Brothers Nkululelo and Siyabonga Mthembu reworkimg the music of Mongezi Feza, Johnny Dyani, the Malopoets, Batsumi, and Philip Tabane.
Old wisdom in new voices, new wisdom in old voices. Tolika Mtoliki, ‘Interpret Interpreter’.
“Just brilliant,” says Gilles.

The first volume in a two-part collection of pirate radio adverts & idents, assembled from home recordings of London stations made between 1984 & 1993.

A gospelized, autobiographical collage of raps, beats, modern jazz and songs, featuring the in-demand drummer alongside an expansive roster of collaborators bringing together artists from his hometown of Houston (vocalists Corey King, Lisa E. Harris, Fat Tony, Jawwaad Taylor), those he became close to over several years living in LA (Sam Gendel, Zeroh, Mic Holden, Josh Johnson, fellow International Anthem artist Carlos Niño), and other creative partners from his life-long journey in sound (Chassol, Svet, Kenneth Whalum).
‘Rooted in his faith, Jamire opens the album with Hands Up, a devotional hymn cut against the stark reality of the modern world that sounds like an apocalyptic middle-grounding of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly and Merry Clayton’s Gimme Shelter. Whether in the rousing, spiritual Just Hold On or the fluid verses of Fat Tony on Safe Travels, the music exists in the tension between higher realms and social realities — what Jamire calls the “duality of a personal thing and what I’m seeing in my community, in the Black community, as a Black man.” ‘

First record as leader for the Mahavishnu drummer — featuring Tommy Bolin on guitar and Jan Hammer, keys — this is heavy fusion, with some deep funk. Massive Attack sampled Stratus for Safe From Harm.

Though a gold record in 1976 — with Something He Can Feel an anthem for the ages — Sparkle quickly became neglected.
It is written and produced by Curtis Mayfield, the fifth of his six seventies soundtracks, shadowing the rise and fall of the black film industry in the US during this decade. There were three more Atlantic LPs to come from Aretha, but Sparkle has a singularity and accomplishment which in retrospect take a definitive step away from her classic, southern soul sound — half-closing the church door — before Jump To It, Luther Vandross and Arista ushered her into a new era of grooving, contemporary R&B, at the start of the eighties.
The singing here is totally knockout, sparking off the sophisticated slinkiness of Curtis’ sound-world: more excursive than testifying, with a new improvisatory freedom, more warmly intimate and enraptured, over-running with sensuality, love, and expressiveness. (You get a foretaste of this from the portrait on the cover.) Mainstays of seventies Chicago Soul are present and correct, like Phil Upchurch on rhythm guitar and Henry Gibson on congas, Joseph Lucky Scott playing heavy bass, and the swirling strings arrangements of Rich Tufo.
Originally devised for a female trio — in accord with the film’s storyline, about Sister & The Sisters — the songs are all written from a woman’s point of view, and with the Kitty Heywood Singers in full effect as backing vocalists, the album is steeped in classic Chi-soul girl-group sensibilities and aesthetics, like Patti & The Lovelites in future shock. (It makes perfect sense that En Vogue would have smash hits in the nineties with both Something He Can Feel and Hooked On Your Love.)
Something He Can Feel is the killer blow, but it’s all wonderful, and over in a flash… via the dazed, defiant, junkie blues of I Get High… right through to the sultry, swinging finale Rock With Me.
A masterwork by the Queen of Soul.

A Bengali-Italian collaboration — nurtured by Rimini’s Associazione Ardea, for refugees — psychedelically combining ancient folk and cosmic synth exotica.
Entrancing, fresh renditions of mystical Baul songs, with Md After accompanying himself on
harmonium and two headed pakhawaj drum, over Andrea Rusconi’s warm Crumar synth and veena string drones.
Check it out.

Links was an artists’ cooperative, formed in 1968 by The Gaylads, Ken Boothe, The Melodians, and Delroy Wilson, fed up with getting ripped off by Studio One and co. They did everything themselves — hiring Dynamic / Wirl studios, printing up labels, organising the pressings, and distributing in person to Kingston record shops — in the teeth of peeved obstructiveness from other labels, producers, and radio stations. Many of their 45s were blanks, hand-stamped with BB Seaton’s home address: ‘Links Records, 39 Wildman Street, Phone 24954’.
The backing band was probably Lynn Taitt & The Jets to start, giving way to the Conscious Minds (with Joe White and Ken Boothe on keys), whose instrumental Something New is one of the highlights here, featuring killer guitar and trombone by Harris Seaton and Derrick Hinds.
Links was short-lived; ironically unable to cope with the success of a Melodians’ hit entitled It Comes & Goes.
It’s a fascinating story, and this is top-notch rock steady; the first compilation of the dozen or so Links releases. Scorchers by Conscious Minds, The Melodians, Randall Thaxter, and Ken Boothe — doing his best Otis Redding — steal the show.

The more expensive iteration is from Acoustic Sounds.

This saxophonist came through with the likes of Roy Ayers and Joe Henderson in the sixties, before hooking up with Steve Lacy in Paris in 1973. In this soundtrack composed for a film by his friend Joaquin Lledó — entitled Le Sujet Ou Le Secrétaire Aux Mille Et Un Tiroirs — he was joined by members of the group around Lacy, and diverse co-conspirators including friends from the funk outfit Ice, French accordionist Joss Bassellion, and none other than Jef Gilson at the mixing desk. It’s a dazzling, intensely entertaining blend of modal, cosmic and spiritual jazz, free funk, dirty grooves, heavy jams, bistro boogie and Javanese wah-wah.