spiritual sound of Free Will and the upful, Latin-tinged In The Fall Of The Year — both Jaman compositions — have turned the LP into a legendary collector’s classic.

Eniola Famodimu’s UK house monster back to stalk the earth, more than twenty years on.
Co-produced and mixed by Chris Simmonds — hardcore HJ massive in those days.

Spine-tinglingly yearning, yet dignified, rootical rocksteady classic — one of Phil Pratt’s top tunes, limpidly delivered by Lynn Taitt — with an ace Tommy McCook version.

Full-on, sex-hungry, hard-grooving, rock-steady, into-the-future electric blues.
Check out Muddy dancing in his last minute on stage. Otis Spann led the closer — torch-carrying verses by Langston Hughes — because the boss was so knackered.
Look at all the people laughing, shouting out, swaying in their deck-chairs… and wonder about Dylan causing such a cataclysmic stink five long years later, on the same stage, going electric the same way (on the same type of Telecaster).

‘Tony Williams was barely twenty-three when he put the Lifetime trio together in 1969, only five years past his stint as the engine of the Miles Davis Quintet. Emergency!, the group’s sprawling double-album debut, paired Williams with organist Larry Young and a little-known British guitarist named John McLaughlin, and the record still stands as one of the founding documents of jazz-rock fusion — loud, unruly, ahead of where the rest of the music was standing.
‘The original Polydor LP, mixed by Gene Radick and mastered by Lee Hulko, caught that ferocity on tape but never quite in the grooves; low end swallowed the drums, and the whole thing arrived compressed into something closer to sludge than three musicians clearly having the time of their lives…
‘Mastering engineer Michael Brändli did this thingamajig Reference restoration and set against the 1969 pressing the gap is not subtle. Williams’ drums, once smothered under tape hiss and organ bleed, now hit with real transient snap. His cymbal work—skittering, argumentative, never just keeping time—finally gets the room the LP never gave it. Young’s Hammond pulls apart into distinct registers instead of one low howl, and McLaughlin’s guitar sits up front without the digital harshness that dogged later reissues too…
‘The 1969 LP sounded like a fight recorded from the next room, three musicians throwing punches through plaster. Brändli’s remaster tears the wall down. Nothing about the performance has changed; everything about hearing it has’ (All About Jazz).

‘By turns gleeful, sensitive, urgent and ruminative, this is a brilliant set that plays to the trio’s formidable strengths… Hearteningly delightful contemporary music-making’ (The Guardian).
‘A spare, de-cluttered, étude-like qualitymusic of sometimes unassuming but penetrating emotion and structural focus… full of the detail given to artists with powers of judgment to match the command of their instruments’ (Jazzwise).

‘As deeply rooted in soul’s past as you’d expect, but it never feels self-consciously retro… strikingly raw, racked with very real emotion’ (The Guardian).

No surprise that JC does the absolute business over this scorching do-over of Winston Riley’s Nothing Is Impossible rhythm (as nailed originally by the Interns / Viceroys).

Terrific, gospelised, soulful disco by Gwendolyn Dennison, produced for P&P by Arthur Manning and P. J. Wyatt, making a change from Greg Carmichael or Patrick Adams.
Theo and Floating Points both rinse it.

With Larry Young, Elvin Jones, and Bobby Hutcherson.

‘Young is exceptional, very much on form, and Hutcherson makes an enormous contribution to a slower-paced and more meditative session than he’d normally favour’ (Penguin Guide to Jazz).
‘Bittersweet and beautiful, Street Of Dreams will be enjoyed by anyone who loves Idle Moments’ (All About Jazz).

On harp and piano — with Pharoah Sanders (soprano sax), Vishnu Wood (oud), Rashied Ali (drums), Cecil McBee (bass), Charlie Haden (bass), Majid Shabazz (bells, tambourine), Tulsi (tamboura).
Transcendent jazz from 1970; full fathom five deep but compellingly accessible. Our favourite of all her records, and over the decades our first recommendation as an introduction to her work.
According to AC’s sleeve note, ‘Anyone listening to this selection should try to envision himself floating on an ocean of Satchinandaji’s love, which is literally carrying countless devotees across the vicissitudes and stormy blasts of life to the other shore.’