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Mal Waldron
Candy Girl
Strut
‘A lost 1975 session by the great pianist Mal Waldron, recorded in Paris with core members of the mighty Lafayette Afro Rock Band.
‘By 1975, Waldron was a decade into his self-imposed exile from the United States, having reassembled his sound after a devastating breakdown in the early ‘60s. His post-1969 output stripped jazz down to its core elements: modal intensity, locked grooves, and hypnotic repetition. Candy Girl doesn’t interrupt this trajectory—it extends it, wrapping Waldron’s minimalist mantras around the funked-up chassis of the Lafayette rhythm section.
‘Originally released in microscopic quantities on the Calumet label and long shrouded in obscurity, Candy Girl was recorded spontaneously in the studio of producer Pierre Jaubert, whose Paris HQ had become the workshop for both avant-garde jazz (Archie Shepp, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Steve Lacy) and psychedelic funk (Lafayette Afro Rock Band AKA Ice). This session finds Waldron jamming freely with bassist Lafayette Hudson, drummer Donny Donable, and keyboardist Frank Abel on clavinet, Moog and more—laying down raw, unfiltered instrumental funk with an experimental edge.
‘Highlights include the low-slung vamp of Home Again, the crisp, break-laden groove of Red Match Box, and the mesmeric swirl of the title track Candy Girl — a minor-key electric piano waltz with hints of cosmic soul. The sombre yet meditative Dedication To Brahms deconstructs the composer’s third symphony into a sparse jazz reverie.’
A reissue of Vambe’s privately pressed album from 1982.
‘Occasionally, you find music outside the commercial mainstream, outside of everything – the music of visionaries, eccentrics, inventors, loners. Moondog, Daphne Oram, Harry Partch are from this mould. And so too is Lori Vambe.
‘A self-taught drummer, inventor, and sonic experimentalist, who moved from Harare to London in 1959, Vambe is a unique figure in British music. The creator of his own instrument, the drumgita (pronounced ‘drum-guitar’) or string-drum, Vambe intended to create a kind of music that had never been made in order to pursue access to the fourth dimension. The album plays with time, mixing hypnotic, trance-like drumgita pieces with the same segments played backwards. You can hear echoes of African drumming traditions, minimalist repetition, and tape-manipulated musique concrète— but ultimately, the album defies genre. It is a solitary voyage, spiritual and futuristic.’
‘Deep and haunting; a dense tapestry of layered percussion, time-warped tape loops, and spiralling drumgita figures, all underpinned by hypnotic improvisations from Brazilian pianist Rafael Dos Santos. Privately pressed in 1982, it is both ecstatic and unsettling, a landmark recording in black British experimental music.’
From the same 1979 recording sessions as Strange Celestial Road, this is one of Sun Ra’s best-loved, funkiest records, with John Gilmore in full flight, and a bigger Arkestra than had just played the Moers festival.
A compilation inspired by the fabulous sound-system, record-collecting culture of the northern cities of Cartagena and Barranquilla, where ricocheting champeta, highlife, soukous, mbaqanga, zouk, soca, and cumbia blare through stacks of hand-painted speakers, in street-corner, neighbourhood bailes.
From 1979, and including UFO — rumbustious disco, Arkestra-style, featuring Marshall Allen on oboe, with solos from John Gilmore, Taylor Richardson and Michael Ray (who also mixed the album, layering in pre-recorded material).
Seductive Fantasy lines up John Gilmore, James Jacson’s bassoon, some fine baritone saxophone and some electric guitar and bass, Marshall Allen’s oboe and Eloe Omoe’s bass clarinet, with great piano-playing from Ra throughout, and towards the end some arco strings.
‘Diving deeper into the archives of one of the greatest French Caribbean labels, Disques Debs, based in Guadeloupe. Founded by the visionary Henri Debs in the late ‘50s, the label and studio operated for over 50 years, releasing more than 300 7” singles and 200 LPs, making it a cornerstone of Caribbean music history. The label bridged traditional genres like biguine and gwoka with contemporary styles like cadence, compas, and zouk. Volume 3 in this series spotlights one of the label’s most dynamic and influential periods as it expanded its global reach during the 1980s, highlighting both emerging talents and established artists who defined the era.’
Recorded a year after the debut, continuing the earthy flow of Malombo’s music. The two albums have since been recognised as unique landmarks of South African jazz. Alongside full original artwork, both albums feature a new interview with Julian Bahula.
Their last record, from 1975 — ‘a psychedelic afrojazz stunner… celebratory, carnivalesque and wholly in the groove. Features the burning classic Black Man And Woman Of The Nile.’
Cut in Ohio in 1973 after Idris and Margot Ackamoor, Kimathi Asante, and Donald Robinson returned from a trip to Africa — ‘an urgent, beautiful and massive two track suite of propulsive afrodelic cosmic earth groove’.
The Arkestra toured Europe in early 1983; then made its way to Cairo. It played a number of concerts during April at Il Capo/Il Buco, before recording superb studio versions of the Ragab compositions Egypt Strut and Dawn, at El Nahar Studios in Heliopolis the following month, featuring Salah Ragab on congas.
For the original release of this LP, the Greek label Praxis added Ramadan and Oriental Mood from the Cairo Jazz Orchestra album Egypt Strut; and another new CJO recording, A Farewell Theme, composed by Ragab upon the death of president Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1970.
This first ever official reissue features previously unseen photos and new liner notes by Hartmut Geerken and Paul Griffiths.
Ray Barney’s label is the bees knees in raw, stripped Chicago house music. From Duane And Co’s breakthrough and killer classics from the likes of young Lil Louis, through to the first shoots of ghetto house.
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