Deep, intrepid, alchemical communion between West African kora and European classical guitar.
‘It’s a remarkable album,’ says Lucy Durán. ‘It’s the furthest away that Ballaké has gone from his own idiom and it’s brilliant. Not world music, it’s in a totally different realm, entering new territory.’

Says AOTN — ‘The rarest and best genuinely outsider soul 45 to come out of America. (We know that’s a controversial shout.) Lee Tracy’s super rare single outing from the outskirts of Nashville is a dream of something bigger that never came in time for him. A beautiful, haunting song cut to cassette with help from his friend Isaac Manning on Casio. Flipped with an almost unrecognizable version of Whitney Houston’s hit Saving All My Love For You. Beyond essential cut of outsider soul.’

‘An innovative and deeply moving blend of spiritual jazz and South Asian devotional music’, with contributions from Esperanza Spalding, Vijay Iyer, Shabaka Hutchings, Immanuel Wilkins…

Melting, copybook Lovers Rock from 1977.
Willie Lindo, Harold Butler Robbie Lyn and co at Federal. Marcia Griffiths on backing vocals. A classy Waiting In Vain.

Featuring Grant Green, and engineered by Rudy van Gelder, in the manner of classic Blue Note organ jazz, this is an ‘underappreciated gem’, according to AllMusic. Leo Wright plays a blinder.
Here is a lovely photo of drummer Pola Roberts performing in the fifties. Nice name, the Pixie Bongo 4 Jewel’s.
Pola and Gloria had an all-women band together in the early sixties. George Coleman is Gloria’s old man.
‘Verve by Request’.

‘Synth chutes, synth ladders, popcorn 808 beats, dirge-y chants and busted sub-woofer hums from inner-galactic soul pioneers Nathaniel Woolridge and Anthony Freeman intertwine to create this hypnotic, mythical 1984 LP from Newark, New Jersey. The most damaged party record ever set to black, or the most partied cry of the heart ever howled into personal space. Probably both.’