From 1963, following stints for Jackie McLean on One Step Beyond and Destination… Out!, this is maybe the great trombonist’s best record, with Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Tony Williams — all involved with Miles around this time — and Cecil McBee. Four Moncur originals: bold, free, forward-looking music; but expansive and assured, never forced. ‘Some other stuff’; not full of itself, but a bit different. Try The Twins — dedicated to his two brothers — for a better sense of his musical good humour.

His spectacularly seminal 2003 LP, plus fourteen hard-to-find or previously unreleased cuts, including seven instrumentals, and the celebrated freestyle Street Fighter.
On white, yellow and black vinyl, in a wide-spine, birthday-boy sleeve.

An expanded version of the album, adding two unreleased tracks — a cover of Richie Havens’ Handsome Johnny and a previously unheard Scott-Heron song, King Henry IV — as well as a selection of other recordings from the original sessions only previously available on a rare, deluxe LP edition.

Recorded in Paris, 1965, at the time of the Vietnam peace talks. ‘Donald Byrd occasionally played with us at the Blue Note, so he came in and helped produce the record.’

‘A moody, atmospheric delight. Jim’s roots in composition via tape-editing have evolved into a highly musical assembly of found-and-processed sounds that achieve near-orchestral majesty as they hang in the very air of the drama that unfolds in Kyle Armstrong’s Hands That Bind.
‘Described as a ‘slow-burn prairie gothic drama’, set in the farmland of Canada’s Alberta province, and starring Will Oldham and Bruce Dern, Hands That Bind is a spellbinding trip to the existential bone of rural working life in North America. As conflict rises over hard worked patches of land to provide a mere and mean existence, a desperate air settles in, as a series of mysterious, often supernatural occurrences rock the small community.
‘O’Rourke’s vaporous, serpentine musical backdrops and atmospheres reflect the obsessions and distractions of the film’s principles; moods of all sorts seen or otherwise implied. Additionally, the music highlights cinematographer Michael Robert McLaughlin’s closely observed accounting of the farmers’ environment, as well as the striking widescreen images of the big sky country with unnerving flair.’

Black Ark business.

Three hours from the legendary Festival — Rance Allen, The Emotions, The Temprees, The Soul Children, Isaac Hayes, Richard Pryor, The Staples Singers, The Bar-Kays, Rufus Thomas and the rest.

Earl Sixteen over two moody Channel One rhythms, around 1984; both with serious dubs, all previously unreleased.

Bagpiping meets Partch DIY and the singing of Pandit Pran Nath, at the grass roots of Fluxus, in an empty swimming pool. Long, slowly building drones, lightly processed, with snatches of melody. Check it out.