Originally released in 1975, from Milan, a one-away blend of Marco Rossi’s bluesy, free, spiritual jazz-guitar (evoking Pharaoh Sanders and Alice Coltrane); middle-eastern winds; and the masterful African percussionists Nick Eyok and Mohammed El Targhi, ranging from northern Saharan to Yoruba styles. Experimental, but warmly grooving, rootsy and accessible.

Precious witness to the dying musical traditions of Ladakh, high in the Western Himalayas, for centuries a hub of the Silk Road to India, Tibet, and Kashmir.

A groundbreaking, 1978 blend of Arab, jazz, Baroque pop, folk, and Brazilian styles like Bossa Nova, Tropicalia and MPB, with Fairouz’ son Ziad Rahbani as musical arranger, setting Palestinian poetry by Samih Al Qasem, Tawfiq Ziad, and the great Mahmoud Darwish.

Terrific stuff from the 1978 Antico Adagio sessions.

A magical record by this Italian actor in films by the likes of Bertolucci and Leone. Alvin Curran, Steve Lacy, and Roberto Laneri from Prima Materia are amongst her co-conspirators in its dream-like menagerie of styles and textures, setting poems by Aldo Braibanti (who’d been banged up — people say framed — for a much more grievous kind of ‘psychological kidnapping’ just a few years earlier). Enchanting stuff, beautifully presented by Holidays in Milan, including a pamphlet of the lyrics, with English translations. Originally released in 1974 by RI-FI.

Originally released in 1979 — ‘a product of my hybrid musical influences that joins together flavours of marchinhas de carnaval, frevo, toada, classical, baião, mpb and jazz,’ says Antonio.
The opener Cascavel is a gold-plated London jazz-dance classic; and the last-ever record spun at Plastic People.

Ace jazz-funk — somewhere between Herbie and RTF — originally released in Finland in 1976, on Love. Featuring the almighty jazz-dance classic Grandma’s Rocking Chair (later revisited by Kenny Dope and Ol’ Dirty Bastard), with Olli soloing on Fender Rhodes.

Not a best-of compilation, this is the great singer’s fine fourth LP, squaring up to Roots in 1977, with the Revolutionaries.

‘Sublime, ethereal minimalism: the first drawing together of Onogawa’s soundtrack compositions, plotting a decade of music for films by cult filmmaker Gakuryū Ishii.
‘Sequenced into an album by Onogawa himself, this retrospective spans a fertile period of collaboration with Ishii, through soundtracks for three remarkable films — August in the
Water (1995), Labyrinth of Dreams (1997), and Mirrored Mind (2005) — where the cinema is texturally and sensually imbued with the spiritual, ambient, dreamlike quality of Onogawa’s music.
‘The sound Onogawa conjures for these films is elegant and patient, often spare or essential in form, but saturated in a strange and otherworldly, poetic emotion and atmosphere. Boundaries are crossed between New Age and science fiction, passing through blissfulness, melancholy, and paranoia, towards enchantments of mood and colour.
‘It’s notable that the compositions on this album straddle the millennium, with a fitting mix of divine and uncertain themes. New listeners might hear links to Mark Snow’s work for the X-Files and Millennium, or the soundtracks of certain future-facing and future-fearing Japanese anime or cyberpunk.
‘Onogawa’s music adds great depth and tenor to the sensory experience of the films themselves, but it stands just as strongly as a listening experience on its own terms; a virtuosic example of Ambient that changes in hue when turned in the light. Remarkably, like Ishii’s films, Onogawa’s work has never been widely available outside of fervid underground fan posts, usually sourced from extremely limited and private CDs limited to Japan.
‘This retrospective seeks to remedy that, presenting Onogawa as one of the great composers of the last three decades.’