This is a blast. From 1996, but summoning the fervour of his early seventies classics, Pharaoh sparks off kora, and high-life, and various African rhythms. The dazzling lineup includes Foday Musa Suso, Michael White, keyboardist Bill Henderson, Bernie Worrell, Charnett Moffett, and Hamid Drake.

Recorded live in Paris in 1994 and New York City in 1995. The band includes Idris Muhammad, Manolo Badrena, and George Coleman. Beautifully constructed, grooving, percussive versions of a tasty mixture of standards and originals.

‘A collection of canonical, mature acoustic guitar soli to contrast against the fractured downtown conceits of previous acoustic releases… Jump On It, with its living-room aesthetics and big reverb, packs a disarming intimacy absent from the formal starkness of Orcutt’s earlier acoustic outings… Not quite refuting (yet not quite embracing) the polish of revered watershed records by Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, or Bola Sete, Jump On It treads a path between the raw and the refined… Each track is a key to a memory, a building block in a shining anamnesis leading to the recollection that hey, we’re all humans in a shared cosmos, and music is one way we might make that universe go down easy. And who wouldn’t jump on that?’ (Tom Carter)

Originally released in 1981, Mr. Circle’s Thi Nam should really have been recognised decades ago as a jazz dance classic. A beautiful example of European jazz fusion at its most sophisticated and optimistic, the album is immersed in the sonics and rhythms of pan-Latin fusion and Brazilian samba, but with one foot in the upful jazz fusion exemplified by Roy Ayers or the Mighty Ryeders.
Taking inspiration from Ursula Dudziak, Flora Purim, and Norma Winstone, singer Monika Linges uses the crystalline tone of her voice as an instrument within the ensemble. The LP is built around the interaction of her vocalising with bandleader Mikesch van Grümmer’s keyboard versatility, all underpinned by the surging Brazilian rhythms laid down by drummer Gerd Breuer and percussionist Ponda O’Bryan.
The result is a unique set of sunlit, Brazilian-inspired jazz fusion. Aimed squarely at the feet throughout, the album kicks off with a double whammy: the funky title track, followed by. the percussion-rich Juntos. The long form Suka begins with a shimmering intro before taking flight halfway through into an urgent jazz samba with Linges’ vocals to the fore. Featuring the vocals of Bill Ramsay, Tides is another driving jazz-dancer with a Brazilian twist, while the summery, propulsive Schoch-Schach features virtuosic interplay between Linges and alto saxophone.

Our favourite Santana LP. So much to enjoy besides the dazzling guitarism of Carlos Santana — channeling John Coltrane — and John McLaughlin.
It’s book-ended by contributions from Alice Coltrane. The stunning opener is a mellotron version of Going Home, her adaptation of a theme from Dvorak’s New World Symphony, which she first recorded for the album Lord Of Lords. Alice plays piano and Farfisa organ. And to close, the title track re-works a tune from JC’s Kulu Se Mama, with Alice on piano here.
Percussionist Jose Chepito Areas chips in his perfect Samba de Sausalito, with bass-playing by Doug Rauch, and keys by Tom Coster, both superb, and Tony Smith from Malo behind the drum-kit.
Later on, the one and only Flora Purim drops by, magnificently lighting up another samba, Yours Is The Light.
And none other than Leon Thomas had just joined. He duets beautifully with Wendy Haas on a breezy jazz-funk version of Love, Devotion & Surrender; he’s back for full-throated yodelling on When I Look Into Your Eyes, with fine flute-playing by Joe Farrell, and some tasty funk to close; and he’s wonderful on the bubbling Light Of Life, riding a striking strings arrangement by Greg Adams from Tower Of Power, with echoes of CTI.

‘In an age when any old modal groove with a tambura drone pasted on is marketed as spiritual jazz, Kingsport, Tennessee born Zoh Amba is the real deal…
‘Opening track Fruit Gathering is a brief aubade to the Holy Spirit, weeping with a tremulous vulnerability recalling Ayler at his most tender and melodic… On the album’s more expansive tunes, her quartet plugs into the tumultuous swells and raging energy of late 1960s US free jazz exemplified by players such as Frank Wright and Noah Howard, which built on the intensity of John Coltrane’s later, spiritually driven exhortations. Here, Amba pushes past low, guttural blasts to altissimo shrieks and the screaming multiphonics pioneered by Pharaoh Sanders during his tenure with Coltrane.
‘On Champa Flower, Amba connects with her Tennessee roots, picking and strumming at an acoustic guitar while cymbals shimmer and bass throbs. Joining the dots between folk, American primitive, pastoral psychedelia and 2000s free folk, she proposes an alternative living continuum of American devotional music. Most affecting, though, are the three solo meditations on which she plays piano with her right hand and sax with her left. Captured in lo-fi on a Zoom recorder, and ending abruptly as though suddenly out of batteries, they’re intimate glimpses of a soul in motion’ (Daniel Spicer, The Wire).

‘Classic Vinyl Series.’

‘Classic Vinyl Series.’

Milford Graves with Arthur Doyle and Hugh Glover, in the weeks leading up to their March 1976 recording of Bäbi.
Graves recorded these sessions himself in his legendary Queens basement laboratory and workshop. Outstandingly, the first two sides feature Graves on drums alongside Glover on klaxon and a Haitian one-note trumpet called a vaccine — “it’s important to keep that tribal possession-state feel… as in the Divine Horsemen of Haiti,” he says in the sleevenotes — and especially riveting, scorching tenor playing by Doyle, even by his own standards.