Honest Jon's Organic Grooves 45 Items

The Paths Of Pain The Caife Label Quito 1960-68

2LP | 2021 | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

Release: 2021 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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A dazzling survey of the last, bohemian flowering of the so-called Golden Era of Ecuadorian musica national, before the oil boom and incoming musical styles — especially cumbia — swept away its achingly beautiful, phantasmagorical, utopian juggling of indigenous and mestizo traditions.

Forms like the tonada, albazo, danzante, yaravi, carnaval, and sanjuanito; the yambo, with roots in pre-Incan ritual, and the pasillo, a take on the Viennese waltz, arriving through the Caribbean via Portugal and Spain.

Exhumations like the astoundingly out-there organist Lucho Munoz, from Panama, toying with the expressive and technical limits of his instrument; and our curtain-raiser Biluka, who travelled to Quito from Rio, naming his new band Los Canibales in honour of the late-twenties Cannibalist movement back home, dedicated to cannibalising other cultures in the fight against post-colonial, Eurocentric hegemony. He played the ficus leaf, hands-free, laying it on his tongue. One leaf was playable for ten hours. He spent long periods living on the street, in rags, when he wasn’t in the CAIFE studio recording his chamber jazz-from-space, with the swing, elegance and detail of Ellington’s small groups, crossed with the brassy energy of ska — try Cashari Shunguito — and an enthralling other-worldliness.
Utterly scintillating guitar-playing, prowling double bass, piercing dulzaina, wailing organ, rollicking gypsy violin, brass, accordion, harps, and flutes. Bangers to get drunk and dance to. Slow songs galore to drown your sorrows in, with wildly sentimental lyrics drawn from the Generacion Decapitada group of poets (who all killed themselves); expert heart-breakers, with the raw passion of the best rembetica, but reined in, like the best fado.

Sumptuously presented, in a gatefold sleeve and printed inners, with a full-size, full-colour booklet, with wonderful photos and excellent notes. Limpid sound, too, courtesy of original reels in Quito, and Abbey Road in London; pressed at Pallas.

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A Heart In Splinters More From The Caife Label, Quito, 1960-68

2LP | 2021 | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

Release: 2021 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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A Stranger I May Be Savoy Gospel 1954-1966

2LP | 2020 | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

Release: 2020 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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The first of three volumes: stomping, rollicking gospel music, intermingling with raw soul, searing blues, hard-rocking doo-wop and jazz, and storming r&b.

Infused and incandescent with the hurting, surging indignation of the Civil Rights movement, here are twenty-four precious scorchers by giants like the Staple Singers and Jimmy Scott, alongside devastating sides by less celebrated names like the Harmonising Five of Burlington, North Carolina, and teen-group the North Philadelphia Juniors, culminating triumphantly with slamming, sanctified versions of Hit The Road Jack and Wade In The Water.

Gatefold sleeve, with full-size booklet; beautifully designed, with stunning, rare photographs and original Savoy artwork.

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London Is The Place For Me 8: Lord Kitchener In England, 1948-1962

Camille Doughty / The Singing Sons Of Washington, D.C.

Release: 2019 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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First there is the hooligan chantwell, up for anything in the hurly-burly of carnival proper; and then the casual reporter, firing off postcards to Trinidad about taxis, flashy booze, fast women and football in Manchester, with homesickness and grievance nestled just behind the optimism, pride and tentative senses of belonging.
There is the bearer of news from home, in detailed accounts of murders, tales of stupid local coppers, and reminiscences about food and particular mango trees; the political thinker, considering racism and Africa; and the diarist, with his vivid tales of infidelity, and disclosure of the break-up of his marriage, and his desire to get away.

One foot in the UK, the other in Trinidad; but the man himself somewhere in-between. Kitch In The Jungle, nobody around. A ‘diasporic explorer’; a key twentieth-century witness, alongside such hallowed figures as Samuel Selvon and Edward Kamau Braithwaite.

Though in frustration Kitch would sometimes take over double-bass duties himself, the musicianship of Rupert Nurse, Fitzroy Coleman and co is top-notch. The original glorious sound is down to Denys Preston, recording for Melodisc, often at Abbey Road Studios (where we transferred and restored the 78s compiled here).

Presented in a lovely gatefold sleeve, with a full-size booklet containing superb, specially-commissioned sleevenotes by Kitch biographer Anthony Joseph, and fabulous, previously-unseen photographs

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Elijah Rock / Jesus Will Be With Me

7" | 2015 | UK | Reissue (Honest Jon's)

2LP | 1979 | EU | Reissue (Honest Jon's)

Release: 2015 / UK – Reissue

Genre: Organic Grooves

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Camille Doughty from Columbus, Ohio, in full flight over a gritty, funk-rock version of the gospel evergreen most famously recorded by Mahalia Jackson twenty years earlier; with some hard-grooving, Sam Cooke-style testifying on the flip, from The Singing Sons of Washington, D.C.

Beautifully sleeved.

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Derek Bailey & Tony Coe

Time

Release: 1979 / EU – Reissue

Genre: Organic Grooves

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Multi-reedist Tony Coe was born in 1934, four years after guitarist Derek Bailey. He cut his teeth as a career jazzman with Humphrey Lyttleton, before an extended stint with the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band. On this rare 1979 duo outing, he sticks to clarinet. And though that instrument has an illustrious jazz pedigree, Coe’s playing here is something else.

It’s worth noting that the clarinettist has also played under the baton of arch-modernist Pierre Boulez, the kind of composer Derek Bailey enjoyed taking to task in his book Improvisation. You might think the Frenchman’s uncompromising serialism and the free playing Bailey defended with such passion all his life would have little in common, yet both men were hugely influenced by Anton Webern. It’s an influence you can hear right through Bailey’s career in his obsessive exploration of tight parcels of registrally-fixed pitches, notably those trademark ringing harmonics. Meanwhile, Coe’s meandering semitones and sinuous arabesques here recall both Boulez’s clarinet writing in Domaines, and the harmonic world of Boulez’s own teacher Olivier Messiaen.

Still, no traditional classical musical notation could ever render the extraordinary rhythmic subtlety and timbral complexity of this music. It’s at one and the same time dazzlingly virtuosic — Coe and Bailey are on stellar form throughout, and have enough sense to, yes, accompany each other where needs be — and supremely lyrical and spacious.

An absolute delight.

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Volume 1: Trinidian Calypso In London 1950 - 1956

2LP | 2005 | EU | Original (Honest Jon's)

Release: 2005 / EU – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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2LP | 2011 | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

Moritz Von Oswald Trio

Horizontal Structures

2LP | 2009 | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

Release: 2011 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves, Electronic & Dance

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Horizontal Structures is palpably a more open, more expressive album than the previous studio recording, Vertical Ascent. There is more contrast, more light and shade. St Hilaire and Muellbauer add fresh drama and swing to the intimate tonal and rhythmic interactions of the core grouping.

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Hypnotic Brass Ensemble

10" | 2004 | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

Release: 2009 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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Malcolm Catto, Tony Allen, Flea of Red Hot Chilli Peppers & Damon Albarn do some help - nice one!

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Moondog

Moondog & His Friends

14,99 €*

Release: 2004 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves, Rock & Indie

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Leaf-Playing In Quito, 1960-1965

Biluka Y Los Canibales

2LP | 2022 | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

Release: 2022 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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The out-of-this-world recordings of Dilson de Souza, leading a kind of tropical chamber jazz on leaves from a ficus tree.

Dilson was from Barra do Pirai, in the Brazilian countryside; moving to Rio as a young man, where he worked in construction. He recorded his first record in 1954, for RCA Victor. He travelled to Quito around 1957, soon hooking up with Benitez & Valencia, who introduced him to the Caife label.

Dilson played the leaf open, resting on his tongue, hands free, with his mouth as the resonator. Though a leaf can also be played rolled or folded in half, this method allowed for more precision, a tethered brilliance. A picked ficus leaf stays fresh, crisp and clean-toned for around ten hours. He could play eight compositions, four at each end, before it was spent.

Biluka plays trills and vibratos effortlessly, with utterly pure pitch, acrobatically sliding into notes and changing tone on the fly. In Manuco, he leads Los Caníbales into a mysterious landscape on a rope pulled from an Andean spaghetti western, and corrals and teases them into a dialogue. A leaf, a harp, a xylophone, and a rondador — joined in Bailando Me Despido (Dancing As I Say Goodbye) by a saucy organ, doing sloshed call-and-response. In Anacu de Mi Guambra, Biluka shows his full range of antics, hiccuping melodically over a set of magic tricks. His expressiveness was boundless.

The eucalyptus leaf is popular among Aboriginal Australians. In China, they’ve played leaves for 10,000 years. In Cambodia, people play the slek, a leaf plucked from either the sakrom or the khnoung tree. But ain’t nobody like Biluka, ever.

Astounding music.

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2LP | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

1983

Release: UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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London Is The Place For Me 2

2LP | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

Release: UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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Something Is Wrong: Vintage Recordings From East Africa

2LP | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

Release: UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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You Better Get Ready For Judgement Day Savoy Gospel 1978-1986

2LP | 2020 | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

Release: 2020 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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Volume three: seventeen gems of fierce funk, rapturous soul and transcendent disco and boogie, super-charged with celebration and affirmativeness, loaded with roaring choirs, rocking horns and popping bass guitars, from the years leading up to Savoy’s acquisition by Malaco.

Some seriously rare cuts here; for instance, the stupendous opener by Edith Moreno only appeared as a blank-label promo, in a tiny run.

Spot-glossed, gatefold sleeve, with gorgeous printed inners.

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Turn It Loose, Ain't No Good Savoy Gospel 1970-1979

2LP | 2020 | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

Release: 2020 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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Volume 4: African Dreams And The Piccadilly High Life

2LP | 2006 | EU | Original (Honest Jon's)

Release: 2006 / EU – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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Calypso, kwela, highlife and bebop, a little rock n roll and an Indian mambo, a shango hymn, some Sun Ra-style cha cha cha. A lake in a Johannesburg zoo, a Chinese on the Harrow Road; astronauts and prostitutes, landlords, streetfighters and cricketers.

The music and notes are presented alongside rare artist photographs by Val Wilmer.

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Trios

Release: 2019 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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A typically eclectic collection of guests joined Derek Bailey for Company Week in 1983: saxophonists Evan Parker and Peter Brötzmann; cellist Ernst Reijseger, mainstay of Dutch new jazz (ICP Orchestra, Clusone Trio); American wind virtuoso J.D.Parran, veteran of the Black Artists’ Group and Anthony Davis and Anthony Braxton ensembles.
The French bassist Joëlle Léandre is equally at home playing free or performing works by Cage and Scelsi, while Vinko Globokar is an acclaimed composer as well as a trombonist of monstrous virtuosity.

British electronics pioneer Hugh Davies served time alongside Globokar with Karlheinz Stockhausen. Percussionist Jamie Muir was with Davies on the very first (Music Improvisation) Company outing in 1970, before a brief stint with King Crimson.

Is there an ideal number of musicians for free improvisation? Bailey once described playing solo as a “second-rate activity” – though he did it spectacularly well – while at the other end of the spectrum, large improvising ensembles can descend into an unwieldy racket.

Three may be a crowd for some, but for Pythagoras it was the perfect number, and trios work surprisingly well in improvised music. Sometimes one instrument takes centre stage, like Parker’s circular-breathing soprano at the beginning of Five, but knowing when to lie low, as he does in the brief austere Three, is just as crucial to the success of the whole. Muir makes sure he doesn’t get in the way of Globokar and Parran’s leisurely exchanges on Four, but the trombonist is all over the place on One, with Léandre racing up and down her bass and Davies all spikes, squeaks and squiggles.

With a touch of Bailey’s dry humour, two of these seven recordings aren’t trios at all: Trio Minus One is his duo with Reijseger, running the gamut from crazed polyrhythmic strumming (imagine Reinhardt and Grappelli playing Schoenberg and Nancarrow simultaneously) to what must be the fastest cello pizzicati ever recorded. And on the closing ecstatic nonet, Brötzmann and trumpeter John Corbett prove that more cooks don’t necessarily spoil the broth but sure as hell can spice it up.

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3LP | 2019 | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

Epiphanies VII-XIII

30,99 €*

Release: 2019 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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More buried treasure from Company Week 1982: seven previously unissued Epiphanies by lineups involving Derek Bailey, Ursula Oppens, Julie Tippetts, Keith Tippett, Philipp Wachsmann, Fred Frith, George Lewis, Anne LeBaron, Motoharu Yoshizawa and Akio Suzuki.

Fred Frith is a stellar improviser — 1974’s Guitar Solos is still a seminal album of free improv — and he has three opportunities here to showcase his considerable talents. Eleventh is a tour de force of extended technique, with George Lewis working slowly but surely through a variety of trombone mouthpieces, while Frith’s guitar, strummed, bowed or prepared, could be a theremin, a koto, a mouse trapped inside a grandfather clock or a lion cub inside a shoebox. Bookending the album, on Seventh he swaps Webernian shards with Lewis and harpist Anne LeBaron and on Thirteenth, with pianist Keith Tippett, he condenses a whole lifetime of musical exploration into a mere twelve minutes. When it’s over both musicians are so amazed they burst out laughing.

Elsewhere, on Eighth, Wachsmann reveals his understated mastery of both his violin and the electronics he’s devised to extend its range, and pianist Ursula Oppens proves she’s as adept as conjuring forth magic from inside her instrument as she is at the keyboard. Major and minor triads too!

Ninth is spikier, with Lewis quacking, spitting and wheezing like a flock of geese let loose in a fairground, while Derek Bailey and Motoharu Yoshisawa patiently explore the outer limits of acoustic guitar and double bass. Bailey and Lewis team up again on Twelfth to take on Oppens — and everybody wins. Voice is more to the fore on Tenth, with Julie Tippetts’ coloratura and flute and Akio Suzuki’s analapos and spring gong flying high, while LeBaron, Wachsmann and Yoshizawa weave intricate webs of pizzicati, spiccati and glissandi beneath.

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Epiphanies I-VI

Edith Moreno 7 The Helen Hollins Singers

Release: 2019 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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Derek Bailey’s guests for Company Week at London’s ICA in July 1982 were contemporary classical pianist Ursula Oppens, folk/jazz singer-turned-improviser Julie Tippetts and her partner pianist Keith Tippett, violinist/electronics wizard Philipp Wachsmann, guitarist Fred Frith, trombonist George Lewis, harpist Anne LeBaron, and from Japan free jazz bassist Motoharu Yoshizawa and sound artist Akio Suzuki.

Altogether they performed the stunning extended improvisation Epiphany.
In different, more intimate lineups they detonated numerous Epiphanies.

Here, to start, Yoshizawa and Oppens (both on the keyboard and inside her piano) bounce ideas off each other like ping-pong balls.
Then Tippetts, Wachsmann and Bailey do extraterrestrial cubist flamenco; and Lewis and Frith rumble at everyone magnificently.
Tippett and Oppens kaleidoscope the entire history of the piano into just over fifteen minutes (Fourth and Fifth) with added seasoning from LeBaron and Wachsmann.
To close, Akio Suzuki — despite once describing himself as “pursuing listening as a practice” — makes one hell of a racket with his self-made instruments: a flute, a spring gong and his analapos (two single-lidded cylinders attached by a long steel coil, which he can manipulate and strike, besides vocalising into the tube). Yoshizawa and Bailey give him a real run for his money, and it all builds to an ecstatic, swirling, grinding climax, with Suzuki whooping and hollering wildly.

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Get Ready For Judgement Day / Jesus Will Give You Love

7" | 2019 | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

10" | 1973 | UK | Reissue (Honest Jon's)

Release: 2019 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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Red hot gospel soul from 1983. Only ever issued as a test white-label; never before released commercially. That test pressings sells online for 1000+ dollars.

Plus some classic early-eighties soul vibes on the flip, as Helen Hollins — from James Cleveland’s Southern California Community Choir— magnificently busts loose Burt Bacharach, strutting resplendently onto the dancefloor with her dad, husband and two daughters Alicia and Francheasca in glorious cahoots.

Lovely spot-glossed sleeve.

Devilishly limited, all three of our Savoy singles.

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The Metro-Tones Inc.

Get Together

The Famous Ward Singers / Jessy Dixon

Release: 1973 / UK – Reissue

Genre: Organic Grooves

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Dedicated ‘to the United Nations and especially young people’, this is slow-burning, steeply screwed, early-seventies Atlanta funk by James Conley and co, spun out of a line from Eliza Hewett’s nineteenth-century hymn, When We All Get To Heaven.

The flip is deadly, too: a super-soulful blend of Sly & The Family Stone with Kool & The Gang, movingly confused and sincere in its pleading (without threats or machismo) to be loved back.

Both sides come with instrumentals. Check part two of Get Together.

Beautifully sleeved.

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I'm Getting Richer / Wade In The Water

7" | 1960 | UK | Reissue (Honest Jon's)

Release: 1960 / UK – Reissue

Genre: Organic Grooves

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A scorcher from the golden age of gospel, via its cardinal label.
From 1960, during the family’s second decade with Savoy, featuring Gertrude Ward, Christine Jackson, Mildred Means and Vermettya Royster — and Clara, totally riveting and in-your-face with evangelistic fervour and raw soul.

Plus a rambunctious, floor-filling Wade In The Water, by Jessy Dixon and his Singers.

Handsomely sleeved (showing a contemporary but slightly different Wards lineup).

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2LP | 1982 | UK | Reissue (Honest Jon's)

Epiphany

The Music Improvisation Company

Release: 1982 / UK – Reissue

Genre: Organic Grooves

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Offcial info: Epiphany \ i-ˈpi-fə-nē \ (1) a manifestation of the essential nature of something (usually sudden) (2) an intuitive grasp of reality through something (usually simple and striking) (3) an illuminating discovery or disclosure.
All three definitions apply perfectly to this span of music recorded at London’s ICA in July 1982. It’s a miracle of group interaction, wonderfully paced, moving steadily between moments of mounting intensity and tension. The passage about halfway through — when Derek Bailey’s harmonics ring out above a sheen of inside piano tremolos and shimmering electronics, topped off by Julie Tippetts’ soaring vocalese — is simply sublime. After which it’s fun to try and tell the two pianists apart. Are those runs Ursula Oppens, with her formidable technique honed from years performing some of the twentieth century’s most difficult notated new music, or are those Keith Tippett’s crunchy jazz zigzags? Are those intriguing twangs from one of Akio Suzuki’s invented instruments or could they be Fred Frith’s or Phil Wachsmann’s electronics? Bah, who cares?

There’s plenty of room for the more delicate instruments too, like Anne LeBaron’s harp picking its way gingerly through a pin-cushion of pings and scratches from Bailey and bassist Motoharu Yoshizawa. Of course, some performers are instantly recognisable: Tippetts, as lyrical and flighty on flute as when she sings, Phil Wachsmann, sinuous and sensitive on violin, and trombonist George Lewis, who, as John Zorn once put it, swings his motherfucking ass off.

So many magical moments abound, from the opening dawn chorus of Tippetts’ voice and Frith’s guitar swooping through a rainforest of exquisite piano cascades, to the Zen calm of the closing moments.

Epiphany, indeed.

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1969, 1970

Derek Bailey & Cyro Baptista

Release: 2019 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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"The original concepts of vocal and instrumental music are utterly different. The instrumental impulse is not melody in a 'melodious' sense but an agile movement of the hands which seem to be under the control of a brain centre totally different from that which inspires vocal melody. Altogether, instrumental music, with the exception of rudimentary rhythmic percussion, is as a rule a florid, fast and brilliant display of virtuosity... Quick motion is not merely a means to a musical end but almost an end in itself which always connects with the fingers, the wrists and the whole of the body."

The inclusion of the above passage from Curt Sachs' The Wellsprings of Music with this album, the recording of which predates the Music Improvisation Company's only other release, the eponymous ECM outing, indicates a clear intention to stake out territory for European Free Improvisation markedly different from that of the (American) Free Jazz it sprang from. The African-American heritage that led to jazz was melodious, vocal, field holler / church-inflected, and the Germans and the Dutch never made any secret of their affection for it, but British free improvisers in the late 1960s were looking elsewhere.

Even so, and though the music press made a big deal a while back about the release of a 1965 rehearsal tape by Derek Bailey's earlier Joseph Holbrooke trio (with Gavin Bryars and Tony Oxley), their early efforts were mere tentative steps along a cliff edge wearing a line safely attached to Coltrane, and there's still a faint but distinct aftertaste of jazz in Bailey and Parker's work with the Spontaneous Music Ensemble up to and including 1968's Karyobin. But with the addition of Jamie Muir - the first great free improvising percussionist who didn't start out as a jazz drummer - and Hugh Davies and his electronics from way out leftfield in the avant garde / experimental world, the MIC leapt right off that cliff. As Nina Hagen screamed later, "1968 is over! Future is Now!" These six tracks – tight, electric, pointillistic, brilliant, uncompromising and exhilarating – sound like nothing else that came before. In a word, seminal.

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Cyro

2LP | 1988 | EU | Reissue (Honest Jon's)

2LP | 2018 | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

Release: 1988 / EU – Reissue

Genre: Organic Grooves

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When Cyro Baptista moved to New York in 1980 from his home city of São Paulo, he brought with him an arsenal of percussion instruments, including the cuica (friction drum), surdo (the booming bass drum associated with samba), berimbau (single-string bow with resonating gourd), and cabasas galore, in the next few years deploying them most notably in numerous ensembles curated by John Zorn, who helped set up this studio session in 1982.

As you might expect from someone whose infectious grooves have graced the work of Herbie Hancock, Astrud Gilberto and Cassandra Wilson, Baptista expertly fires off cunning polyrhythms, even traces of thumping samba, with restless fluency. Bailey the wily old fox skirts and eschews the bait, which is quickly conjured away and newly fashioned. The guitarist homes in on the delicious squeaks of the cuica and the twanging drones of the berimbau with truly awesome tonal precision. You could sing along if you wanted, after a caipirinha or two. And he gets almost as many different sounds from his instrument as Baptista can from his kit – check out the stratospheric plings and string-length fret-sweeps of Tonto, which sound more like a prepared piano than an acoustic guitar.

Wonders abound, from the berimbau/bent-string exchanges that open Quanto Tempo to the delightful collision of howling cuica and spiky bebop on Polvo, and the spare, preposterous Webernian samba of Improvisation 3.

These days, ‘improvisation’ often appears without its customary qualifier ‘free’. If there were ever a case to be made for its reinstatement, this album is the best supporting evidence. Freedom means you’re free to get into the groove, free not to, free to play with each other, free to play against each other. Sometimes frustrating, even scary, but more often than not in the hands of these two great masters it’s hilarious, exhilarating and utterly irresistible.

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Derek Bailey

Aida

Release: 2018 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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At last, the vinyl reissue of this masterwork, adding two hitherto unreleased gems recorded solo for Charles Fox’s Radio 3 programme Jazz in Britain, in the same few months of 1980 as the stunning Aida performances.

The phrase ‘in the moment’ is often bandied about with reference to free improvisation, and indeed there’s no better way to describe Derek Bailey’s playing. The acoustic guitar is notoriously lacking in natural reverberation — notes barely hang in the air for a couple of seconds before they disappear — which explains the almost non-stop flow of new material in these stellar performances. Bailey knew from one split-second to the next exactly where to find the same pitch on different strings, either as a stopped tone or a ringing harmonic, and there’s never a note out of place. ‘He who kisses the joy as it flies,’ in the words of William Blake, ‘Lives in eternity’s sunrise’ — and this music is forever in the moment, constantly active but never gabby, kissing the joy.

One of the special pleasures of the BBC set is the guitarist’s own laconic commentary, a deliciously deadpan description of what he’s doing while he’s doing it — “I like to think of it… as a kind of music” — and the interaction between words and music is a particular delight. “You may have noticed a certain lack of variety,” he quips, while unleashing a furiously complex volley. Is it a coincidence that the final seconds recall the famous cycling fifths of the coda to Thelonious Monk’s Round Midnight? Surely not — for Bailey, like Monk, was a note man par excellence. And they’re both still alive and well in eternity’s sunrise.

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Guarapo! Forty Bangers From Barranquilla

2LP | 2017 | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

Release: 2017 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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Rough, tough, tumping, bumping soundboy breakbeat from the Caribbean coast of Colombia.

Forty brand new buckaroos, tooled and primed by Jeanpi Perreo, Edwin Producciones and DJ Ander — all from local sound-systems — careering guarapo-style out of punches of vintage Nigerian highlife, waka and co, by legends like Steven Amechi, Sagbeni Aragbada and Cardinal Rex Jim Lawson.

Edited and mastered by CGB at D&M for maximum oomph and worries, and presented in a gatefold sleeve with cool and deadly varnishing. Plus a full-size booklet detailing the fascinating history of this music, seamed into the strange, tentacular byways of hand-to-hand vinyl distribution, record collecting and musical connoisseurship, and the soundclash traditions of the region, suffused with the politics and culture of the Black Atlantic, stretching back to the 1950s.

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Volume 3: Ambrose Adekoya Campbell

2LP | 2005 | EU | Original (Honest Jon's)

Release: 2005 / EU – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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10" | 2016 | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

Wareika Hill Sounds

Mass Migration

Release: 2016 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves, Reggae & Dancehall

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Two no-flim-flam, cross-border, dub-wise stompers paired with masterful versions from the veteran, Kingston-based unit led by the trombonist of Count Ossie’s Mystic Revelation Of Rastafari and The Light Of Saba.

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Christians Catch Hell: Gospel Roots 1976-79

2LP | 2015 | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

2LP | 2015 | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

Release: 2015 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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Utterly magnificent, sublimely soulful survey of the Gospel Roots label, subsidiary of the mighty TK Records at the height of the Miami Sound. Beautifully presented, the LPs come with a 12"-square, full-colour, sixteen-page album of photos and original artwork and truly outstanding notes, including insightful new interviews across the board; mastered at Abbey Road.

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Moritz Von Oswald Trio

Sounding Lines

Release: 2015 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves, Electronic & Dance

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The Moritz Von Oswald Trio opens a new chapter. There's a new configuration to the project, with Tony Allen joining original members Moritz von Oswald and Max Loderbauer. Tony Allen, the legendary drummer who's amassed a formidable catalogue both as a solo artist and as part of Fela Kuti's band, has taken over percussion duties from Vladislav Delay. Together, von Oswald, Loderbauer and Allen form something close to a dream team, two masters of the electronic sphere meeting an afrobeat pioneer. Allen had already established a rapport with the group before they entered the studio to record Sounding Lines - he's been touring with von Oswald and Loderbauer for more than a year, playing live shows around the world. There has been an evolution on each new Moritz Von Oswald Trio record, and Sounding Lines is no different. The album, which was mixed by Ricardo Villalobos, maintains the project's trajectory—a fearless exploration of dub techno, classical music and jazz—but the prevailing mood feels looser and more organic than ever before. Allen's imperious percussive work sits tantalisingly in the mix. His drums meet the electronics of von Oswald and Loderbauer in a way that renders the project in new, vivid colours. There are 4/4 tracks, beatless interludes and complex jazz structures, with propulsive recordings ("3") coexisting alongside more languid moments ("1"). Sometimes Allen provides flourishes of drums (notably on "4") while at other times spectral synths come to the fore (as on "5"). Von Oswald, a masterful composer and arranger with a deep understanding of space, paints the crevices of each composition on Sounding Lines with rich detail. Individually, von Oswald, Loderbauer and Allen are formidable and hugely influential musicians. As a trio, they've conjured something remarkable.

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Volume 5: Latin, Jazz, Calypso & Highlife From Young Black London

2LP | 2013 | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

Release: 2013 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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As then, calypso carries the swing. There are four more Lord Kitchener songs — in consideration of his wife leaving him for a GI, cricket umpires, a fling onboard an ocean-liner and West Indian poultry — besides a hot mambo cash-in, cross-bred under his supervision, and an uproarious, teasing Ghanaian tribute to him in Fanti by London visitors The Quavers.
Other calypsos range compellingly from the devaluation of the pound through jiu jitsu, big rubbery instruments, football fans, heavyweight champ Joe Louis and the sexual allure of English women police. The Mighty Terror contributes the woe-begotten, cautionary tale of his beloved Patricia's change of heart: 'I cannot believe, not for one moment / She gone with Millicent... / You may think I am jocular / But this really happened in Manchester / I felt so ashamed, my friends laughed at me / I had to take a train for London city.'
Ambrose Campbell is back, with six more shots of prodigal, limber, melancholic, visionary West African highlife. Also the Rolling Stones' favourite Ginger Johnson, with a percussive Latin scorcher; and Mona Baptiste, with some wonderful, soulful exotica.
Jamaican mento makes its first entry in the series, with a brace by Tony Johnson: a drily witty drinking-song, and a love-letter to Marilyn Monroe. Also finally getting some dues, the path-breaking Latin-African-jazz experiments of Ghanaian drummer and percussionist Buddy Pipp, with spine-tingling playing by the great Jamaican saxophonist Joe Harriott.
Expert jazz idioms course sophisticatedly through all the selections, which include a straight-up, South London version of Duke Jordan's Jordhu, something from Dizzy Reece's soundtrack — brokered by Kenneth Tynan — to the British crime film Nowhere To Go, and a trio of magnificently hybrid, hard-swinging instrumentals led in turn by master-guitarist Fitzroy Coleman, Kitch's innovative arranger Rupert Nurse, and trumpeter Shake Keane — named after Shakespeare because of his love of poetry — from St. Vincent.

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Volume 6: Mento, Calypso, Jazz & Highlife From Young Black London

2LP | 2013 | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

Rocket Juice & The Moon (Damon Albarn, Tony Allen and Flea of Red Hot Chili Peppers)

Release: 2013 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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Leave-Taking

10" | 2012 | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

Rocket Juice & The Moon (Damon Albarn, Tony Allen and Flea of Red Hot Chili Peppers)

Release: 2012 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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Three of the deepest, freshest instrumentals from the imminent album — featuring the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble on the opener. Sound-wise, this is doubly lethal, as alive and present as vinyl gets: mixed by Mark Ernestus, mastered and cut at D&M, manufactured at Pallas. In a silvered, silk-screened sleeve; a limited one-off.

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Manuela Feat. Erykah Badu

10" | 2012 | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

Juju And Highlife, Apala And Fuji

Release: 2012 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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Two tracks exclusive to this release: the one and only Badu in an irresistibly catchy do-over of the euphoric album instrumental there, also featuring veteran Malian synth freak, Cheick Tidiane Seck, and a dub by Mark Ernestus, from Rhythm & Sound. Lovely silk-screened sleeve.

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Lagos All Routes

2LP | 2005 | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

Moondog & His Honking Geese

Release: 2005 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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The period stretching from the mid-1960s through the early 1980s is often considered the ‘golden age’ of African popular music. Concurrently with the rise of popular music as a worldwide phenomenon, African popular music had its beginnings in the early decades of the 20th century, as radio broadcasting and sound recording facilities were gradually established by the colonial powers. By the end of World War II, European companies such as EMI, Gallo and Decca were starting to establish large-scale operations in the colonial territories. But African popular music really began to flower in the years of nationalist struggle and independence. With the winds of political change blowing in the air, popular music became extremely important as a component of the cultural life of newly or soon-to-be independent nations. Produced and consumed largely independently of local ethnic musical traditions — however much it may have drawn on them — popular music was seen as a powerful expression of newly national identity. The enthusiasm, idealism, and optimism that can be felt in the music of this era reflect the optimism and idealism of independence.

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Moondog's Music

10" | 2004 | EU | Original (Honest Jon's)

14,99 €*

Release: 2004 / EU – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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2LP | 2011 | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

Vladislav Delay Quartet

42,99 €*

Release: 2011 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves, Electronic & Dance

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Songs From East Africa 1952-7

Something Is Wrong

2LP | 2010 | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

New Wave Dance Music From South Africa

Release: 2010 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves, Rock & Indie

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Precious, stinging selections from an HMV run of more than four hundred 78s, recordings made in Uganda and Kenya from the mid-1930s till the mid-1950s.

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Shangaan Electro

2LP | 2010 | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

2LP | 2008 | UK | Reissue (Honest Jon's)

Release: 2010 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves, Electronic & Dance

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An astounding compilation of the breakneck Shangaan dance output of the Nozinja studio in Soweto, recorded between 2006 and 2009.

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Sprigs Of Time

78S From The EMI Archive

Moyege Mark Ernestus Remix

Release: 2008 / UK – Reissue

Genre: Organic Grooves

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Honest Jons becomes more and more digger's paradise - the tracklist shows you why!

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Tony Allen

12" | 2006 | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

Release: 2006 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves

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Laventille Rhythm Section

Two Rhythms

12" | 2007 | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

Release: 2007 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves, Reggae & Dancehall

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12" | 2007 | UK | Original (Honest Jon's)

Tony Allen

Kilode Carl Craig Remix

Release: 2007 / UK – Original

Genre: Organic Grooves, Electronic & Dance

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