Driving, rawly soulful kologo music from northern Ghana, propelled by double-stringed lute.
African Head Charge front man Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah guests.
Putoo Katare Yire, Wickedness Has No Home.
Terrific.

Dazzling music from 1969, way ahead of its time, by a nonet with Woody Shaw and Dizzy Reece on trumpets, Joe Farrell on reeds, woodwinds, and English horn, Bob Northern on French horn, Howard Johnson on tuba and bass clarinet, Ron Carter on bass. Fresh from Bitches Brew, Lenny White plays drums at just his second recording session; trombonist Julian Priester is a few months away from Mwandishi.
Sideways establishes Hill’s signature twist on Monk and Bud Powell, with its angular, sinewy restlessness, and Caribbean tang. The horns are crossly careering. The evocative title cut has classical, cinematic manners, but in the service of East of the River Nile mysticism. Plantation Bag is magnificent, delirious, epic funk, with Lenny White channelling Clyde Stubblefied, and Ron Carter dug in deep. Noon Tide tears way further eastwards, in the same urgent cohort as classics like Yusef Lateef’s Chang, Chang, Chang and Pete La Roca’s Dancing Girls. Cascade is precisely skittering and eruptive, with wonderful trumpet-playing. Yesterday’s Tomorrow is playful, both jaunty and rueful, undecided, to close.
The arrangements throughout are imperious; the playing is uniformly superb. “We had rehearsal time and a lot of studio time. Some of those songs, we did take 45 or take 50. We played them over and over and over, till we got a complete take just right.’‘
Knockout.

Absorbing new music from Ecuador, named after a street in the historic centre of Quito.
A poignant, trippy, astute, bass-heavy blend of a range of styles including juke, reggaeton and UK garage, flavoured by their to and fro between Latin America and Europe.
Quixosis’ grandad was a key, controversial player in the explosion of musica nacional in the city in the early sixties, and the mix is studded with evocative samples of Italian chanson and South American folk from his record collection, in a kind of reverie about national and self identity, Beat Konducted at the centre of the world.
Check it out.

Old records of solo dulcimer, fairground mechanical pianos and music boxes, re-rendered via a slowed-down, pitch-modified turntable, with tape delay, EQ-fiddling and distortion.
Strange, atmospheric, poignant, folky dokey. Well worth checking.

Hypnotic, infectious space-funk from Chicago’s south side — and some bedroom funk on the flip —  produced by Staple Singer’s engineer Don Greer in 1980.

With Idris Muhammad, Bobby Watson and James Spaulding in 1983 (when the trumpeter was gigging for Archie Shepp and Frank Wright). Glowing, spiritual jazz, featuring the jazz dance classic Brotherhood.