His first solo recording, in 2013-14; on top-quality vinyl, in a flipback sleeve.
‘Parker combines the dark tonal palette & percussive attack he’s long been known for with real-time processing elements & field recordings, deftly crafting a unique world of solo guitar music — multilingual, mysterious, alive with extraordinary sonic events, with a sturdy intelligence in charge & a raw homestyle vibe. The title composition sets the album’s cavernous mood. Terse lines & ricocheting loops morph into a gnarly ambient section that resembles Neil Young droning out over a vg+ copy of Discreet Music. Parker creates a different sort of ambient space in his take on Frank Ocean’s Super Rich Kids, bending the melody around a bossa nova rhythm into a moodsville tone poem. Parker makes an extraordinary long-form statement out of Chad Taylor’s Mainz, a piece he first recorded with Taylor & Chris Lopes on the album Bright Light In Winter. Twice the length of the trio recording, the multi-layered soliloquy finds Parker leaping from the high rung to damn near orchestral heights, pushing his techniques & concepts to the breaking points. To say Lush Life comes with formidable baggage is an understatement. Parker achieves instant classic status with a rendition that sounds beamed-in from a decommissioned satellite — burned out, covered in space grit, yet still formally nuanced & beautifully reflective of Strayhorn’s world-weary lyrics… An artist who’s clearly taking his music to the next level.’

1928-35 recordings by the Memphis bluesman (with Cherokee Indian close by in his family tree) — including That’s No Way To Get Along, later covered by the Rolling Stones as Prodigal Son.

The truly iconic compilation from 1965, when ska was in its full, irrepressible, post-colonial glory.

Poor Isa — Ruben Machtelinckx and Frederik Leroux — playing woodblocks and prepared banjos; joined by Evan Parker, and Norwegian percussionist Ingar Zach.
Wonderful, moody, questing music, beautifully presented, in thick grey cardboard sleeves with foil stamping. Individually hand-numbered, in a first edition of just 150.
These are the last copies.
Strongly recommended.

It’s Gonna Rain is a total knockout.
Steve Reich’s first official piece is spun out of a chance encounter with a Pentecostalist preacher at work in San Francisco’s Union Square Park in 1964.
“He’s talking about the flood in the Bible and Noah and the ark, and you’ve got to remember the Cuban missile crisis was in ‘62, and this was something hanging over everyone’s head ... that we could be so much radioactive dust in the next day or two. So this seemed very appropriate…. There are two loops of his voice, starting in unison. And then one slowly creeps ahead of the other — I just did it with my thumb on the recording reel of one of the machines. And so they go out of phase. It’s like a canon or a round, like Row, Row, Row Your Boat. And you get first a kind of shaking, a reverberation, and then you get a sort of imitation and gradually you begin to hear it as a round. And that’s exactly what happens in this piece.”
Apocalyptic, riveting, banging, urgent, game-changing… it’s killer.

Moss-green, rooted, bodily crossings of Folk, Ambient, Drone, and experimental electroacoustic music, using violin, woodwind, percussion, voice, and various effects. Captivatingly story-based and ancient as fairy tales. The inner life of a pearl of sap in song. Warmly recommended.

Radiant, probing piano-trio-jazz by this celebrated ensemble, reaching out in all directions from bluesy, funky, South African roots.

‘It just came down to playing some tunes that we like and we can flow with, so that we can be inspired and express ourselves in a very natural organic way,’ says Kyle. ‘We walked away from the from the studio feeling like – you know, we actually really enjoyed playing this record!
‘With this record, I felt less attached to any sort of predetermined concepts except that we would play some music that I wrote that we like – a selection of things that we like to play. It felt like a bit of a tonic – every musician gets a chance to breathe through the music, and the music just flows and moves as organically as we could make it.’

Ten Shepherd originals, plus a reading of Massive Attack’s Teardrop and a deconstructed take on Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing.
The album’s title nods to William Kentridge, with whom Shepherd collaborated on Waiting For Sybil.

Taking a break from cabbing duties back home in Washington DC, for his first LP in fifteen years. Ethiopian standards and originals; his unmistakable melodica, accordion and keys, in the same double-bass-and-drums setting as recent live shows.

Don Cherry meets the Groupe de Recherches Musicales!
Recorded in 1977 at the Paris MIX festival organised by INA grm and hosted by François Bayle, this is a terrific, deeply congruent, soulful encounter.
Cherry plays pocket trumpet extensively and beautifully (also n’goni and whistles), with characteristically unguarded, elemental sublimity; Nana Vasconcelos is dazzlingly, hypnotically grooving. Electro-acoustic pioneer Jean Schwarz — a collaborator of Jean-Luc Godard — contributes elegant tape-work, synths, and treatments; his long-time associates Michel Portal and JF Jenny-Clark are highly accomplished European jazz legends. (Feted recently by Souffle Continu, the clarinettist is a mainstay of the Jef Gilson set-up, who recorded with Serge Gainsbourg, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Sunny Murray; the bassist played on DC’s 1965 Blue Note classic Symphony For Improvisers… not to mention Brigitte Fontaine’s Comme à la Radio).
Remastered from the original master tapes; out here for the first time.
It’s a must.