‘All is Sound could not be a more apt title for this,’ says Mississippi. ‘Through saxophone, cello, piano, and flutes The Cosmic Tones Research Trio created a truly beautiful record. All is Sound breaks new ground. At its heart, it’s healing/meditation music, but the Gospel and Blues roots are in there too…as well as hints of forward-looking Spiritual jazz.
‘Delicate, profound melodies create peaceful, immersive soundscapes, which the group develops through their combined background in acoustic ecology, sound meditation, mindfulness, and active community involvement.
‘Following the steps of musicians such as Sun Ra, Alice Coltrane, and Pharoah Sanders, The Cosmic Tones Research Trio delivers music that is both restorative and sonically rich—each tone falling into a perfect place, as if by magic.
‘As sincere a record as you could ever hope for. Music is indeed the healing force of the universe.’

Mississippi presents ‘the deeply moving second LP by Portland’s The Cosmic Tones Research Trio.
‘A follow up to last year’s beloved All Is Sound, this one sees the Tones adding more percussive elements and pushing their sound into more melodic song-based territory while keeping the ambient / spiritual effect. It’s pretty amazing.
‘Blending cello, alto sax, piano, flutes, and an eclectic palette of textures and percussions, the album channels a sacred energy that feels both ancient and forward-reaching. It is music for reflection, for movement, and for inner travel. Tracks unfold with patient grace, yet pulse with deliberate rhythms that ground the listener—echoing the ceremonial spirit of cosmic jazz and deep improvisational traditions.
‘This is not background music—it’s an invitation to engage fully, to breathe with the instruments, and to explore the liminal space where sound becomes prayer. With The Cosmic Tones Research Trio, Norfleet, Silverman, and Verrett continue to map sonic territories where the mystical and the musical converge.’

‘One of the best, rarest and most sought after South African recordings of the early 1970s, available again for the first time since its original South African release — the tough, jubilantly swinging township groove of The Jazz Clan’s 1973 debut LP, Dedication. It captures the acoustic jazz sound of the early 1970s in its pomp — a handful of tightly wound songs jostling for space, blending uptempo soul-jazz sensibilities with Latin influences and pronounced township jazz accents, the latter especially audible in Dimpie Tshabalala’s piano vamps, Jeff Mpete’s pattering hi-hat emphases, and the unmistakably South African swagger and dip of the horns on cuts like Rabothata. It is music on the brink of a transition, looking ahead but still dedicated to the sound of the golden years, and it could have been made nowhere else on earth but in Soweto.’

Frank Lowe, Billy Bang, Rafael Garrett, and the great, unsung drummer Dennis Charles, in 1983.
Book-ended by Jackie Mac’s Little Melonae and Ornette’s Lonely Woman; plus compositions by Bang and Lowe, Rashied Ali and Butch Morris.

Revered British jazz from 1969; the pianist leading a quartet featuring Harold McNair.
Originally out in 1969 on the Deram imprint which Decca set up for prog, new wave folk, and psych, Off Centre is obligingly eclectic. Cameron’s background in library and soundtrack music is opened up to the spirit of Roland Kirk. Best of several tasty modal numbers, the closer Troublemaker is a testifying rug-cutter, with a gritty flute solo by McNair.
Remastered at Abbey Road using the original tapes. New sleeve notes incorporate a recent interview with Cameron.

Though music journalists made a big deal recently about the release of a 1965 rehearsal tape by Derek Bailey’s Joseph Holbrooke trio with Gavin Bryars and Tony Oxley, those early efforts were mere tentative steps along a cliff edge wearing a line safely attached to Coltrane. There’s still a whiff of jazz to Bailey and Parker’s work with the Spontaneous Music Ensemble up to and including 1968’s Karyobin.
But with the addition of Jamie Muir — the first great free improvising percussionist who didn’t start out as a jazz drummer — and the way-leftfield electronics of Hugh Davies, the MIC leapt right off that cliff.
These six tracks — tight, electric, pointillistic, brilliant, uncompromising and exhilarating — sound like nothing else that came before.
In a word, seminal.

Neil Ardley, Jack Bruce, Jon Hiseman, Dave Gelly, Jim Philip, Dick Heckstall-Smith, Barbara Thompson, Derek Wadsworth, John Mumford, Michael Gibbs, Tony Russell, Derek Watkins, Harry Beckett, Henry Lowther, Ian Carr, George Smith, Frank Ricotti…
‘The range, invention and depth evident on Le Dejeuner Sur L’Herbe outstrips most large ensemble jazz albums of the time; at times muscular and powerful, at others delicate and sensitive, the interplay of the musicians, arrangements and compositions make for a stand-out recording that bristles with confidence and energy.’

The singer’s 1969 debut under his own name — after a stint in Pharoah Sanders’ group — is his best album.
A beautiful, succinct version of Master Plan, a lovely Song For My Father, an angry Damn Nam. Malcolm’s Gone is a forgotten classic: intensely spiritual eastern sounds, with Pharoah Sanders at his most focussed.
Cecil McBee, James Spaulding, Roy Haynes, Lonnie Liston Smith, Richard Davis…
The CD offers three bonus tracks, including A Night In Tunisia, and a live version of Damn Nam (Ain’t Goin’ To Vietnam).
HIQLP and BGPCD from Ace.

Sonatas or concerti, says Threadgill: Come and Go for saxophone and cello; Poof for saxophone and guitar; Beneath the Bottom for trombone; Happenstance for flute and drums; Now and Then for tuba and guitar.
‘By this point, the group’s reliance on the serial intervallic system that was the basis of the group’s unique sound is more felt than prescribed, relying on the musicians to fill in the rest.
‘All the other hallmarks are here: unpredictable forms, percolating rhythms, the interwoven melodic strains; there’s really nothing else remotely like it.
‘The best part of it all is that Zooid is the one platform where one still gets to hear Threadgill really play. His keening saxophone wail retains that unmistakable gutbucket blues feel, with no small measure of church thrown into the mix.’

From 1991, the debut, milestone release of this lineup featuring dual tubas and dual electric guitars.

An album of American standards… by Richard Rodgers, Charlie Parker, Jerome Kern, and others… plus one improvisation. With bandmates Matt Brewer on bass, and drummer Justin Brown, and guests including Ambrose Akinmusire, Joshua Redman, and Mark Turner.

‘Hamasyan puts so much emphasis on mood and melody that it’s easy to miss how virtuosic the playing is’ (DownBeat).
‘Tigran has found a way to keep improvisation fresh and lyrical. Other jazz musicians would be wise to take note’ (Guardian).
‘There are many brilliant and perfectly finished young jazz pianists around, but Hamasyan stands out because he has something important and urgent to say’ (Daily Telegraph).

“I love these compositions and melodies so much that, to me, it’s like Armenian folk music.  As an immigrant – an Armenian-American – I relate to these composers and musicians from various backgrounds who have that kind of history, a dark history, but managed to succeed in an embodiment of freedom. In that way, I feel like I want to be part of this, to find something in the tradition of where I came from.”

A private press LP from early-eighties Youngstown, Ohio, featuring an absolutely killer Hammond B3 version of Chameleon, and an exceptionally funky The World Is A Ghetto, showcasing Lavorgna’s soulful saxophone, and more deep funk from David Thomas, on organ.

“An album of what one might consider Danish Spiritual Jazz, with songs inspired by and named for Pharaoh Sanders and Yusef Lateef” (Egon, Now Again).
“I’ve never come across an original of this Norwegian spiritual jazz masterpiece but happy enough with the reissue. They’ve put some work into it to make it sound and look good”
(Gerald Short, Jazzman).
“Killer spiritual jazz album from Denmark, superb repress” (Gilles Peterson, BBC Radio 6).

This quartet formed in 1969, and played for a while every Monday in the famous Jazzhouse Montmatre in Copenhagen. 
This is their sole record, released in 1970.


‘With Touch, the Tortoise bandmembers — Jeff Parker, Dan Bitney, Douglas McCombs, John Herndon, and John McEntire — harness their collectivist songwriting approach, a slightly anarchistic but resolutely egalitarian process where ideas triumph over ego towards an abstracted muscularity. While there are still excursions into the dusky, elegantly gnarled jazz ambience that flourished on landmark works like Millions Now Living Will Never Die and TNT, Touch is perhaps most remarkable for Tortoise’s unapologetic embrace of grand gesture. Aerodynamically re-engineered Krautrock, hand-cranked techno rave-ups, and pointillist spaghetti western fanfares are all imbued with Tortoise’s now-signature internal logic — equally alluring and confounding, a puzzle to be savored rather than solved.’