The magic moments of Sharam Shabpareh, front-man of Iranian garage legends The Rebels. ‘Blurting horns, evil bass grooves, cheesy organs, a thick strata of percussion going off like microwave popcorn.’

An astounding compilation of the breakneck Shangaan dance output of the Nozinja studio in Soweto, recorded between 2006 and 2009.

‘SK Kakraba is a master of the gyil xylophone — fourteen wooden slats strung across calabash resonators. The silk walls of spiders’ egg sacs — ‘paapieye’ in the Lobi language — are stretched across holes in the gourds, giving each note a buzzy rattle. SK learned as a child from elders in his Lobi community in the far northwest reaches of Ghana.’
Beautiful, spare, mesmeric recordings — song cycles, dirges, improvisations based on traditional songs, original compositions — newly made.

The second half of the CD.

The kind of expert, dancefloor-attuned compilation we take for granted from this label; with a generous fanzine-style booklet, stuffed with snaps and interviews. That opening track, though, is one step beyond… Bim!
LP back at last.

Wonderful, previously-unheard recordings by the legendary Bahamian guitarist, at his peak in 1965, made at his only New York concert, at home in Nassau, and in a Manhattan apartment. Gripping, one-off playing, continuously stepping out of line, or surprising you with accents, like Monk; rough, enraptured singing in the age-old tradition of local sponge fishermen, with startling irruptions of humming, babble and scat.

‘At a distance of more than forty years, the radicalism and significance of African Spaces can be seen more clearly. Ambitious, uncompromising, and resolutely progressive, it represents a unique high-water mark in South Africa’s long musical engagement with the newest developments in American jazz — a response to the cosmic call of Return To Forever, and an answer to Miles’ On The Corner… a complex and challenging jazz fusion that shifted the terms of South Africa’s engagement with jazz towards new music being made by pioneers such as Chick Corea, Weather Report, John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny and others.
‘This debut recording is one of the key documents in the South African jazz canon. Emerging in the aftermath of the 1976 Soweto uprising, and taking its place alongside the crucial mid-1970s music of Malombo, Abdullah Ibrahim, and Batsumi, it is a defining but unsung musical statement of its era.’

‘A wicked sense of pacing, of beauty and absurdity, and an instinctive ear for musical action’ (The New York Times). ‘There’s no theme or continuity… unless you count sheer awesomeness’ (Fader).

Bangers drawn from the bootleg compilation LPs — ‘pirata’ — which were all the rage in 1980s Mexico City, The hottest, rarest hits from Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and beyond — edited, tweaked, EQ-manipulated and pitched-down, to suit the sonideros running the city’s mobile soundsystems.

Seventies and eighties funk, disco and boogie from Surinam — poised between northern South America, the West Indies, and the wider Caribbean — expertly drawn from 45s and LPs.