Moving Day weaves field recordings from the day André moved home a couple of years ago — as filmed by Dexter Navy, in Venice Beach — together with an impromptu Q&A, Dexter to André, and studio recordings made while watching the film. Tunnels of Egypt is from the New Blue Sun sessions, but not previously released. Three tracks, half an hour.

An afternoon in Osaka, 1975. With an On The Corner kind of gang — Sonny Fortune, Pete Cosey, Reggie Lucas, Michael Henderson, Al Foster and Mtume. ‘The greatest electric funk-rock jazz record ever made’ (Allmusic).
LP from Music On Vinyl.

The Duke’s response to Billy Strayhorn’s death from cancer in 1967, this album is one of his masterworks.
Featuring Johnny Hodges, in Strayhorn’s sublime arrangement, Blood Count is utterly devastating, every time. Another masterpiece of despair, cut by wistfulness, After All is stone-cold classic Ellingtonia. The solo-piano version of Lotus Blossom — which closed the original LP — is the Duke at his most emotionally frank.
Ineffably beautiful music, to help you through life.

With Keith Jarrett, Jack DeJohnette, John McLaughlin, Airto, Gary Bartz, Wayne Shorter — different lineups around 1970 — running jazz into Sly and JB and way out the other side.
Vinyl from Music On Vinyl.

Timelessly killer, essential music, and a humongous commercial success, this is the key record bar none in the binding of jazz into funk.

All nine in the box, properly remastered, packaged in replica mini-LP sleeves, with original documentation, and new notes from scholar Michael Eric Dyson and BW himself.

Dazzling, smash-hit, fully-fledged blend of flamenco, reggaeton and post-Timbaland r&b, with a Middle Eastern flavour to the singing. It’s the re-telling of a medieval story about a woman locked in a tower by her husband, and her escape. There’s even an Arthur Russell sample.
Lost in the Christmas rush here, but so nice we’re serving it twice.