Jazz | Fusion 431 Items

Featuring a lineup of musicians who would go on to weave ECM’s significance into the fabric of time, Solstice is a tour de force of musicianship, writing, arrangement, and recording.

Each track is brimming with life and features the sensitive application of a variety of instrumental combinations and studio savvy. “Oceanus” showcases Garbarek in his prime, soaring with an unbridled emotional register. As always, Towner’s 12-string speaks in 360 degrees. Superb drumming from Christensen complements lush melodic lines from Weber, who stretches a melodic cello into infinity while his bass arises like the conical aftereffect of a water droplet. “Visitation” clouds this ardor in a nocturnal vision filled with laughing spirits. “Drifting Petals” is a slow progression, a timid look out onto a dusty plain where the promise of freedom looms larger than the possibility of danger. But then an elder’s advice rings in our ears and pushes us onward. Feet move of their volition and pull us into the ever-receding horizon as the first drops of a squall streak across our foreheads. Towner proves again that his piano musings are not to be taken lightly, as they make for one of the most evocative tracks on the album. A transcendental 12-string solo (with gentle dimensional support from Weber) opens “Nimbus,” soon blossoming into a flourish of flutes, drums, and a bowed bass that cries with the grating fluidity of a sarangi. Garbarek’s sax joins in the fray and lets loose its harmonious fire. The deftly overdubbed flutes return, spreading their wings for a few moments before fluttering off into the distance. “Winter Solstice,” “Piscean Dance,” and “Red and Black” comprise a triptych of duets: the first for classical guitar and sax, the second a prime jam for 12-string and drums, and the third for 12-string and bass. “Sand” ends our cosmic journey with one of Garbarek’s deepest meditations for sax set to the strangely compelling ululations of Christensen’s flexatone lolling about in the background.

Melodically robust while structurally yielding, this is an album to be treasured and is a must-listen for anyone desiring to know what ECM is all about. An astounding meeting of musical minds if there ever was one.

The Heliocentrics are a group for which genres are meaningless and boundaries invisible. Since first appearing on DJ Shadow’s 2006 album The Outsider the group have gone on to release a string of records that float through jazz, hip-hop, psych, krautrock, and musique concrete whilst collaborating with numerous genre heavyweights from Mulatu Astake to Gaslamp Killer and picking up prestigious fans along the way, such as Madlib and the recently departed David Axelrod.
The primarily instrumental group, who operate out of their vintage analogue studio in East London called the Quatermass Sound Lab, bring in a new singer on album number four - a young Slovakian singer called Barbora Patkova. The result is an album that takes the band, already solidified in ever-expanding grooves and rhythms into new previously unexplored dimensions.The group’s deep-set ability to craft music intuitively and impulsively stems from a desire to avoid typical processes or generic structures. Since its conception, the band’s music has mainly been created from live improvisation. This musical approach gives the band its own sound and identity -”for anything to happen it must be at that time from the people in the room, and on the spot”. A decade of such sonic adventures has resulted in a tightly knit bond that the group refer to as “almost a form of telepathy” with “musical changes that otherwise would be near impossible to write.”

Conceived, as its predecessors, as the ideal musical accompaniment to a packed dance hall, “Blue Latin” reinterprets a musical genre – jazz, of course! - which even decades ago was considered the dance music ‘par excellence’, and delivers it, extremely modernized, to the present day, contaminated by Afro-Cuban, Brazilian and Latin-jazz elements, all made fluid, compelling and above all… danceable! The almost-meditative “Incanto” combines spiritual jazz influences and African atmospheres.

On this great compilation you’ll find 16 early vocal & jazzy tunes from the Golden Age of Jive & Kwela in South Africa. All released originally on fragile shellac discs only, which is a very delicate material but the music survived thanks to the archives of ILAM. A truly great source of South African music is being preserved here for new generations, to inspire young and hopeful musicians and singers from all over the world. These treasures of musical genius were recorded in the glory years of Jive and Kwela, the years 1940-1965.
On side A it is not very difficult to recognize the similarities to American popular music like R&B and small combo close harmony singing. But most of all notice that typical South African swing, that Jive, that incredible smooth form of African Jazz on side B; Kwela!

The rarest and most treasured finds are collected here, some with the original spoken intros, ‘sketches’ as these were called. Characteristic conversations between the musicians, often in a humoristic slang, always extremely funny. The record is pressed to 180gram vinyl.

When PAINKILLER started in 1991, their first two albums “Guts Of A Virgin” and “Buried Secrets” (both released on extreme metal label Earache) were heavy attacks blending grindcore and free jazz that brought together the musical backgrounds of the three protagonists: drummer MICK HARRIS had just left grindcore legend NAPALM DEATH, JOHN ZORN explored new extremities with his NAKED CITY project while BILL LASWELL had as a member of roaring free jazz quartet LAST EXIT ( PETER BRÖTZMANN / SONNY SHARROCK / RONALD SHANNON JACKSON) proven that he was not only a visionary producer but also an accomplished bassist. But it is their 1994 double album “Execution Ground” that remains the opus magnum of the brilliant trio: ZORN’s unmistakable shrieking saxophone, HARRIS’ pounding drums and LASWELL’s growling sub-bass lines were given heavy mixing desk treatment, resulting in extended tracks that are no less intense than their early works but display the full range of the musicians’ skills. Soaked with reverb and delay, avant-jazz, grindcore, dub and ambient melt into eerie tracks of haunting atmospheres - even more so in the ambient versions of disc 2.
Mastered and cut by RASHAD BECKER at D&M Berlin, “Execution Ground” is now available on vinyl for the very first time as 2x 180gr LP incl. a download code and insert in a limited edition of 500 items.

180g