Rough, wild slide-guitar blues. “He couldn’t play shit, but he sure made it sound good,” was the guitarist’s verdict on himself.
Halfway through Sadie, his ex tells him straight: ‘Hound Dog, I can’t use you any more.’ Taylor cries his heart right out into three solos. Terrific.

Precious, late-eighties dance music from Mogadishu. Big group —  three horns, four singers plus three backing, two guitars, keys, drummer, two percussionists, bassist — choca with funk swagger and highlife shimmy.

Beautifully direct Wassoulou songs by the twenty-year-old accompanied only by N’Gou Bagayoko on acoustic guitar.

These two sharpened their musical skills in the celebrated seja-jazz band from La Réunion, Le Club Rythmique. In 1967 Sylvin Marc put out a terrific funk 45, saturated in James Brown. Later, he would play bass for Nina Simone on her album Fodder On My Wings, whilst Del Rabenja would work with Manu Dibango.
In these 1972 recordings for Jef Gilson’s Palme label, they are joined by their Madagascan compatriots Ange Japhet, Gérard Rakotoarivony and Frank Raholison — comprising the same group of five which lights up Funny Funky Rib Crib by Byard Lancaster and Soul Of Africa by Hal Singer & Jef Gilson.
The first side showcases the valiha harp-playing of Del Rabenja: three excursions in tribute to the great Rakotozafy, hypnotic and full of spirituality. The second side presents four compositions by Marc — free, grooving and cosmic.

Jef Gilson, Sylvin Marc and his cousin Ange Japhet, Del Rabenja, Gérard Rakotoarivony and Frank Raholison, blending together bebop, sub-Saharan roots and electric funk.
Requiem Pour Django, Dizzy 48 and Anamorphose — renamed Salegy Jef after this re-routing via Madagascar — rejuvenate Gilson compositions from the previous couple of decades. Newport Bounce is a reworking of Interlude, recorded by Gilson in 1969 with Philly Joe Jones. Le Newport was a club in rue Grégoire de Tours, Saint Germain des Prés.

Even leaving aside the epochal title track, this is unmissable. Wildly original Jammys rhythms, cool as cucumber, with his old next-door-neighbour in full flow. Fire like E20, Like A Dragon, My Lord My God, Icky All Over…

Recorded at the tail end of summer 2020, in the garden behind Chicago’s Experimental Sound Studio, by this collective of artists, musicians, singers, and dancers, including Angel Bat Dawid and Ben LaMar Gay.
“It was about offering a new thought,” says Locks. “It was about resisting the darkness. It was about expressing possibility. It was about asking the question, ‘Since the future has unfolded and taken a new and dangerous shape… what happens NOW?’”

His soundtrack to Claude Sautet’s 1972 film, featuring Romy Schneider’s haunting voice-over of La Lettre De Rosalie. ‘Like a magical bridge between baroque and electronic music, mixing Moog synthesizer sequences with acoustic instruments.’

The trio of Daniel Carter (reeds, trumpet, flute), William Parker (bass, trombonium, shakuhachi), and Hamid Drake (drums).
The title Painters Winter addresses “those who paint with sound, in different landscapes, to celebrate the coming of the seasons: winter spring summer and autumn. Acknowledging the entire universe of world jazz music. Discovering the undiscovered.” According to WP’s liner notes, ‘The music on this album is a tribute to the flow of rhythm as melody and pulsation. Laced with the joy and the bounce, the dance and the heartbeat. Giving a nod to all the music that has ever passed through us.’

‘At a distance of more than forty years, the radicalism and significance of African Spaces can be seen more clearly. Ambitious, uncompromising, and resolutely progressive, it represents a unique high-water mark in South Africa’s long musical engagement with the newest developments in American jazz — a response to the cosmic call of Return To Forever, and an answer to Miles’ On The Corner… a complex and challenging jazz fusion that shifted the terms of South Africa’s engagement with jazz towards new music being made by pioneers such as Chick Corea, Weather Report, John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny and others.
‘This debut recording is one of the key documents in the South African jazz canon. Emerging in the aftermath of the 1976 Soweto uprising, and taking its place alongside the crucial mid-1970s music of Malombo, Abdullah Ibrahim, and Batsumi, it is a defining but unsung musical statement of its era.’

Majestic 1982 LP with Junjo at Channel One.

The fruits of a recording session deftly convened by Jef Gilson, to take advantage of Serge Rahoerson’s visit to Paris from Madagascar for just a few days in November 1976. Though a saxophonist by training, Serge had played drums on The Creator Has A Master Plan for the Malagasy album. To establish rhythmic foundations, Gilson reunited him in this capacity with Baroque Jazz Trio bassist Jean-Charles Capon. Recruited from Gilson’s current big band, Saravah saxophonist Philippe Maté and cornetist Butch Morris — on the verge of hooking up with David Murray — added their contributions later.