Hard-rocking, rawly soulful gospel.
The highly-prized original LP was issued by Hoyt Sullivan on his HSE label out of South Carolina and then Nashville.
Nuff highlights but Hold Out is utterly devastating and unmissable (the band almost nodding out with tribulation).
Hotly recommended.

After recent recordings with Mark Turner and Billy Hart, the pianist leads his own quartet through a programme of standards and blues, live at the Village Vanguard.
‘Its prime melodic voice is the veteran trumpeter Tom Harrell. Iverson extols the poetic vulnerability in his playing, particularly in such ballads as The Man I Love and Polka Dots and Moonbeam. The album’s effervescent swing is thanks to the top-flight rhythm team of bassist Ben Street and drummer Eric McPherson, whose subtle invention helps drive Denzil Best’s bebop groover Wee and two irresistibly bluesy Iverson originals.’

One of the all-time great guitarists, Nolen was with the James Brown band from the mid-sixties till his death in 1983.
Strollin’ collects 78s and 45s released before 1961, both under his own name and as a much in demand session guitarist and touring band member with artists like Monte Easter, Johnny Otis and George Smith.
Don.

‘Triumphant experiments in privately-issued sci-fi soul music; lonely transmissions from a planet in a state of cultural fugue. Packaged in a one-way portal to the further limits of expression. Some assembly required.’

Smash hits by the greatest mbaqanga girl group in history.
‘With its pulsating rhythm, sunny guitar phrases and resonant close harmony, Umculo Kawupheli — the music never ends —  celebrates music as a source of joy and healing.’ As ripped off by Malcolm McLaren for Bow Wow and Duck Rock.
Handsomely presented, with original label artwork, in a printed sleeve, with new notes on the back.

A set of five throbbing, twinkling, oscillating excursions on analogue synth. Cosmic but intriguingly personable. Have a listen!

Besides the debut single She Is Beyond Good And Evil adding the ten-track album Alien Blood and Y Live.
Alien Blood unearths revelatory, never-before-heard material, including the studio recording of Kiss The Book,  a gloves-off version of We Are Time (Ricochet) and Words Disobey Me (Dennis The Menace Mix). It exposes the raw skeletons of iconic tracks such as Thief of Fire (Bass Addict), at its original velocity.
Y Live captures all the fierce urgency of the group’s live performances at the time, at a variety of locations including New York, Manchester and — on a bill with William Burroughs and Joy Division — Brussels. It bottles what was so thrilling about The Pop Group.

‘The second of our odes to soundsystem culture. Logos back-burners the weightless sound for a minute and brings forward a chop-up laced with such tasty ingredients as the Bloom-era Aardvarck white labels, Shed’s Panamax Project and Wormhole-era Ed Rush and Optical.
‘To cap it off, Ossia delivers one of the heaviest remixes of the year. The ice-cold grime sensibilities of Eska infused with the militant sound of early Aba Shanti I on that Jah Lightning album.’

The first of a fascinating trio of LPs — this for Futura in 1970, by Hungarian saxophonist Yochk’O Seffer, German pianist Siegfried Kessler, French bassist Didier Levallet and Vietnamese drummer Jean-My Truong.
‘Lyrically incandescent free jazz, made up of startling interactions between complex harmonies and disjointed rhythms.’

‘The second LP, from 1971, augmenting the original quartet with numerous guests including Teddy Lasry, Jean-Charles Capon, Kent Carter and Jean-François Jenny-Clark. Siegfried Kessler is largely absent on this recording, temporarily replaced by Manuel Villaroel, a pianist from Chile with a completely different temperament.
‘It all seems to predict the after-life of Perception would subsequently take. One track, by Yochk’O Seffer, who had already been part of Magma two years previously, looks forward to the more structured Neffesh Music, whilst, in the opposite direction, another track, by Didier Levallet, is more evocative of the future arrangements on Swing Strings System. All these different elements, from tightly written pieces to wild improvisation, work so well together: their coherence is one the key attributes of a group free like few others.’

‘By the time Mestari, their third and final album, came out, Perception had four years of questing and originality behind them, developing their own individual language, in which the improvisatory spontaneity did not exclude influences from European folk or classical traditions.
‘Balanced, ethereal and structured, Mestari reinstated the original quartet. It opens infinite perspectives, totally in phase with what was being produced in France at the same time by the Cohelmec Ensemble and the Dharma Quintet.’

A precious, previously unreleased live recording from 1977, when Jacques ‘Jeter La Girafe A La Mer’ Thollot was drummer.

The opening track of the Ecstatic Computation album, re-imagined by eight friends and long-time collaborators.
‘Kali Malone turns in a slowed-down, austere and eerie version for two Organs; Evelyn Saylor a vocal ensemble conveying its choral, psychedelic and vitalistic nature. Walter Zanetti composes Fantas for electric guitar. Bendik Giske’s reinterpretation for saxophone and voice captures its atmosphere and its psychic meteorology. Carlo Maria resynthesizes for TR808 and MC202, with an eye on the dancefloor. Jay Mitta’s Singeli pitches up the percussion, unleashing the frenetic, shifting matter within the original into euphoric dance. Baseck’s variation is a hardcore rave fantasia; whilst Kara-Lis Coverdale’s take is a phantasmagoria for piano that gently, yet inexorably, captures the relentlessness chimerical qualities of the original, unveiling its spectral backbone.’