Remastered direct from the original master tapes, with previously unreleased outtakes and rarities — including Patti’s 1975 RCA audition tape.

By themselves on the first record; for the second, joined by Evan Parker and Byron Wallen, harpist Tori Handsley and tabla player Sarathy Korwar, and drummer Yussef Dayes. Both sessions were recorded completely live, straight to tape, consolidating the ‘incandescent immediacy’ of the playing. The duo’s ‘soulful tenor sax sermons plus earthily funky drumming, fusing jazz, hip-hop and grime… winningly mix dark, classic Coltrane raptures, infectious hook-rooted rockers and Sonny Rollins-like calypsos. The larger group sets up thrilling rhythm textures merged from Parker’s seamless soprano lines and a chatter of snare drums and tablas; there are atmospheric guitar-like harp figures, and dramatically spontaneous two-tenor tussles’ (The Guardian).
‘CD of the year so far’ (London Jazz News).

Brassy, infectious Afro-Amerindian cumbia, porro, gaita, and mapalé from Colombia’s Caribbean coast, which injected a modern, jazzy, big-band sound into regional Afro-Colombian traditions, and took the country by storm.
The Orquesta Del Caribe, recorded in Medellin, 1946-1961: a legs-eleven blaring trumpets, soaring saxophones, meandering clarinets, rattling and pounding percussion, plus singer Matilde Diaz, led by the maestro Bermudez, widely considered Colombia’s most influential composer of all time.

One of their best, most diverse LPs: gritty soul, country hillbilly, raucous funk — the classic Nothing Before Me But Thang — and bagpipes galore on The Silent Boatman.

An expert sampling of the original Studio One dub LPs, plus a couple of wild cards.

A September 1989 performance at the World Financial Center Winter Garden in New York City, with Brian Eno mixing live.
‘During this period Hassell was inspired by the increasingly innovative production techniques being used in hip-hop, in particular the hyper-collaged sampledelic barrage of the Bomb Squad’s work with Public Enemy, hearing it as a kind of extension of the tape splicing that Teo Macero brought to his work with Miles Davis. He began to incorporate more of this aesthetic into his own music, playing over loops of his own performances and riffing on angular juxtapositions of noise, rhythm and melody.’
First time on vinyl.

A fabulous selection of Swahili popular music from the East African coast — Lamu, Mombasa, Tanga, Dar es Salaam, Zanzibar and the Comoros — taking in Tanzanian dance-band music, Congolese-style rumba and the hypnotic, Islamic sounds of Taarab, from the 1960s to date.

‘Their vividly definitive statement: haunting tones from an unusual combination of instruments, filtered through multiple layers of reverb and delay. Their music has strong stylistic affinities with the trippy ambience of cosmic and psychedelic rock, but the Taj Mahal Travellers were tuning in to other vibrations, drawing inspiration from the energies and rhythms of the world around them rather than projecting some alternative reality.
‘The electronic dimension of their collective improvising was coordinated, as usual, by Kinji Hayashi. Guest percussionist Hirokazu Sato joined long-term group members Ryo Koike, Seiji Nagai, Yukio Tsuchiya, Michihiro Kimura, Tokio Hasegawa, and the renowned, enigmatic electric violinist Takehisa Kosugi.
‘Films of rolling ocean waves often provided a highly appropriate backdrop for their lengthy improvised concerts. This is truly electric music for the mind and body.’

Not for the faint-hearted — dark and dirty psych improv from Chie Mukai, Eric Cordier and Seichi Yamamoto (Boredoms). Moody, subterranean squalls and drones, blowing up like a bad-tempered Fushitsusha.