Good old-fashioned bopping out at Van Gelder’s in 1989 with chums Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins from early Ornette days; and sensationally bringing back Texas Tenorman James Clay, DC’s spar in late-50s California, and avowedly a key musical influence. It’s a celebratory, self-affirming set: three OCs, Bemsha Swing, a rootical solo Haden and a sparkling solo Cherry, Body And Soul, I’ve Grown Accustomed To Your Face… Look back in love. Everyone plays masterfully.
‘Verve By Request’.

With guests including Erika Elder, P.G. Six, Michael Flower, J Mascis from Dinosaur Jr and Jeremy Earle from Woods. A legs eleven and a midden mound of ‘sprawling jams (including the incredible Rudy Rucker inspired Freeware) and beautiful songs. A truly wondrous, sun-blinded, summer stoner record that lets the sand slip through its toes and tramps off in the direction of a mirage of a gigantic effigy of Ganesh.’ 180g; heavyweight, UV-coated, tip-on gatefold; poster insert. 300 only.

‘Heady, raw, druggy songs of love, dread, hardship, and yearning, recorded in Athens between 1932 and 1936, when Markos was already a master of the bouzouki. His forceful, clean playing compliments his hoarse voice and his stunning rhythmic sensibility, the result of his years as a champion zebekiko dancer. Tracks build and spiral outward, his open-note drones and melodic lines drawing calls of ecstasy and encouragement from his fellow musicians. These recordings mark the height of rebetika, the brief period between the music’s emergence on the recording scene in the early 1930s and government censorship of all lyrics starting in 1936. During the Axis occupation there was no rebetika recording, and though Markos had some hits in the years after the war, he never again attained this level. These are the dizzying, entrancing, and heaviest works of one of the great artists of the 20th century.’

Gritty, diggers’ selection of sides originally out on Wackies, Aires, Earth and co; plus some tough dubplates featuring Leroy Sibbles and Stranger Cole.
Sibbles chips in his own Guiding Star rhythm from Studio One days, re-worked at Bullwackies; and reputedly that’s him undercover on the opener with Little Roy, ripping off Glen Brown’s Wedden Skank.

From 1971, A Guitar in the Foreground is Rosinha’s best record. Classic, chilled Bossa shot through with her scintillating guitar-playing.
Check this version of Summertime for her instrumental virtuosity. (Tyler, the Creator burglarised it for Tomorrow, on Chromakopia.)