Originally recorded and released in 1980, "Six of One" beautifully captures the detail in Evan Parker's high frequency split tones for which he is now perhaps better known. Five years on from "Saxophone Solos" and with circular breathing and polyphonics well worn into his live performances, Parker's experimentations here produce sustained passages of brilliant flight. Set into the echoes and resonances of a St Judes On The Hill church, the results are stunning.  "The recital commences with a split tone line of twining sine waves that expand and contract in telepathic collusion. Pitch dynamics narrow and redefine themselves more emphatically on the second piece where sliding legato rivulets born of Parker’s compartmentalized tonguing create the sonic semblance of up to three separate voices emanating from the single reed speech center. It’s a feat he’s accomplished innumerable times since, but every fresh hearing never fails to open an aperture into a style of improvisatory expression that is at once wholly alien and intensely mesmerizing. There’s also something strangely subterranean about the flood of sounds, like the rush percolating water through an underground aquifer system enroute to unknown tributaries. The third piece trades tightly braided tones for leaner and more linear phrases, but a vaporous trail of phantom notes still clings to the central line. And so it goes, with the illusion of repetition guiding the momentum, though Parker never explicitly repeats himself." - Derek Taylor, All About Jazz Transferred from the original master tapes and released in an edition of 500.

Download will be avaliable on release day - 17th November. First vinyl re-issue of Evan Parker’s duo with George Lewis. Transferred from the original masters, we discovered that the original Incus LP was cut at the wrong speed - and so, we present the first vinyl issue of the correct masters, or ‘mastas’ as Adam Skeaping, legendary engineer who is also responsible for Six of One and Compatibles, fondly calls them.  Skeaping, always working with the latest in recording technology for the time, has a knack for gaining access to remarkable spaces. Good spaces that were cheap because no one else had discovered them. The Art Workers Guild is a Georgian Hall in Bloomsbury, London, with lofty ceilings and hard wooden floors. It’s the perfect room to exercise an instrument to its full length, to ‘run the full length of the staircase’ in Parker's words. Two bells to ring off the floor and remain in dextrous, airy resonance. Recorded at 30ips on enormous reels, the recording captures all the fine filigree detail so celebrated on Parker’s later ‘Six of One’, though here we are treated to tenor as well as soprano, plus, of course, George Lewis’ trombone. Parker and Lewis first met at Moers festival, Lewis having just played excerpts of Coltrane’s ‘Giant Steps’ with Anthony Braxton. Living in Paris, it wasn’t so hard for a young Parker to invite him for a session on his new imprint, Incus. Though having been part of the AACM, toured with Count Basie and made records for Black Saint, this would be Lewis’ first foray into British improv, excited by the idea the Bailey and Parker were attempting to open up the notion of improvisation to include “the freshness of the immediate encounter”.  Lewis had not long recorded his solo LP, which mixes lively hints of Ellington and tender lyricism with total experimentation in three part overdubbed trombone. From Saxophone to Trombone veers towards his wilder end of technicality, and features some of Lewis’ rarer, starker improv - all avant garde burbles and bubbles, breath control and scalar flights. It’s a recording of two young masters, documented beautifully, and released for the first time on vinyl at its intended speed.

Can you believe there are now four CIA Debutante lp's in the world? That's right, this newest one, 'Trespass' is batting in the cleanup spot & it is very up for the task; the strongest, most focused effort put forth yet. Narrator/guitarist Nathan Roche is at the peak of his oratory & string mangling prowess. His recitation over flared fret work, conjoined with Paul Bonnet's alchemical electronic stitchery (don't forget that clarinet!-Woodwinds ed.) summons forth a promethean tableau that's inexplicably both gothic & futuristic. Imagine if Mary Shelley had created Roxy Music instead of Frankenstein? 'Trespass' burns with a demanding urgency, its majesty sweeping across time from the charnel houses of Ingolstadt, Barvaria, to the Offworld shoulders of Orion....frontiers! Whatever you've thought of their previous three albums, those are now but tears in the rain. With 'Trespass', could CIA Debutante be approaching the pinnacle of Godhead? The Fates whisper only, "perhaps." released October 22, 2025

A New LP from one half of Paris based duo CIA Debutante. Bluesy abstract guitar pieces, wandering off to the bar and back againReleased 2026 - celluloid recoreds

Killer live outing by doom / stoner legends, Om, recorded at the legendary Maida Vale studios in spring 2019. Among the four tracks are the OM classics Gethsemine and State Of No Return.

Antigone is a chilling look at our already-alternate reality, coming from inside Eiko Isibashi’s own head. Her band brings a wide array of sounds and moods, shading pop, funk and jazz, ambient, electronic and musique concrète in a bittersweet latticework. Interlocking her new songs in seamless long-play flow with the compositional ambitions of her acclaimed soundtrack work, Eiko’s expressions are epic and intimate. 2025 will never be the same!

Individually and collectively, Gastr have broken down the fourth wall in music that was invisible and we previously didn't know was there.

Good news from some of the city's finest gutters: the boys are back in town. Acre Thrills features thrills and chills, ballads and blues, all wrapped up in the sweetest sleaze ever!

Extended guitar hero Oren Ambarchi returns with Shebang, the latest in the series of intricately detailed long-form rhythmic workouts that includes Quixotism (2014) and Hubris (2016). Like those records, Shebang features an international all-star cast of musical luminaries, their contributions recorded individually in locations from Sweden to Japan yet threaded together so convincingly (by Ambarchi in collaboration with Konrad Sprenger) that it’s hard to believe they weren’t breathing the same studio air. Expanding on the techniques used on Simian Angel (2019), we can never be entirely sure who is responsible for what we hear, as Ambarchi’s guitar is used to trigger everything from bass lines to driving piano riffs. Picking up from the staccato guitar patterns that ran through Hubris, Shebang’s single 35-minute track begins with a precisely interwoven lattice of chiming guitar figures, expanding Hubris’ monolithic pulse into a joyous, hyper-rhythmic melodicism that calls up points of reference as disparate as Albert Marcoeur, early Pat Metheny Group, and Henry Kaiser’s It’s A Wonderful Life. Building from isolated single notes into densely layered polyrhythms, the muted guitar tones are joined by subtle touches of shimmering Leslie cabinet tones and guitar synth. Simmering down and funnelling into a single note, the guitar stew is soon thickened by Joe Talia’s propulsive ride cymbal, which blossoms into a beautifully flowing yet rigorously snapped-to fusion funk, whose ever-shifting details skitter across the kit – think 70s heavyweights like Jack DeJohnette or Jon Christensen. An unexpected entry of guttural bass clarinet licks from Sam Dunscombe begins the series of instrumental features that pepper the remainder of the piece. Soon we hear from the legendary British pedal steel player B.J. Cole (hopefully known to some listeners from his outer-limits singer-songwriter masterpiece The New Hovering Dog or, failing that, ‘Tiny Dancer’), whose languorous yet uneasy lines float in and out of a shifting rhythmic foundation supported by a single note bass groove, cut through with aleatoric synth articulations Though single-mindedly occupying its rhythmic space throughout, Shebang’s dense ensemble sound is carefully composed while drawing on the free flow of improvisation, with individual voices momentarily coming to the fore and subtle changes in harmony and texture. Perhaps the most surprising of these shifts occurs around half-way through when the smoke of a buzzing synth crescendo from Jim O'Rourke clears to reveal something like a piano trio, with Ambarchi’s guitar-triggered piano patterns providing restless accompaniment to flowing melodic lines from Chris Abrahams of The Necks, while Johan Berthling’s double bass and Talia’s drums fill out the bottom end. Before long, things take another left turn as Julia Reidy’s rapidly picked 12-string guitar lines take centre stage, with O’Rourke’s monumental synth clouds hovering in the distance. The ensemble surges through a slow series of harmonic changes before the whole shebang dissolves into a delirious synthetic mirage. Bridging minimalism, contemporary electronics, and classic ECM stylings, and bringing together a cast of preternaturally talented contributors, Shebang is unmistakably the work of Oren Ambarchi: obsessively detailed, relentlessly rhythmic, unabashedly celebratory.

Noel Kelehan Quintet’s gorgeous holy grail of Irish jazz newly cut to vinyl on a first ever reissue - dusted, vibrant, effervescent bebop, emastered at Abbey Road using the master-tapes.  “Long sought-after by those in know, this essential Irish jazz album finally gets a vinyl reissue on Outernational Sounds! Fully licensed from producer John D’Ardis, remastered at Abbey Road from the original tapes, and with lacquers cut at Dubplates and Mastering, the Noel Kelehan Quintet’s stunning 1979 Ozone is presented with unseen photographs of the band and commentary from original band members. Featuring moody, modal jazz of the first order, subtle and original composing and world- class playing, Ozone was the creation of Ireland’s most respected jazz composer and musician, pianist Noel Kelehan (1935-2012). The only small-group album under his name, and arguably the first ever Irish jazz LP, Ozone was a landmark recording, but it was far from Kelehan’s only achievement. Born in Dublin, Kelehan had studied music from an early age. From the mid-1950s he worked at state-broadcaster Radio Éireann (RÉ, later RTÉ – Radio Telefis Éireann), and from the early 1960s he fronted Dublin’s first be-bop unit, the Jazz Heralds. A busy professional career saw him compose for numerous Irish pop stars, arrange and conduct many of Ireland’s Eurovision entries, and even contribute string arrangements to U2’s Unforgettable Fire LP. But jazz was Kelehan’s first passion, and he never stopped playing in both small modernist units and composing for his own big band. The late 1970s saw him fronting the Noel Kelehan Quintet, alongside drummer John Wadham, saxophonist Keith Donald, bassist Frank Hess and trumpeter Mick Nolan. Playing weekly in Dublin for several years, they opened for visiting stars including Dollar Brand and the Ronnie Scott Orchestra, and eventually played a two-week residency at Ronnie Scotts in London. Though Kelehan had recorded a big-band LP of traditional Irish songs arranged as easy jazz in 1970, Ozone was his first album of modern jazz.  Released on John D’Ardis’s independent Cargo imprint and press on blue vinyl, it featured original compositions such as the deep collectors cut ‘Spon Song’, subtle Latin flavours on ‘Spacer’s Delight’ and a beautiful modal arrangement of the traditional Irish air ‘Castle of Dromore’. A legendary recording in Ireland, Ozone reflected Kelehan’s keen appreciation of classic quintet-era Miles, with touches of the cerebral fusion of Ian Carr and the arranging genius of Neil Ardley. Not just a landmark Irish jazz set, Ozone is a lost classic of European jazz more widely – finally available again on vinyl from Outernational Sounds!”

‘Raga Jazz Style’ speaks brilliantly to a transcontinental fusion of styles seeded in the US with John & Alice Coltrane’s visionary efforts, and here adapted back to source in the subcontinent. By this point the Shankar Jaikashan duo had practically achieved their zenith as go-to composers for Hindi film scores, and as competition started coming from likes of R.D. Burman, they would prove their versatility in melding Afro-American jazz with millennia-old raga forms, resulting this vibrant suite that nails both styles, sometimes on their own, and sometimes combined with sitar. It’s rare pleasure to hear them dance between the two, only a few years before Jaikashan passed away, leaving Shanka to continue solo under the Shankar-Jaikashan handle, and a richly inspirational legacy.

The amazing, and widely acliamed latest from the French composer and musician, Delphine Dora, onMarionette. Printed artwork on reverse-board sleeve, pressed on 180g Vinyl. Delphine Dora, the prolific French composer and multi-instrumentalist, graces Marionette with a suite of keyboard instrumentals that evoke futurism and the transcendental. Based in France and actively releasing music since the 00’s, Delphine’s remarkable solo and collaborative projects loosely connect the dots scattered across modern classical, folk, ambient, and poetic writing - always seeking new ambitions in terms of her sound. Leaving behind the chaos of city life for the quiet solitude of a small village in the French countryside, Delphine finds herself fully immersed in the present moment and committed to her multi-disciplinary creative practices, savoring the experiences of deep listening in nature and her environment. Drawing from an academic background in Outsider Art and Art Brut, Dora yearns to express intimate inner dialogues, revealing the beauty of vulnerability through transportive musical passages to the mystical and sublime. L’inéluctable pulsation du temps was composed in 2018, at a time when Delphine’s life was becoming increasingly busy, marked by relentless touring and concerts unfolding in rapid succession across different places. Written in parallel with L’Inattingible, her most ambitious album, it stands as its instrumental counterpart. The recordings reflect a period of exploration and assimilation of the Nord Electro, an instrument that opened up vast sonic possibilities, particularly for the development of rich polyphonies inspired by repetitive music. The track titles draw inspiration from an essay by Hartmut Rosa on the notions of acceleration and alienation - a reflection that resonates strongly with the pre-covid era right before the quarantine. The album reveals Delphine’s most colorful and rhythmic side, an aural mille-feuille, in total contrast with her previous melancholic vocal works. On L’inéluctable pulsation du temps, Dora sustains atmospheric drone miniatures that form the foundation for flowing, cyclical arpeggios, spiraling into a liminal dream space where the repetitive phrasing of melodies rewards introspective listening. The compositions move through (dis)enchanted landscapes, taking unexpected turns into more haunted terrain, their contours further blurred by Dora’s intuitive articulation and sense of refinement. By mirroring both the acceleration of time and the experience of alienation, Delphine conjures up timeless sonic meditations, rendering the inevitable pulsation of time as something at once mesmerizing and unsettling.

One of the greatest that ever was, Noah Howard, captured in 1971 with  Han Bennink, Misha Mengelberg, Earl Freeman, Jaap Schoonhoven, and Steve Boston, reissed on Viny for the first time Released in 1971, this experimental jazz album stands as a defining moment in Noah Howard's career, capturing his vision of music as a "sound painting." A blend of free jazz and Dutch improvisation, the album features Howard's alto saxophone alongside an eclectic mix of musicians, including Misha Mengelberg (piano), Han Bennink (drums) and Earl Freeman (bass). The album opens with a disorienting space duet between conga and electric guitar, setting the stage for a primal and intense exploration of sound. As the musicians join in, the music evolves into a fierce clash of American free jazz and European avant-garde, where rhythmic energy and dissonant piano clusters intersect with Howard's lyrical yet passionate saxophone lines. The album's complex interplay of structure and improvisation reveals Howard's quest for originality, influenced by jazz legends but never imitative. It showcases his belief in the spiritual essence of jazz, channeling cosmic energy through his compositions. Despite challenges, such as guitarist Jaap Schoonhoven's discomfort, the session results in a high-energy fusion, full of vivid contrasts and sonic exploration. This work remains a powerful, enigmatic piece in Howard's catalogue, illustrating his distinct, boundary-pushing approach to jazz.

Since first developing Natural Information Society in 2010, Joshua Abrams has been gradually expanding the group’s conceptual underpinnings, its musical references & the sheer number of the group’s members. Its music is, in a sense, an expansive form of minimalism, based in repeated & overlaid rhythmic patterns, ostinatos & modality. Its roots, its scale & its meaning become clearer in time. If time is gravity, it also allows us to carry more. Having begun as fundamentally a rhythm section with Abrams’ guimbri at its core, the version here can stretch to a tentet, including six horns. Abrams has been expanding his minimalism gradually, but he has long understood a key to minimalism’s potential: the breadth of its roots in the late 1950s & early 1960s, ranging from the dissatisfaction of young European-stream composers with the limitations of serialism to the simultaneous dissatisfaction of jazz musicians with the dense harmonic vocabulary of bop & hard bop. The former began exploring rhythmic complexity & narrow tonal palates in place of harmonic abstraction (Steve Reich’s Drumming, Philip Glass’ Music with Changing Parts; perhaps above all Terry Riley’s In C & his late ‘60s all-night organ & loop concerts); the later reduced dense chord changes to scales (signally with Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, but rapidly expanding with John Coltrane’s vast project). In the 1950s the LP record opened the world with documentation of Asian & African musics, key influences on both minimalists & jazz musicians. If John Coltrane’s soprano saxophone suggested the keening shehnai of Bismillah Khan, the instrument was rapidly taken up by two key minimalists, LaMonte Young & Riley, similarly appreciative of its flexible intonation, the same thing that kept it out of big bands. If the guimbri, the North African hide-covered lute that Abrams plays with NIS, involves a rich tradition of hypnotic healing music associated with the Gnawa people, Abrams’ music also touches on other musics as well —other depths, memories & healings, different drones, rhythms & modes. As the group expands on Since Time Is Gravity, he has made certain jazz traditions in the same stream more explicit as well. If there is a mystical & elastic quality involved in the experience of time, both in direction & duration, you will catch it here. The parts for the choir of winds expand on the roles of Abrams’ guimbri, Mikel Patrick Avery & Hamid Drake’s percussion & Lisa Alvarado’s harmonium: at times, the winds are almost looping in the tentet version, each hitting a repeating note in turn, at once drone & distinct inflection on temporal sequence. The brilliance of the work resides in Abrams’ compositions, the NIS’ intuitive execution & in Ari Brown’s singular embodiment of the great tenor saxophone tradition, including the oracular genius of Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, & Yusef Lateef. The three pieces by the expanded NIS featuring Brown —the opening “Moontide Chorus” & “Is” & the ultimate “Gravity”— have an immediate impact, & togther might be considered a kind of concerto for tenor saxophone. Here Brown presses almost indistinguishably from composed melody to improvised speech, getting so close to language that he might have a text. Everything here is a sign. Note the tap of the Rhythm Ace that links “Moontide Chorus” to “Is”, the attentive heart always present, even when signed by a machine. There’s a link here to the methodologies & meanings of dub music & the linear & vertical collage of beats, textures & tongues: treated with reverence, a sample of a beat-box can be as soulful, as hypnotic, as a mbira or a tamboura. If those pieces with Brown are heard as a suspended concerto, the three embrace & enfold the other works, like the sepals of a flower. That placement will also touch on the mysteries of our perception of time. Particularly in “Is”, but elsewhere as well, a phenomenon of transcendence arises in which time appears to be tripartite, at once moving backwards & forwards & standing still. This is an act of technical brilliance certainly, but also an illumination of music’s ability to represent temporal consciousness through polymetrics. This particular listener has only heard it before in a few places, including the horn shouts & bowed basses of Coltrane’s Africa, in moments of Charles Mingus’ The Black Saint & the Sinner Lady, in certain pieces where tapes were literally running backwards, & earlier still in Dizzy Gillespie’s Cubana Be, Cubana Bop, in which the composer George Russell & conguero Chano Pozo found a music that spoke at once in the voices of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring & the vestigial rites, rhythms & songs of the Yoruba language & Santeria religion of inland Cuba. In Joshua Abrams’ compositions & the realization of them by the NIS, in the time of one’s close listening & memory thereof, distinctions between the “natural” & the “social”, the “quotidian” & the “transcendent” are erased, suspended or perhaps irrelevant. Consider two of the ensemble pieces, one named for nature, the other social science. In “Murmuration” the repeated wind figures of flute & alto saxophone combine with the interlocking patterns of harp, guimbri & frame drum (tar) to create a perfect moving stillness, not an imitation but a witness to the miracle of the starlings’ astonishing collective art, a surfeit of beauty that might be the ultimate defense tactic. “Stigmergy” takes its name & concept from the Occupy movement’s Heather Marsh, who proposes a social system based on a cooperative rather than competitive models, one in which ideas are freely contributed & developed as ideas rather than an individual’s property. In its form, Abrams’ “Stigmergy” is the closes thing to traditional jazz, a series of accompanied solos by each of the wind players. However, the composed accompaniment is a radically collectivist notion: a repeated rhythmic figure, call it ostinato or riff, in which the different winds each play only a note or two of the figure, a concept both more collectivist & individualistic in its conception than any typical unison figure. It suggests another of the underlying recognitions that propel the Natural Information Society, the group as social organism, the teleology of hypnotic anarchy, all parts in place, functioning systematically, evolving & expressing itself, its nature & society, as a transformative organism. George Lewis has described music as “a space for reflection on the human condition”. This suggests that, rather than a “distraction”, at least some music might serve as a distraction from distraction. It’s a focus, a clarity, an awareness, an external invitation to interiority, as if music itself is a model for form & contemplation, an organism contemplating for us or as us. If that is a possibility, & I am sure I have heard such musics, than this music is among them. How many of our rhythms, melodies & harmonies (cultural, historical, biological, psychic) might such music carry, translate & transform in the particulate ecstasy of our own murmuration? Stuart Broomer, April 2022  credits released April 14, 2023 Joshua Abrams: bass, guimbri Lisa Alvarado: harmonium Mikel Patrick Avery: drums Josh Berman: cornet Kara Bershad: harp Ari Brown: tenor saxophone Hamid Drake: conga, tabla, tar Ben Lamar Gay: cornet Nick Mazzarella: alto saxophone Jason Stein: bass clarinet Mai Sugimoto: alto saxophone, flute

Aguirre Records present a reissue of Taj Mahal Travellers' August 1974, originally released in 1975. A monumental work by the Japanese experimental music ensemble. In April 1972 a group of Japanese musicians set off from Rotterdam in a Volkswagen van. As they crossed Europe and then made their way through Asia they made music in a wide range of locations. They also paid close attention to the changing scene and to differing ways of life. Midway through May they reached their destination, the iconic Taj Mahal on the bank of the Yamuna river in Agra, India. The Taj Mahal Travellers had fulfilled physically the promise of the name they adopted when they formed in 1969. The double album August 1974 was their second official release. The first July 15, 1972 is a live concert recording, but on August 19th, 1974 the Taj Mahal Travellers entered the Tokyo studios of Nippon Columbia and produced what is arguably their definitive statement. The electronic dimension of their collective improvising was coordinated, as usual, by Kinji Hayashi. Guest percussionist Hirokazu Sato joined long-term group members Ryo Koike, Seiji Nagai, Yukio Tsuchiya, Michihiro Kimura, Tokio Hasegawa, and Takehisa Kosugi. The enigmatic Takehisa Kosugi, whose soaring electric violin was such a vital element in their music, had been a pioneer of free improvisation and intermedia performance art with Group Ongaku at the start of the '60s. Later in that decade, before launching the Taj Mahal Travellers, he had become known internationally through his association with the fluxus art movement. During the mid-70s the Travellers disbanded and while his colleagues more or less stopped performing as musicians Kosugi continued to reach new audiences across the course of several decades as a composer, regular performer, and musical director for the acclaimed Merce Cunningham Dance Company. August 1974 captures vividly the characteristic sound of the Taj Mahal Travellers, haunting tones from an unusual combination of instruments, filtered through multiple layers of reverb and delay. Their music has strong stylistic affinities with the trippy ambience of cosmic and psychedelic rock, but the Taj Mahal Travellers were tuning in to other vibrations, drawing inspiration from the energies and rhythms of the world around them rather than projecting some alternative reality. Films of rolling ocean waves often provided a highly appropriate backdrop for their lengthy improvised concerts. Licensed from Columbia Japan. Remastered and lacquer cut by Rashad Becker.

At the beginning of the 1960s, at the Berklee College of Music, Byard Lancaster met some feisty friends: Sonny Sharrock, Dave Burrell and Ted Daniel. It is easy to see why he rapidly became involved in free jazz. Once he was settled in New York, he appeared on Sunny Murray Quintet, recorded under the leadership of the drum crazy colleague of Albert Ayler. In 1968, the saxophonist and flutist recorded his first album under his own name: It’s Not Up To Us. The following year he came to Paris in the wake of… Sunny Murray. He would come back to France in 1971 (again with Murray) and in 1973 (without Murray for a change). This is when he met Jef Gilson, the pianist and producer who encouraged him to record under his own name again. On Palm Records (Gilson’s label), he would release four albums: Us, Mother Africa, Exactement and Funny Funky Rib Crib. “Us”, the first of the four records was recorded on November 24th, 1973 with Sylvin Marc on electric bass (a Fender… Lancaster?) and the evergreen Steve McCall on drums. On the album, the trio works from the John Coltrane model; free jazz shook up by the timely contributions of the bassist, followed by a mesmerizing atmospheric music. Then, Lancaster delivers a sinuous solo path, which is a reminder of his unique tone. On the album’s companion single, the trio launches into great black music of a different genre which would lead the clairvoyant François Tusques to claim that Byard Lancaster is an “authentic representative of soul/free jazz”, to sum up this is Great Black Music!

t the beginning of the 1960s, at the Berklee College of Music, Byard Lancaster met some feisty friends: Sonny Sharrock, Dave Burrell and Ted Daniel. It is easy to see why he rapidly became involved in free jazz. Once he was settled in New York, he appeared on Sunny Murray Quintet, recorded under the leadership of the drum crazy colleague of Albert Ayler. In 1968, the saxophonist and flutist recorded his first album under his own name: It’s Not Up To Us. The following year he came to Paris in the wake of… Sunny Murray. He would come back to France in 1971 (again with Murray) and in 1973 (without Murray for a change). This is when he met Jef Gilson, the pianist and producer who encouraged him to record under his own name again. On Palm Records (Gilson’s label), he would release four albums: Us, Mother Africa, Exactement and Funny Funky Rib Crib. A few months after recording “Us”, Lancaster recorded “Mother Africa” along with Clint Jackson III, a trumpeter, partner of Khan Jamal or Noah Howard on other recordings. On march 8th, 1974, Lancaster and Jackson headed up a group composed of Jean-François Catoire (electric and double bass), Keno Speller (percussion) and Jonathan Dickinson (drums). Together, they create an immediate impression. From the first seconds of “We The Blessed”, they develop a free jazz which rapidly abandons any virulence under the effect of blues and soul based interventions. When Gilson’s composition “Mother Africa” begins, listeners are transported into the studio, listening to the musicians setting up: chatting and joking… Then comes the melody: a dozen or so notes of a repeated theme which is accelerated and deformed according to their whims… The jazz played by the association Byard Lancaster / Clint Jackson III is rare: creative AND recreational. “We the blessed”, is apt listening to this again today! This CD edition contains a bonus track, the magnificent “Love Always” that was originally released on the fourth (and last) volume of the Jef Gilson Anthology series released in 1975. Recorded on 8th March 1974, it is a beautiful 15-minute-long modal jazz piece. Four notes from the bass (the relentless Jean-François Catoire, who makes up the rhythm section alongside drummer Jonathan Dickinson and percussionist Keno Speller), and the group is up and running! On piano, Gilson shows the subtle tact of a sideman, leaving the lions’ share of the place to the horns. This allows us to hear the trumpet of Clint Jackson III and the alto (which sometimes sounds almost flute-like) of Byard Lancaster each staking their claim in a long hallucinatory march which moves from moments of direct exaltation to profoundly sensitive collective playing.

Another absolute marvel from Stanley Schtinter's Purge: The Fall of Communism as Seen in Gay Pornography is the original soundtrack to the film of the same name by WILLIAM E. JONES. Our first release in the seven-inch format, the record comes with original texts by WILLIAM E. JONES and JARETT KOBEK. 100 copies, numbered.