From the 1968 SABA LP Trip To The Mars, with its nods to library music and post bop, and charged, widescreen atmosphere. Blue Dance is a modal waltz dancer; Milky Way trips out into floating brass harmonies and sensuous solos.

Two highlights of the vibraphonist’s 1966 LP for SABA, his first as leader, following up an early Blue Note 10”. Ensadinado is a Latin jazz number by Jimmy Woode, who plays bass. The hard-swinging Night Lady is written by Francy Boland, playing piano; jet-propelled by the drumming of Kenny Clarke.

A song-based ritual dedicated to the memory of Sofía Miranda de Bellido, performed one year after her death, in the Ayacucho region of the Central-South Sierra of Peru.
Bells are rung all morning. The coffin is presented at noon. Mass starts at midnight; at four the next morning, harp and violin players pick up the pace.
“I have not died, I will die on the day that you forget me!”

Haunting, ravishing blends of western art song, blues and jazz with traditional and classical Japanese music. Wonderful.

Zarko Komar aka Feloneezy winging in from Belgrade — by way of Hyperdub — with an EP of hypnotic psychedelia.
Four characteristically intimate, steppers blends of jungle and juke, unfurling into intervals of dub and jazz; axis as nexus, threaded with field recordings, startlingly dotted with song.
Check it out.

‘At a distance of more than forty years, the radicalism and significance of African Spaces can be seen more clearly. Ambitious, uncompromising, and resolutely progressive, it represents a unique high-water mark in South Africa’s long musical engagement with the newest developments in American jazz — a response to the cosmic call of Return To Forever, and an answer to Miles’ On The Corner… a complex and challenging jazz fusion that shifted the terms of South Africa’s engagement with jazz towards new music being made by pioneers such as Chick Corea, Weather Report, John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny and others.
‘This debut recording is one of the key documents in the South African jazz canon. Emerging in the aftermath of the 1976 Soweto uprising, and taking its place alongside the crucial mid-1970s music of Malombo, Abdullah Ibrahim, and Batsumi, it is a defining but unsung musical statement of its era.’

Magnificent roots from 1996. An expertly dubwise rhythm, with rolling, nyabinghi drums, deep bass, and terrific trombone. Militant lyrics with no let-up; dramatically delivered, channelling Burning Spear and Pablo Moses.

A compelling Spear-style chant over a bumping rhythm, from 2000. Ace.