Roland Al tearing up Louis Jordan in 1962; plus a tasty, doowop-derived ska shuffle.
Both sides previously unreleased.

Wicked little minor-key organ instrumental, with a killer intro and rare toasting by Ramon The Mexican — resident deejay of Harriott’s Musical Chariot Sound System — who later changed his name to Ambelique.

Scorcher. Ska at the threshold of rocksteady. Mittoo and Dizzy Moore do it to it.

Tough Jammys do-over of Cuss Cuss, with dangerous bass and banging dub, and Junior in no mood for messing. ‘Galong before we chop off your hand.’

A stunning complement to Theme De Yoyo!
Panou was an activist and actor, in Paris from Benin; he plays a refuse collector in Jean-Luc Godard’s Weekend. His texts here cross existentialism and Black Power like a knockabout Richard Wright, with an extra shot of anti-colonialism. Recorded by Pierre Barouh for Saravah, in the same months as its classic Comme A La Radio LP with Brigitte Fontaine, furthering the AEC’s rowdily brilliant elaborations of Leroy Jones’ Black Dada Nihilismus.
It’s a scorcher; hotly recommended.

A lovely set from 1965 — taking its own path away from Fire Music, but forwards nonetheless — featuring the under-rated pianist Georges Arvanitas, and the drummer James Black, trumping his brilliant contributions to the Live At Pep’s sessions.
Bamboo Flute Blues and Satie’s First Gymnopedie are ravishing stand-outs.
‘Verve By Request.’

The Barca-born pianist back to wow us again on piano, Fender Rhodes, Chinese gongs, and a little whistling; with longtime collaborator Masa Kamaguchi, and Detroit drum wizard Gerald Cleaver. ‘Where melodic density meets contrapuntal dialogue, a free interplay of rich textures and riveting, masterly improvisation. This smooth complexity is what gives rise to the group’s uniqueness.’
The Wire magazine hailed the first volume: ‘deep and thoughtful’.

‘Brotzmann barely plays saxophone at all, sticking mostly to tarogato and a host of clarinets; Nilssen-Love mostly plays gongs, bells and other metal percussion. With the changes in tools comes a change in approach. Nilssen-Love is sparer and more decorative, providing accentuating commentary that highlights the more solemn and yearning aspects of his partner’s playing, and Brotzmann explores melancholy to devastating effect. This is a career peak for the recently departed reedist’ (Bill Meyer, The Wire).

A second volume of ‘the best and rarest Chicago blues of the early postwar era.’ Little Walter, Muddy Waters, Sunnyland Slim, Floyd Jones, Snoooky Pryor, Roosevelt Sykes… all present and correct.
You need it for Johnny Shines’ Living In The White House, about setting society to rights, over the rocking saxophone of J.T. Brown. ‘I want to live in paradise, make servants out of kings and queens / Now don’t shake me please darlin / This is one time I want to finish my dream.’

For John Corbett ‘one of the most luminous albums of creative music ever made’, this forty-minute work by the four-piece — Roscoe Mitchell, Joseph Jarman, Lester Bowie, Malachi Favors — is surely the apex of the fourteen studio albums recorded by the Art Ensemble during their two years’ sojourn in France.
‘Still-startling music, which uses space, dynamics, and a wide range of emotions expertly’ (AllMusic).

‘At 36 years old, in exuberant form, revisiting songs of his which hit for other artists, like Bastidores (which revived Cauby Peixoto’s career) and Morena de Angola (a smash for Clara Nunes). Released in December 1980, when Brazil was rehearsing its redemocratization even in the throes of continuing political violence, Vida dicloses an artist emerging from censorship. In the irresistible dancehall samba Deixa a Menina, he relishes a feminist response to Geraldo Pereira’s syncopated classic Sem Compromisso: ‘Behind a sad man, there’s always a happy woman / And behind that woman, a thousand men, always so kind.’ The Cubano title track spotlights a character near death, looking back with bittersweet ambivalence, and tightly holding on. ‘Light, I want light,’ sings Chico, threading Goethe’s famous last words into the sublime orchestration of Francis Hime, who creates the masterful arrangements on ten of the twelve songs, elucidating the delicacy of classics like Mar e Lua and Qualquer Canção, and lending the appropriate grandeur to Fantasia. Tom Jobim contributes the arrangement and piano of the masterpiece Eu Te Amo, co-written with Buarque. Another triumph is the bolero-style Bye Bye, Brasil, co-written with Roberto Menescal, humorously reviewing the profound transformation of Brazil during the previous decade.’

A bonafide MPB classic.

Proper socialist to the bone. Great novelist, too.

‘Great Black Music’, and funny.

Chicha is the late-sixties, in-thing scrambling of traditionally-demented cumbia dance music. Uncouth electric guitar and organ join the mix, with other electronic debauchery.