Startling, brilliant, minimalist experiments for percussion and electronics. Issued by Ayna as a tiny private pressing in 1972; re-mastered now from EM’s own master-tapes. Daring fun; warmly recommended.

Created in collaboration with Walter Branchi from the Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, this soundtrack to Mino Guerrini’s 1968 film is among the most strikingly experimental of all Macchi’s music for cinema. A suspenseful, jet-propelled fresh mix of
psychedelia, jazz, and improv, threaded with beautiful melodies.
The first time out; from the master tapes.

In Anton Chekhov’s last play The Cherry Orchard, written just a few years before these Gramophone Company recordings in Odessa (mostly), the character Gayev hears off-stage ‘our famous Jewish orchestra… four violins, a flute and a double bass.’
In this period, klezmer music was venturing beyond its original role as Jewish wedding and celebratory music. It was proliferating in secular settings; sometimes disreputable, even underground. In the Odessa Stories, Isaac Babel mentions a bar with a house-band of ‘old Jews with dirty beards playing Romanian and Jewish tunes’; and klezmer would have been the soundtrack of the local brothels, pretty much all Jewish-owned. (One track here celebrates a new treatment for syphilis, Preparation 606… even lavishing a trumpet on proceedings.)
Tangy, exuberant, life-affirming music, high and low, mostly for dancing, featuring virtuosi like violinist Jascha Gegner and clarinettist Titunshnayder, presented with excellent notes.

Half-price this weekend.

A stunning survey of the 1970s heyday of this great Japanese singer and countercultural icon.
Deep-indigo, dead-of-night enka, folk and blues, inhaling Billie Holiday and Nina Simone down to the bone.
A traditional waltz abuts Nico-style incantation; defamiliarised versions of Oscar Brown Jr and Bessie Smith collide with big-band experiments alongside Shuji Terayama; a sitar-led psychedelic wig-out runs into a killer excursion in modal, spiritual jazz.
Existentialism and noir, mystery and allure, hurt and hauteur.
With excellent notes by Alan Cummings and the fabulous photographs of Hitoshi Jin Tamura.
Hotly recommended.

Expert, ecstatic, technicolour disco from the Orlando Riva Sound.

Top-notch vocal-harmony roots and tough dub, produced by the legendary engineer Sylvan Morris.

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).

The singer Yu Ji-suk, with a 10-piece ensemble of choir and percussion, performing the Seodo Sori repertoire of the north-west provinces. Nostalgic, dynamic folk songs, rooted in everyday life.

The celebrated three-hour set of this close collaborator of Flying Lotus and Kendrick Lamarr.
Two drummers, two bassists, two keyboardists, trumpet, trombone and vocals, plus string orchestra and full choir.
‘The music reflects many inspirations — John Coltrane, Horace Tapscott’s Pan-African People’s Arkestra, Azar Lawrence’s Prestige period, Donald Byrd’s and Eddie Gale’s jazz and choir explorations, Pharoah Sanders’ pan global experiments, Afro-Latin jazz, spiritual soul, and DJ culture… It challenges the cultural conversation about jazz without compromising or pandering’ (AllMusic).

Armenian sacred music from the fifth to nineteenth centuries — chants, hymns and sharakans — in settings for choir and piano.
‘Extraordinarily beautiful… Hamasyan uses the characteristic, Eastern-hued Armenian modes to summon up an ancient world. It’s very different to Jan Garbarek and the Hilliard Ensemble’s million-selling Officium, but if you like that, you’ll love this’ (The Independent).

The Armenian pianist in a quartet setting, meditating on ancient folk melodies (including a couple of compositions by Komitas), between jazz and ambient.

An album of American standards… by Richard Rodgers, Charlie Parker, Jerome Kern, and others… plus one improvisation. With bandmates Matt Brewer on bass, and drummer Justin Brown, and guests including Ambrose Akinmusire, Joshua Redman, and Mark Turner.

‘Hamasyan puts so much emphasis on mood and melody that it’s easy to miss how virtuosic the playing is’ (DownBeat).
‘Tigran has found a way to keep improvisation fresh and lyrical. Other jazz musicians would be wise to take note’ (Guardian).
‘There are many brilliant and perfectly finished young jazz pianists around, but Hamasyan stands out because he has something important and urgent to say’ (Daily Telegraph).

“I love these compositions and melodies so much that, to me, it’s like Armenian folk music.  As an immigrant – an Armenian-American – I relate to these composers and musicians from various backgrounds who have that kind of history, a dark history, but managed to succeed in an embodiment of freedom. In that way, I feel like I want to be part of this, to find something in the tradition of where I came from.”