Jazz | Fusion Preorder 418 Items

Vibey, soulful and genre-bending, Sun Ark weaves together electronic, hip-hop, Brazilian and jazz influences to create a lush, colourful and orchestral sound. Dreamy and complex, Sun Ark founder and songwriter Johannes Mann describes their self-titled debut album (Berlin’s Xjazz Music, February 2024) as ‘exploring a landscape’; a sonic story with a bright, springy opening track that bends into a red-hot, experimental arc. In Sun Ark’s performances, the band’s beat-driven grooves drift from produced compositions penned by Mann into skillful ambient and collaborative improvisations, creating a sound that is effervescent and entirely unique. Two of the band’s in-studio improvisations are excerpted in Sun Ark: fragile, droning ‘Photon’ and delicate ‘Fear’ both stem from the same 25-minute improv, and are sampled at opposite ends of the album. From Sun Ark’s light, breezy opening track ‘Sun’ to a lush, groovy ‘Arden’ sunset,this exploratory and masterful debut album paints a strange other world, which drip from the trippy and psychedelic to the dark, droning and angular. Listeners tumble into Sun Ark’s shimmery, fluid moods, which reach a crescendo at the album’s midway point, ‘Moon.sun’, a rich, ambient inverse of the album’s opening track, featuring a vocal sample from Charles Mingus’s ‘Eclipse’. Composer Mann and his band of skillful improvisers eschew categorization, leading the listener boldly from contemporary jazz to avant-garde and experimental (‘Ai Ai’ and ‘ArkOne’), lo-fi and guitar-forward (‘Shuggie’) and daydreamy melodies in acoustic Instrumentation (‘Crepuscule’). Sun Ark bridges the gap between electronically-produced music and acoustic jazz ensemble playing, with tracks that highlight the skilled musicianship of each of the band’s players. Melancholy, hungover-feeling ‘Walk’ highlights a stand-out bass solo from Thorbjörn Stefansson (on double bass), while Bene Jäckle (flute) provides sparkly, sunny intros and outros to ‘Arden’ and ‘Onfym’. ‘ArkOne’ and ‘Crepuscule’ feature confident performances from Povel Widestrand, playing on the Fender Rhodes and grand piano, and guitarist and composer Mann leans into an ‘80s synth sound in ‘Shuggie’ utilizing a Casio Midi-Guitar. In ‘Ai Ai’, Marius Wankel’s performance on drums is unmistakable, providing a complex rhythm that oozes between fast and slow, while Mann shows his guitar skills improvising over the complex set of Chord Changes of the song. Mann, Nissen, Widestrand, Stefansson, Wankel and Jäckle have played in venues around the world, from Bahia, Brazil’s Festival de Jazz do Capão to Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center, and across a number of local venues, including the Jazzexzess Concert Series, A-Trane and Donau115. In SUN ARK they join forces to improvise and experiment collectively to create a current Sound that aims to have a profound spiritual and emotional Impact. Sun Ark was recorded by Piotr Zegzula at RecPublica Studios in Lubza, Poland and Mixed & Mastered by Martin Ruch at Control Room Berlin. Additional Overdubs and Postproduction were done by Johannes Mann in his Studio in Berlin-Neukölln. The album’s retro futuristic artwork and visualizers are by Ben Luu, with trippy, mind bending videography by Ada Grueter for “Moon.Sun”.

Words by Eliza Levinson

Where does pop start and experimental music end? Instead of drawing lines, Red On keeps on exploring the spaces in between these supposed poles with his latest album Phantom Easy, a record that offers moments of pure beauty as well as unpredictable, uncontrollable wilderness.

The spaces Red On moves in aren’t per se terra incognita, but have been explored in recent years by like-minded musicians such as How To Dress Well, Fever Ray, or Dawuna, as well as artists that are affiliated with Präsenes Editionen, where Red On’s album is published, such as Martina Lussi, Belia Winnewisser, or Magda Drozd. Yet, Phantom Easy is an exploration of its own: The melancholic album, which is informed by pop, electroacoustic music, rhythm-focused jazz, and krautrock, is carried by Red On's voice, which appears in ever-changing stages of alienation. The wistful tone of the twelve tracks is reinforced by single phrases sung by Red On that, through their repetition, develop an urgency that can hardly be escaped. The result is pop music that is brave enough to embrace the adventure; or experimental music that doesn’t shy away from offering catchy hooks and grand melodies.

Harumi Ohzora’s “Viva” first released in 1983. This album features an array of musical influences from Salsa to Synth-pop and Rumba to Mambo. The record’s lyrics were composed by Takashi Matsumoto and its music composed by Haruomi Hosono.

180g 2LP 45rpm
Analogue Productions (Atlantic 75 Series)
Celebrating the 75th Anniversary of Atlantic Records!
An absolute must-have for every jazz collector!
180-gram mono 45 RPM double LP
Pressed at Quality Record Pressings
Gatefold old-style "tip-on" jacket by Stoughton Printing

The Clown was Charles Mingus' second masterpiece in a row, featuring Jean Shepard (yes, that Jean Shepard from the holiday movie A Christmas Story) on the title tune narrating a story about a clown attempting to please the world with his performances. The Clown also introduced two of Mingus' finest compositions in the driving, determined "Haitian Fight Song" and the '40s-flavored "Reincarnation of a Lovebird," a peaceful but melancholy tribute to Charlie Parker; Mingus would return to both throughout his career.

With Pithecanthropus, Mingus displayed a gift for airtight, focused arrangements that nonetheless allowed his players great freedom to add to the established mood of each piece. The Clown refines and heightens that gift; instead of just writing heads that provide launch points for solos, Mingus tries to evoke something specific with every piece, and even his most impressionistic forays have a strong storytelling quality.

The Clown tells the story of a clown "who tried to please people like most jazz musicians do, but whom nobody liked until he was dead," Mingus said, in an interview. "My version of the story ended with his blowing his brains out with the people laughing and finally being pleased because they thought it was part of the act. I liked the way Jean changed the ending; leaves it more up to the listener."

The title track is even more interesting for the free improvisations led by trombonist Jimmy Knepper, as the group responds to Shepherd's story and paints an aural backdrop. It's evidence that Mingus' compositional palette was growing more determinedly modern, much like his increasing use of dissonance, sudden tempo changes, and multiple sections.

Musicians:
Charles Mingus, bass
Shafi Hadi, alto and tenor saxophone
Jimmy Knepper, trombone
Wade Legge, piano
Dannie Richmond, drums
Jean Shepherd, narration (Track 4)

The album Ashac, initially released in 2017, a true gem that Discogs speculators have been coveting, is finally getting a repress.

King Chino's first full length instrumental album.

February of 2021 marked an eventful month for visionary Western Massachusetts electro-acoustic percussionist Jake Meginsky: the birth of his daughter Luce, the death of his friend and mentor (and the subject of his celebrated 2018 documentary, Full Mantis) Milford Graves, and the creation of Trinities. A four-piece suite heavily inspired by Graves’ notion of the primacy of threes as “a fundamental pattern in the universe - and the lowest, strongest and most generative structure in rhythm” the album showcases Meginsky’s adventurous vein of pointillist minimalism: stark, oblique, cerebral, fluid. It’s free music in both form and function, liberated from rhythm, pattern, or expectation. Abrupt flurries of metallic reverberations ping and echo against charged silences like avant-garde morse code. Textures clang and hang in low-lit air. Presence and absence commingling in elusive ballets of resonance and negative space.

Among the many influential teachings of free jazz icon Milford Graves was the idea of three-ness as “the underlying structure… the grounded being of all music.” It’s a concept both dialectical and divine – the sacred geometry of an idea, its opposite, and the synthesis that binds the two. For Trinities, Meginsky developed modular synth patches that allowed him to explore triplet structures in an intuitive way, “the threes as a structural principal, the building blocks, felt rather than heard”. During sleep deprived sessions with his newborn infant listening, he channeled the grief of Graves’ passing in early morning improvisations alternately quiet and questing, inquisitive and defiant.

The outlier is “2521,” a celestial lullaby of suspended frequencies composed on a 4-track in the birthing room of the hospital during a particularly strict phase of quarantine lockdown (no coming or going, or visitors, for a week straight). Meginsky played the piece for his daughter “as she came into this world, and while she slept.” Its harmonic tranquility ebbs and radiates in soft arcs like a soft dawn glowing on the horizon – welcoming those newly here, and waving warmly to those in the hereafter

He"s known as a versatile soloist, a forward- thinking composer and an expert leader, having fronted his long-time quartet of guitarist Jesse van Ruller, bassist Frans van der Hoeven and drummer Martijn Vink for over 20 years. Together, they present Polyphony 3, the newest instalment of Blom"s Polyphony cycle, which follows the widely acclaimed 2019 Whirlwind release Polyphony. Cologne based pianist Pablo Held, joins the line- up as a guest throughout this record and saxophonist Ben van Gelder and bass clarinettist Joris Roelofs feature on one track.

Trumpeter Raynald Colom immediately captivates with the hauntingly beautiful dream-like opening notes of his live recording, A Million Dreams. Colom demands the listener"s attention throughout the cohesive eight-track outing, alongside pianist Tony Tixier, Joe Sanders on double bass and Francesco Ciniglio on drums. French- born and Barcelona-based, Colom is a seasoned musician inspired by many genres and artforms, but with firm roots in flamenco

Pianist John Escreet, hailed by Time Out London as a "transatlantic jazz genius," continues his artistic ascent with the bold, exploratory album Seismic Shift. It is Escreet"s ninth album as a leader but his first at the helm of a trio, and also one of the first to see release since his move to the West Coast in early 2020. The UK native, former Brooklynite and now Los Angeles transplant teams up with fellow Angelenos Eric Revis (bass) and Damion Reid (drums) for a set brimming with fire and invention.

Paddan's Sigtryggur Baldursson and Birgir Mogensen are lifelong friends from Kópavogur, Iceland, who started as mates on the local football team, then graduated to making music together as teenagers, and even later as young men doing time in the experimental punk collective Kukl, from 1983 - 1986.

Kukl was populated by survivors of the post-punk scene in Iceland in the early 80s, which is well documented in the film Rock in Reykjavik from 1982. The band was released by the Crass collective in London and featured members, apart from Birgir and Sigtryggur, like Guðlaugur Óttarsson, Einar Melax, Björk and Einar Örn, some of whom would become better known later in outfits like the Sugarcubes and their respective solo work and other collaborations.

Sigtryggur has a long career in music, having worked with among others, Emiliana Torrini, Howie B, Les Negresses Vertes, Tomas R. Einarsson, Petur Ben, KK, Kaktus Einarsson, and many many others. He also produces an award-winning documentary music show for RUV called Hljómskálinn.

Birgir Mogensen is a classically trained classical guitarist and bass player who has worked through the years with artists ranging from Kukl to Killing Joke to Spilafifl and Inferno5.

Birgir and Sigtryggur formed Paddan during the 2010s, and are now preparing to release their EP Fluid Time, which has been inspired by their perception of time and space. Birgir Mogensen says, "As a duo, we trusted our musical intuition and were guided by allowing the first idea to remain unchanged during the recording process"Recorded, produced, and arranged by the pair, Sigtryggur and Birgir play basses and drums along with various other instruments.

All recordings are played on live instruments except a modular synth which is

programmed in the background of two tracks The duo is joined by the great harmonica and lap steel player Gaukur Davidsson on "Vaguely" and "Bug," and trumpet player Eirikur Orri Ólafsson on "Splash," not to mention the mixing expertise of Vaccines bassist Arni Hjörvar Árnason on "Bug," "Splash," and "Kokka," and sound-mixer Albert Finnbogason on "Vaguely."

Limited edition colored vinyl.

Everybody Loves THE Sunshine is more than a classic. It is “the” summer anthem, one of the most covered and sampled Soul tunes by Roy Ayers and the Ubiquity family. This vinyl re-release has been eagerly awaited by music lovers worldwide. This version was originally recorded as a cover version, produced by Soulciety Records for their label band project named The Soulsociety. The performance was recorded with the original songwriter and producer of the song, Mr. legendary vibes controller and Soul superstar Roy Ayers. This recording follows the original 70s feel and instrumentation of the 1976 version, but this time also features Roy Ayers prominently on lead vocals. Another big difference compared to all other versions by Roy and Ramp is the fact that this version is arranged and produced as a midtempo track. It will fit perfectly into any DJs set with a focus on Soul, Funk or Hip Hop. For the first time ever, this classic is now available on a Sedsoulciety Recordings 7” vinyl, including the previously unreleased instrumental version on the flip side with added extra vibes by the master himself.