A gorgeous reissue of his first LP, from 1957; with Curtis Fuller, Hugh Lawson, Ernie Farrow, Louis Hayes, and Doug Watkins. Beefy, alive, and exploratory, with Lateef’s Eastern trajectory flagged already, in the thrilling argol introduction to the opener, Metaphor. On the flip, Morning is ravishing, unmissable Lateef.

From 1974, featuring knockout rare groove like I Don’t Need Nobody Else and What Do You Want Me To Do.
Limber, feeling and introspective, with full horns and strings setting fine songs and frankly soulful singing.
Lou came through in Detroit as a writer and producer with Barbara Lewis, before signing in his own right to Epic, via the Rags label run by legendary producer Jerry Ragovoy. Hereafter he was briefly a member of The Fifth Dimension.
One of the greatest of all modern soul albums.

Scorcher!
Just cop the opener. Such a knockout!
Six Horace Tapscott compositions and arrangements. Swirling, passionate, raging, valedictory, richly allusive music.
Teddy Edwards is here; Tommy Flanagan. Criss is on fire.
Hotly recommended. Something really special.

In its full-length glory, from the great man’s 1980 LP Journey To The One; plus his version of the Marvin Gaye classic, from his 1978 LP Love Will Find A Way, with Norman Connors.
Both recordings luxuriating on 12” for the first time.

‘Classic Vinyl Series.’

Collecting the first five Burial Mix tens, all featuring Tikiman, with their dubs.

Of all his albums, this was Stan Getz’ favourite. Ours, too.
Freed from the formal orthodoxies of small-group bebop, and revelling in the freedoms opened up by Eddie Sauter’s thrilling strings-based arrangements, lyrical improvisation pours out of the saxophonist (with Lester Young coursing through as per). The music shimmies devil-may-care through jazz, classical, soundtrack, show-tune, and the rest.
Try the dazzling opener. A theme from Béla Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta is mashed into skittering, paranoid funk, with a killer spot for Roy Haynes. And next up, something quite different, a quiet, complexly tender tribute to Getz’s mum, exquisitely proffered. Just a shame Bill Evans wasn’t sitting in.
Original, knockout; very warmly recommended.

Brassy, infectious Afro-Amerindian cumbia, porro, gaita, and mapalé from Colombia’s Caribbean coast, which injected a modern, jazzy, big-band sound into regional Afro-Colombian traditions, and took the country by storm.
The Orquesta Del Caribe, recorded in Medellin, 1946-1961: a legs-eleven blaring trumpets, soaring saxophones, meandering clarinets, rattling and pounding percussion, plus singer Matilde Diaz, led by the maestro Bermudez, widely considered Colombia’s most influential composer of all time.

Remastered, adding extended versions of the original LP, plus the remix of Paisley Park, the extended version of Girl, and Hello (Fresh Dance Mix). This new version of America runs over twenty minutes.

‘Classic Vinyl Series.’

‘Boomerangs back into the slashing chords and frenzied double-picking of the Harry Pussy years, tossing the gentler melodic glow of the last few solo records into the dustbin. In other words, this may be Orcutt’s most overtly punk-rockist record since Gerty Loves Pussy, his first solo electric LP from a decade ago. It’s an affirmation that Orcutt is above all a lead player—angular runs scaling the heavens, ricocheting back to ground zero before climbing again. Orcutt builds tension with short phrases, repeated with slight variability until it seems like they’ll never stop, finally slamming into a fresh line like the dawning valley at the crest of the mountain pass. Another Perfect Day is, ultimately, something of a solo guitar Nouveau Roman, an exhilarating run through melodic reiteration, impossible crescendos (check out those ecstatic crowd hoots on For the Drainers) breaking into—a moment rarely found on an Orcutt record—soft, whisper-quiet tracer notes at the end of A Natural Death. Another Perfect Day returns Orcutt to the immediacy of his earliest records while maintaining the melodic complexity, phrasing, and flow of a player, who’s been going, what—four-plus decades now? And when he taps his roots, it’s a reminder of exactly what was so exciting about Orcutt’s playing in the first place.’

‘Pure machine soul for late-night heads.’

Their epochal 1997 masterpiece inaugurating the Rhythm & Sound label.
Half an hour of judge-long-sentence steppers.
A stone masterpiece of modern dub, towering over the field till kingdom come.

‘Based in the south of France, Beduneau builds intricate self-playing installations and DIY electronics. Bringing a fresh and personal perspective to electronic and electroacoustic music, his work is intent on opening up dialogues about the social construction of disability, and other norms and conventions.
‘‘Clairon’ refers both to a medieval trumpet and to the beloved with whom this music was first shared, as a kind of impressionistic, though deeply moving sound-diary, during the stillness of the pandemic. The movement of air, pressure, resonance, and the physical properties of the trumpet are reimagined; organic ASMR tones, synthesized bird calls, and pirouetting melodies of pipes and bells score an imaginary biodome where chaos and harmony coexist.
‘Striking, singular, and boundary-pushing.’