At Fillmore West in 1970 with Airto, Steve Grossman, Chick Corea, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette (just before Keith Jarrett joined). The Bitches Brew sound.

‘Classic Vinyl series.’

His first proper LP, recorded in 1955; with Red Garland, Oscar Pettiford, and Philly Joe Jones.

Recorded in Paris, 1965, at the time of the Vietnam peace talks. ‘Donald Byrd occasionally played with us at the Blue Note, so he came in and helped produce the record.’

‘If you love the era in which electronic elements began to enter contemporary jazz, during the late ‘60s and ‘70s, you’ll LOVE what Sweden’s Dennis Egberth has been creating.
‘A blend of cosmic composition and chilled ambient and electronic sounds, with floating, irresistible, melodic bass lines, and long, modal build-ups that come alive with exploding lyricism.
‘The drummer is joined by Fredrik Ljungkvist on tenor sax and clarinet, Niklas Barnö on trumpet, Alexander Zethson on Wurlitzer, Linus Hillborg on electronics, and double bassist Joe Williamson.’

Bassist Dezron Douglas and harpist Brandee Younger doing over Alice and John Coltrane, The Stylistics, The Jackson 5, Pharoah Sanders, Kate Bush, Sting, and The Carpenters.
Douglas has worked with Pharoah Sanders and David Murray, amongst other jazz notables; Younger with Charlie Haden, Stevie Wonder, Lauryn Hill… Both are featured on Makaya McCraven’s Universal Beings.
‘It’s an uplifting suite of real, soulful comfort music — a spiritual salve.’

“We try to reach within free jazz the same sort of rhythmic cohesion as in bop… based not exactly on tempo, but something which feels like tempo. A kind of underlying pulse.”
This is Dharma’s first LP: from the same neck of the woods as the Cohelmec Ensemble, a mixture of spiritual jazz, free jazz and electric Miles — especially for its keyboards — infused by the anti-authoritarian politics of collectivism and anti-hierarchism.
Saxophonists Jef Sicard and Gérard Coppéré are moonlighting from Claude Delcloo’s Full Moon Ensemble.

Their second LP, released three months after Mr. Robinson in 1970.
Funky jazz-rock — tight, direct, restless. Pianist Patricio Villarroel lays on the Corea / Jarrett vibes; alongside bassist Michel Gladieux and drummer Jacques Mahieux.

‘Winding operations down after End Starting, Archipel is likewise planned-out music, 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. Everything is electric, with the density of On The Corner, and flashes of viciousness all its own.
‘Along with the Cohelmec Ensemble, the Workshop de Lyon, the Full Moon Ensemble, Perception, Armonicord or the Michel Portal Unit, the Dharma Quintet stands out as one of the most important examples of free jazz as it was played in France at the beginning of the 1970s.’

A moody, ambitious, intriguing record, originally released by Audio Fidelity in 1964.
Just two side-long tracks — and an amazing lineup, with Walter Davis on piano, bassist George Tucker, and two drummers together, Edgar Bateman and the great Andrew Cyrille.
The sleeve-notes quote a Downbeat article from the same year, claiming that Dickerson was the most important vibraphonist since Milt Jackson: ‘instead of solos made up of one related note following another, Dickerson often builds areas of sound, placing them one on the other, creating a total effect.’

The towering jazz landmark originally issued in South Africa in 1974 under the title Mannenberg Is Where It’s Happening. Recorded with Basil Coetzee, Robbie Jansen, Monty Weber and Morris Goldberg, the music protested the evictions underway from District Six, whereby ‘coloureds’ were murderously booted out to Mannenberg township (where Coetzee was from). The LP sold by the thousands within weeks, becoming South Africans’ unofficial national anthem.

“I’d had the experience of playing dance bands, African dance bands like the Tuxedo Slickers, and we played xhosa, American swing music, mbaqanga… I also played with coloured dance bands — waltzes, quick-steps, squares, paso doble, then also the traditional Cape music…”

An upfully ravishing, hypnotically danceable, rootsily syncretic, universal call to resistance.

Magnificent jazz from 1977 by this nonet including Don Cherry, Johnny Dyani — both top-form — Hamiett Bluiett and Roy Brooks. The grooving, rolling, side-long Hajj — with eastern-style oboe — is knockout.

Don Cherry meets the Groupe de Recherches Musicales!
Recorded in 1977 at the Paris MIX festival organised by INA grm and hosted by François Bayle, this is a terrific, deeply congruent, soulful encounter.
Cherry plays pocket trumpet extensively and beautifully (also n’goni and whistles), with characteristically unguarded, elemental sublimity; Nana Vasconcelos is dazzlingly, hypnotically grooving. Electro-acoustic pioneer Jean Schwarz — a collaborator of Jean-Luc Godard — contributes elegant tape-work, synths, and treatments; his long-time associates Michel Portal and JF Jenny-Clark are highly accomplished European jazz legends. (Feted recently by Souffle Continu, the clarinettist is a mainstay of the Jef Gilson set-up, who recorded with Serge Gainsbourg, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Sunny Murray; the bassist played on DC’s 1965 Blue Note classic Symphony For Improvisers… not to mention Brigitte Fontaine’s Comme à la Radio).
Remastered from the original master tapes; out here for the first time.
It’s a must.

Luminessence Series.

‘Sangam means ‘meeting place’ in Sanskrit. Don obviously knew exactly what he wanted to do, and Latif immediately understood, his fingers fizzing across the tablas at frightening speed… It was Don who suggested that Latif overdub new tabla parts to enrich and add complexity to the first takes. We could reasonably have expected to spend the night doing this because this was the first time the percussionist had done this. It took him all of five minutes to get used to listening to the first tracks over the headphones before playing them without the slightest mistake. When we got to the timpani, which he was playing for the first time, his keen sense of pitch and tone once again did miracles. During one take, just for the fun of it Latif started to play a fairly slow, disconnected duple time, moving on to three and then four… all the way up to 19 by which time his fingers were whizzing invisibly across the skins, leaving us in awe and him looking as if he didn’t know what the fuss was all about. All this just made Don even keener to impress his musical companion for a day…
‘Of course, the subtleties of this album call for greater analysis, for example the meeting between the Malian doussou n’gouni and Indian tablas, the Hammond organ taking over from the tampura, 5 1/4 time as if it were the easiest thing in the world, the reinvented Indonesian gamelan… and the lyricism of the pocket cornet.’