Terrific new folk music from Dublin. Try the opener, the travellers’ song What Will We Do When We Have No Money? And the centre-piece, the furiously inward-turned immigrant song, Déanta in Éireann. The Granite Gaze… killer.
Hotly recommended.

Warmly welcome, expertly recorded, new saze music from southern Albania, upholding its traditional, stunning mix of drones, in-your-face a cappella, and rootsy, virtuosic instrumentalism — in this case, violin, clarinet, lute and percussion. Produced by Joe Boyd.
Try searching out Albanian Village Music (78s from 1930 reissued by Heritage). Other-worldly and heart-stopping; totally knockout.

Sombre Shaka weapon, with Junjo and the Roots Radics, from the same early-eighties sessions as Police In Helicopter.

‘America’s greatest singer’; ‘the greatest gospel singer of her generation’; ‘the greatest singer ever’ (Pulse, Time, Rolling Stone). Check the title track for her influence on Little Richard, The Isley Brothers, James Brown and co. Stuffed with gems.

‘Lo-fi, primitive orchestral pieces for a Swedish TV-documentary series that in the end never was finished. Someone said, If the Penguin Café Orchestra would’ve used old rhythm-boxes and recorded rough demos influenced by Moondog, then this would’ve been it. That’s not true, but it’s still a hell of an album. Unique and warm. And in totally gorgeous sleeves… Old album covers have been remade and glued and etched on with the old artworks shining through here and there.’

Out of all the twelves by MN on Jamal Moss’ Mathematics label, maybe the most outstanding goes under the name Ra Toth — and true to form this is double-sided trumps for BH, slapping together bad-minded, cosmic jazz and banging, bruk-up disco.
The A sounds like a young Pete Rock giving Theo a hand with some Dirty Edits; the flip like a blend of evilous Arkestra and prime Innerzone Orchestra.

Peerless cover of the soul classic — recorded at Randy’s in 1974 with Fully Fullwood, Chinna Smith, Tony Chin, Santa Davis… and Errol T at the controls.
It’s no surprise that Carless is a soul boy, into Jerry Butler and The Dells back then; one half of the Little Roys, when they cut Bongo Nyah for Lloyd Daley.
Crucial bunny.

Stupendous rendition of a Chinese folk song over red-hot rocksteady, produced by Ronnie Narsalla in 1967. Aimed at the Chinese community in Kingston; super-rare ever since.
Pure worries. The guaranteed musical detonation of any kind of dance or party.
Cheng, evidently, not Chang. Essential reading, here.

King Ayisoba is a star in Ghana. His kologo-playing is both melodic and percussive. With his producer Panji Anoff he changed the Accra music scene by using traditional instruments together with the beats, bleeps and bass drawn from hip-hop and dancehall by the local, mid-90s ‘hip life’ scene.
‘King Ayisoba’s Modern Ghanaians is the fastest selling cassette by an artist from the northern part of Ghana. The album’s popularity started in Bolgatanga where the artist is from, but has spread through the other regions like harmattann bushfire’ (Ghana Gazette, 2007).

‘Bottling the vehemence bursting forth nightly in the downtown NYC loft scene, these 1973 recordings at Marzette Watts’s studio are furious, brutal, and poignant.
‘Mixed and mastered from the original tapes, this expanded 2020 LP edition restores sections of the original record inexplicably excised from the CD release in the nineties, adding more than double the playing time of the original LP, in fascinating variations.
‘Heavyweight vinyl; quality pressing.’

Terrific soulful Northern banger — a Wigan anthem — and classic Motor City fire from Jack Ashford’s Pied Piper Productions. Performed, written and produced by LC.

Eleven exuberantly swinging, startlingly fresh jazz ragas by an ensemble combining hard-core Bombay jazz messengers, Bollywood royalty, and sitar master Ustad Rais Khan.
This is indo-jazz fusion direct from the source: an extremely rare glimpse of the same Bombay jazz scene that gave us Amancio D’Silva. Nothing kitsch here: by turns rollicking and lyrical, this is edgily committed and heartfelt music-making.
Never reissued since its 1968 release by EMI India, Raga Jazz Style is a collectors’ holy grail of Indian jazz; and this is a highly impressive inaugural salvo by Outernational Sounds, using original masters and beautifully rendered facsimile artwork, with 180g vinyl pressed at Pallas, in Germany.
Very warmly recommended.