Thrillingly uncontainable, uproarious, wildly creative music, teeming with passion, protest, sex, orality, dread, blues, and the gospel truth. With Roland Kirk newly enrolled, Mingus passes his bass to Watkins… and it all kicks off. We can’t recommend this record strongly enough. It will do you good.

‘If it is the radical edge of uncompromising hardcore minimalism that you are after, this reissue of Four Organs and Phase Patterns delivers two key examples.
‘‘I am interested in perceptible processes’ Reich had written in 1968. ‘I want to be able to hear the processes happening throughout the sounding music.’ Four Organs is a radical realisation of this goal. Against the steady rattle of maracas, individual tones within a single chord are gradually lengthened. No changes of pitch or timbre occur, and the drawn out nature of the process provoked outrage at some early performances, when audiences found themselves caught up in a decelerating loop, being dragged towards stasis. Phase Patterns, composed a month later, relies on a phasing technique developed during Reich’s earlier experiments with magnetic tape recordings, which he allowed to drift out of sync. Identical figures initially in unison shift out of phase, generating unexpected patterns.’
‘Obviously music should put all within listening range into a state of ecstasy’ (Steve Reich).
Vinyl from Aguirre.

Slower and funkier than the Gary Bartz excursion a few years earlier — with Bad Wilbur Bascomb popping away on electric bass, not Ron Carter — this unmissable 1974 version of Celestial Blues was a game-changing revive in the early nineties, a cosmic crossing of Bill Withers, Sly and Brian Jackson, threading trip hop and Jazz Dance through to Madlib.
‘C’mon meditate! Let’s contemplate!’

The debut LP of David Jahson and Jerry Baxter, from 1978 (featuring the classic, parping Black On Black, from four years earlier).
The CD adds the Love Train album.

Her mid-seventies turn to jazz, bringing in the Drummers of Burundi. Prince loved it.
The LP is newly remastered by Bernie Grundman under the supervision of Joni Mitchell.

Ayler at his most intense, with Sonny Murray and Gary Peacock in Copenhagen.
This is the 1964 recording entitled Ghosts for its original release on Debut.

Pulling together a couple of Prestige 10”. The twenty-eight-year-old with Horace, Lucky, JJ, and Dave Schildkraut. (You remember Dave.)

Her third Columbia, from 1970.
With Muscle Shoals crew on side one — Roger Hawkins, Eddie Hinton, Barry Beckett and co — and a lineup convening the Armenian oud-plyer Ashod Garabedian, Duane Allman and Alice Coltrane, on side two.
‘I love my country as it dies in war and pain before my eyes. I walk the streets where disrespect has been. The sins of politics, the politics of sin, the heartlessness that darkens my soul… on Christmas.’

Stone-classic country blues album recorded by Pete Welding for Testament in 1970. Just singing and slide guitar, still crackling and luminous with the time Shines knocked around with Robert Johnson in the mid-30s.
“Blues is like death. Blues is when you are lost. Blues is when you are depressed but don’t know why you are depressed.”
It’s a must.

Terrific 1963 date with Charlie Rouse, John Ore and Frankie Dunlop.
Originals and standards; nothing Monk hadn’t recorded before. Bubbling, chewy versions of Hackensack and Rhythm-A-Ning; a fabulous, seven-minute, solo Don’t Blame Me.
As Baroness Nica notes poshly on the sleeve, ‘this is the happiest of albums, leaving one with an extraordinary feeling of elation.’

Mr Pitiful at his most powerful, with the MGs in 1965.