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12"
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HJP 098EP
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$19.00
PREORDER
RELEASE DATE: 1/19/2024
Epic, grooving, dazzlingly creative, perfectly attuned blends of complex mbalax drumming, field recordings, thumping kick-drum, and cosmic, bubbling, jamming synths and electronics. The opening is suitably liminal, haunted by a diachronic sense of times past, present, and to come: ancestral ghosts, scratched playback, scraps of old recordings, voices strangulated or just out of range; puttering drums; futuristic, kosmische keys. Part II picks up the pace; III gives the drummers some, and heightens the atmosphere of enchantment. Jon Hassell's Fourth World music courses through a kind of Dream Theory In Dakar. "Toco SOS," the second side, is a thumping, throbbing, mesmeric future-classic. Expert hand percussion, call-and-response singing, bin-trembling foot-drum, spaceways keys. Sleekly funky as prime Popol Vuh. Both sides range expansively by way of Berlin, where Lamin resided for a few years. Half an hour of stunning music; in a beautiful sleeve, with mirror lettering, and an intricate spot-gloss rendition of salt crystals, laid over a photograph of the salt mines at Lac Rose, outside Dakar.
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2LP
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HJP 097LP
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Four dazzling, extended engagements with mbalax master-drumming. The contribution from Holy Tongue is chase-the-devil steppers -- thumping, clangorous, reverberating -- super-charged with energy and atmosphere. From the off, drummer Valentina Magaletti detonates a hard rain of small bombs, rounds of fire, ticking fuses. Musical co-ordinates are somewhere between classic On-U Sound crew like African Head Charge, The Mothmen, and Creation Rebel, and the experimental funk of the Pop Group and 23 Skidoo, at their funkiest. Thrillingly, the two dubs are increasingly deranged. Adjusting the same wavelengths as her superb Workaround LP, Beatrice Dillon plays spaced-out, abstract synth-work against the bodily physicality of the ancient, shifting mbalax rhythms. The music is poised, mindful, tentative; but also limber, fleet, and magical. Phantasmagorical and efflorescent, Lamin Fofana's one-two is simply stunning. Both excursions are wide-open, beautiful, epic, and propulsive -- the first mix is banging and headlong, the second more syncopated and serpentine -- teeming with freshly sublime, funkdafied updates on Jon Hassell's Fourth World possible musics. The two parts of LABOUR's "Etu Keur Gui" engage the same sequence of drum patterns (called bakks) from different perspectives. The duo performed portions of this piece at the opening ceremony of the Dakar Biennial in 2022, at the Grand National Theater, with thirty sabar players from the family of Doudou Ndiaye Rose. This Wolof phrase for the inner-court of a home -- a meeting-place -- doubles here as a metaphor for inner space on a metaphysical level; and Pan Sonic, Muslimgauze, Zoviet France, early Shackleton -- all ghost across the threshold.
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12"
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HJP 096EP
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Killer EP. Next-level Shackleton. Taking off from Beaugars Seck's foundational sabar drum rhythms -- recorded by Sam in Dakar in February 2020 -- Shackleton has constructed a trio of intricately layered, luminous, enchanted, epic excursions. The second is more dazzled and meandering, with jellied bass, insectile detail, and discombobulated jabbering; the third is more liquid, fleet of foot, and psychedelic, with a grooving b-line and funky keyboard stabs, scrambled eastern strings and hypnotic vocalese. The harmonium in "The Overwhelming Yes" sounds like Nico blowing in chillily from up the desert shore. The overall mood is wondrous, twinkling with light, onwards-and-upwards; an uncanny, dubwise mix of the ancient and the futuristic. Mark Ernestus's "Version" is stripped, trepidatious, mystical, and stranger still, with just a snatch of the original melody, extra distortion and delay, and crystal-clear drum sound. Twenty minutes of startlingly original music, with Shackleton the maestro at the top of his game, and a characteristically devilish dub by Mark Ernestus. Mastered by Rashad Becker; handsomely sleeved. Sick to the nth. Love 4 ever.
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2LP
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HJR 087LP
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Magnificent Wolof drum music, performed by an extended griot family over seven consecutive days, in the mystical setting of Lac Rose, outside Dakar. Doudou Ndiaye Rose -- who died in 2015 -- is a key drummer in the musical history of the world. He developed a system of five hundred original drumming patterns, ancient and new. Amongst the modern rhythms here is Bench Mi -- "under the Baobab tree," a spot where problems get solved. Also, Hibar Yi -- "passing on information" -- the theme-tune of Senegalese TV national news for decades -- and Les Rosettes, the signature rhythm of Senegal's first ever all-female percussion group, convened by Doudou, and named after his grandmother. These original compositions sit alongside important traditional rhythms, familiar to every Sabar player, such as "Farwu Jar" (a courtship game sometimes resulting in a wedding), "Ceebu Jin" (also the name of the national dish of fish and rice), and "Gumbé", often played after a successful harvest. Recorded in joyful single takes, with no overdubs, mastered by Rashad Becker, the music is deep and thrilling, polyrhythmic to the bone, with a complex, pointillistic intensity at times evoking Jeff Mills in full flight.
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2LP
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HJR 084LP
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2023 restock. 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, hiccupping 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.
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12"
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HJP 095EP
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Three dazzling re-routings of Detroit machine funk -- Moodymann in particular -- into deep mid-Atlantic cominglings with raw, old-school hip-hop and house. "Str8 Crooked" is clattering, chugging jack, holding something like Paisley soul under the water; "Build Back Better Sweatshops" is more driving, riven with breakdowns and horror-show vocal samples. With an up-tempo downbeat which nonetheless sounds like a tolling bell, the epic, immersive, sixteen-minutes-plus "Episcopi Vagantes" pulls off the deadly combination of a kind of stifled, timeworn, melodic wistfulness and percussively restless, passing-through urgency. This is killer dance music, run through with swinging bass and ruff b-boy drum-machine rhythms: encrusted and detailed, mangled and nervy, but intensely hard-grooving; wired with punk insouciance, edginess, and free spirit.
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2LP
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HJR 083LP
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2023 repress. Gonzalo Benitez and Luis Alberto Valencia were kingpins of the musica nacional movement in Ecuador. Check them out on the cover, on a rooftop in Quito's Old Town, surveying their dominion. In 1970, when Valencia collapsed onstage during a performance of the yaravi Desesperacion -- "My heart is already in ashes" -- and died four days later, aged 52, his coffin was carried through those city streets on the shoulders of his fans. They began singing as a duo in their mid-teens. During twenty-eight years together they recorded more than six hundred songs, for Discos Ecuador, Nacional, Granja, Ortiz, Rondador, Onix, Fuente, Real, Tropical, Fadisa, RCA Victor -- and of course CAIFE. Their exquisitely romantic harmonizing is a sublime blend of collected forbearance and abject self-annihilation, underpinned and elaborated by the heart-piercing, improvisatory guitar-playing of Bolivar Ortiz. Effectively the third member of the group. "El Pollo" sets the tone and intensity for everything that follows: listen to his soloing at the start of our opener, "Lamparilla". Musically a pasillo -- a cross between a Viennese waltz and the indigenous yaravi rhythm -- "Lamparilla" draws its verses from a poem by Luz Martinez from "Riobamba", written in 1918 when she was 15, under the influence of Baudelaire and Mallarme. Another pasillo here, "Sombras" is one of the best-loved songs in the musica nacional canon, setting lines about undercover sex and loss by the Mexican poet Maria Pren, which were considered pornographic on publication in 1911. And Benitez and Valencia looked back still further, to the indigenous roots of Ecuadorian music, as the key to its future. "Carnaval de Guaranda" is their take on a song dating back to the era of the Mitimaes, a broad group of Bolivian tribes conquered by the Incas and displaced to Ecuador. "Impossible love of mine/ I love you for being impossible/ Who loves what is impossible/ Is the truest lover." Presented in a gatefold sleeve with spot-gloss, and printed inners, with stunning photos and expert notes. Excellent sound, drawn from original tapes, by way of Abbey Road, Dubplates & Mastering and Pallas.
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2LP
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HJR 086LP
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Visceral, elemental, electronic funk, conjured from scraps of sound, breath, mutterings, dub-wise remembrances, scuffling, sweat and blood, thin air -- "crawled out of the slime", as the opener puts it, self-engendering like the baddie in Terminator -- all harnessed to cruelly grooving earthquake bass and b-boy drum science. Rhythmically it has ants in its pants and it needs to dance, with an improvisatory, streetwise nervous energy and uninhibited, purposeful rapture, crossed with on-song Pepe Bradock and stripped-to-the-bone, mongrel hip-hop. It's unruly and edgy, a bit off its rocker, emotionally ranging -- typically anxious, often nostalgic -- and riveting dance music. Mastering by Dubplates & Mastering; first-class Pallas pressing; gatefold artwork by Will Bankhead.
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2LP
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HJR 085LP
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2023 restock. Impatiently returning to the golden age of Ecuadorian musica national, this second round of retrievals is more of a selectors' affair: less reverent, more free-flowing, with more twists and turns. There is no let-up in musical quality, maintaining the same judicious, heart-piercing balance between emotional desolation and dignified endurance, the same bitter-sweet play between affective excess and musical sublimity. This time around, the women steal the show. Laura and Mercedes Suasti were child stars, with an exclusive Radio Quito contract. Unlike nearly all the men here, they lived long and prospered: Mercedes died last year, at the age of 93. Gladys Viera and Olga Gutierrez both came to Ecuador from Argentina. To start, Gladys plugged the scandalous new Monokini swimwear; Olga performed for visiting British royalty in 1962. Olga was glamorous but tough. She would make little of the amputation of one of her legs: "I don't sing with my leg." She is accompanied on our opener by quintessentially reeling, sultry musica national: haunted-house organ, twinkling xylophone, Guillermo Rodriguez' heart-plucking guitar-playing, and lilting, dance-to-keep-from-crying double-bass. "Sometimes I think that you will leave me with no memories," she sings, "that you hold only disappointments in store for me... In the future your love will search me out, full of regret. By then it will be too late, there will be no consolation, only disappointment awaiting you." Other highlights include the two contributions of Orquesta Nacional: "Ponchito Al Hombro", like an off-the-wall forerunner of the Love Unlimited Orchestra, beamed into the tropics from an unknowable time and space; and the tone poem Atahualpa, a mystical yumbo invoking Quito's most ancient inhabitants, the Kichwa. Also, the tremulous, gypsy-flavored violin-playing of Raul Emiliani, who arrived in Quito from Italy, suffering PTSD from the Second World War; the inscrutable, sardonic experimentalism of organist Lucho Munoz; and the mooing and whistling of Toro Barroso -- school of Lee Perry -- in which a muddy bull dashes home to his darling chola, fearless, full of desire. Lavishly presented, with a full-size, full-color booklet, with transporting art-work and expert notes. Luminous sound, by way of Abbey Road; Dubplates & Mastering and Pallas. Features Olga Gutierrez, Hnas. Mendoza Suasti, Benitez y Valencia, Caspi Shungo, Gladys Viera, Orquesta Nacional, Lida Uquillas, Los Inaquingas, Segundo Bautista, Los Barrieros, Raul Emiliani, Hector Bonilla, Duo Aguayo Huayamabe, Conjunto CAIFE, Lucho Munoz, Hnos. Valencia Con Conjunto CAIFE, and Luis Alberto Valencia.
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2LP
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HJR 082LP
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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 the curtain-raiser Biluka, who travelled to Quito from Rio, naming his new band Los Canibales in honor of the late-twenties Cannibalist movement back home, dedicated to cannibalizing 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. Features Biluka y Los Canibales, Duo Mendoza-Ortiz, Mendoza Suasti, Olga Gutierrez, Los Inaquingas, Hermanos Castro, Benitez y Valencia, Los Tres Ases, Conjunto Caife, Lucho Munoz, Duo Aguayo Huayamabe, Hermanas Mendoza Suasti, Raul Emiliani y Hector Bonilla, and Segundo Bautista. Sound courtesy of original reels in Quito, and Abbey Road in London; pressed at Pallas. Gatefold sleeve and printed inners; includes full-size, full-color booklet, with photos and notes.
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10"
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HJP 093EP
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Fourteen Years is the first of three 10" comprising Charlotte Courbe's third album. It marks her return to Honest Jon's after two decades. Recently, Charlotte joined Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds, singing and playing scissors. Her recording "Born To Lie" featured prominently in the TV series Killing Eve. After a cancer diagnosis last year, Charlotte felt the urge to produce and release new music. "It became like a vital thing." "MRI Song" and "Planet Ping Pong" were recorded during chemotherapy. "Mind Contorted" is a duet with Terry Hall, also featuring Terry's son Theodore, and Noel Gallagher on guitars, in a cover of Daniel Johnston. The song Fourteen Years is the oldest inclusion. Meant for LVC's second album -- I Wish Dee Dee Ramone Was Here With Me -- it announces a fresh, freer direction. The sleeve exclusively presents new work by the celebrated English artist, John Stezaker, in the first of a triptych. This EP is laced with surprise and subversiveness. It's refreshing candor sets it apart. It's a unique, compelling listen.
"When I first met her she was wearing a cape. She looked like a little piece of Lego. She told me she liked some of my songs but not all of them. (I hadn't even asked her opinion!) She's beautiful, fearless and one hell of a tambourine player." --Noel Gallagher
"Inspiring originality, fiercely independent, beautiful music, always years ahead of its time. I remember hearing Charlotte's music for the first time and being immediately taken by the freshness, great melodies and utterly unique approach." --Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine
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2LP
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HJR 080LP
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2022 restock. The second of three volumes surveying surely the mightiest Gospel label of them all. Sublime crossings of gospel with the soul, funk and jazz of the Black Power era. Twenty rapturous cuts dot dazzlingly between Muscle Shoals soul, screwed breakbeat, Mizells-style fusion, disco and proto-house. Triumphant re-workings of Sly Stone, Donny Hathaway, and Herbie Hancock's "Head Hunters" will have listeners throwing their pew cushions into the air. Drawn from hard-to-find 45s and LPs, hardly any of these recordings have been reissued since their first release. Presented in a gatefold sleeve, with full-size booklet; beautifully designed, with stunning, rare photographs and original Savoy artwork. Sound restoration and mastering at Abbey Road; pressed at Pallas. Co-curated by Greg Belson, compiler of Divine Disco; with deep, extensive notes by Robert Marovich, author of A City Called Heaven: Chicago and the Birth of Gospel Music (University of Illinois), and host of the award-winning radio show Gospel Memories.
Features The Artistic Sounds, The Holy Lights of Baltimore, MD, The Swan Silvertones, Gene Martin, Myrna Summers, James Cleveland and the Southern California Community Choir, Betty Hollins, The Metro Tones, The World Wonders, The Brooklyn Skyways, Ida Maxey, The Thornes Trio, Mildred Clark And The Melody-Aires, The Highway Q.C.s, The Gospelaires Of Dayton, Ohio, The Exciting Supreme Highlights, James Moore, Prof. Charles Taylor and The Charles Taylor Singers, and The Brockington Ensemble.
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2LP
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HJR 079LP
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2022 restock. The first of three volumes surveying surely the mightiest Gospel label of them all. 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 Harmonizing 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". Drawn from nigh-impossible-to-find 78s, sevens and LPs, hardly any of these recordings have been reissued since their first release. Presented in a gatefold sleeve, with full-size booklet; beautifully designed, with stunning, rare photographs and original Savoy artwork. Sound restoration and mastering at Abbey Road; pressed at Pallas. Co-curated by Greg Belson, compiler of Divine Disco; with deep, extensive notes by Robert Marovich, author of A City Called Heaven: Chicago and the Birth of Gospel Music (University of Illinois), and host of the award-winning radio show Gospel Memories.
Features Famous Ward Singers, The Harmonizing Five, The Sensational Six, The Gospel Harmonettes Specials, The Christones, The Staple Singers, Swindell Brothers, The Roberta Martin Singers, Jimmy Scott, Shirley Caesar and The Caravans, The Blind Boys of Alabama, The Hightower Brothers, North Philadelphia Juniors, The Selah Singers, The Ward Singers, The Stars of Faith, Marion Williams, The Gospel Cavaliers, The Caravans, Eddie Williams and the Crusaders, The Davis Sisters, The Gospel Chimes, The Angelic Gospel Choir, and The Angelic Choir.
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3CD
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HJR 079CD
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2021 restock. An extensive, sumptuous survey of surely the mightiest Gospel label of them all. Sixty-one gems of stomping, rollicking, desolate, ravishing gospel music, intermingling with soul, blues, doo-wop, jazz, R&B, disco, and boogie. Covering 1954-1966, the first disc is infused and incandescent with the hurting, surging indignation of the Civil Rights movement. Twenty-four heart-stopping scorchers by giants like the Staple Singers and Jimmy Scott, alongside less celebrated names like The Harmonizing 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". The second disc presents sublime crossings of gospel with the soul, funk, and jazz of the Black Power era. Twenty rapturous cuts dot dazzlingly between Muscle Shoals soul, screwed breakbeat, Mizells-style fusion, disco and proto-house. Triumphant re-workings of Sly Stone, Donny Hathaway, and Herbie Hancock's "Head Hunters" will have listeners throwing their pew cushions into the air. The third disc selects fierce funk, rapturous soul and transcendent disco and boogie, loaded with roaring choirs, rocking horns and popping bass guitars, super-charged with celebration and affirmativeness, from the years leading up to Savoy's acquisition by Malaco. Drawn from nigh-impossible-to-find 78s, sevens, twelves and LPs, hardly any of these recordings -- perhaps none -- have been reissued since their first release. The third disc opens with a stupendous onslaught by Edith Moreno which only appeared as a tiny handful of blank-label promos. Presented as a sixty-page mini-book, perfect-bound, with CDs suspended in card sleeves; beautifully designed, with stunning, rare photographs and original Savoy artwork. Sound restoration and mastering were done at Abbey Road. Co-curated by Greg Belson, compiler of Divine Disco; with deep, extensive notes by Robert Marovich, author of A City Called Heaven: Chicago and the Birth of Gospel Music (University of Illinois), and host of the award-winning radio show, Gospel Memories.
Features Famous Ward Singers, The Harmonizing Five, The Sensational Six, The Gospel Harmonettes Specials, The Christones, The Staple Singers, Swindell Brothers, The Roberta Martin Singers, Jimmy Scott, Shirley Caesar and The Caravans, The Blind Boys of Alabama, The Hightower Brothers, North Philadelphia Juniors, The Selah Singers, The Ward Singers, The Stars of Faith, Marion Williams, The Gospel Cavaliers, The Caravans, Eddie Williams and the Crusaders, The Davis Sisters, The Gospel Chimes, The Angelic Gospel Choir, The Angelic Choir, The Artistic Sounds, The Holy Lights of Baltimore, MD, The Swan Silvertones, Gene Martin, Myrna Summers, James Cleveland and the Southern California Community Choir, Betty Hollins, The Metro Tones, The World Wonders, The Brooklyn Skyways, Ida Maxey, The Thornes Trio, Mildred Clark And The Melody-Aires, The Highway Q.C.s, The Gospelaires Of Dayton, Ohio, The Exciting Supreme Highlights, James Moore, Prof. Charles Taylor and The Charles Taylor Singers, The Brockington Ensemble, Edith Moreno, The World Wonders, The Helen Hollins Singers, Solomon Burke, Genobia Jeter, The Lady Lois Snead with the Interdemoninational Mass Choir of Atlanta, GA, Charisma, The Stan Lee Revue, The Sensational Williams Brothers, The 4th Of May, James Cleveland And The Cleveland Singers, The Hollywood Stars, The Steele Family, and Glenn Jones And The Modulations.
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2LP
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HJR 081LP
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2022 restock. The third of three volumes surveying surely the mightiest Gospel label of them all. 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. Hardly any of these recordings have been reissued since their first release. The stupendous opener by Edith Moreno only appeared as a blank-label promo, in a tiny run. Presented in a spot-glossed sleeve, with full-size booklet; beautifully designed, with stunning, rare photographs and original Savoy artwork. Sound restoration and mastering at Abbey Road; pressed at Pallas. Co-curated by Greg Belson, compiler of Divine Disco; with deep, extensive notes by Robert Marovich, author of A City Called Heaven: Chicago and the Birth of Gospel Music (University of Illinois), and host of the award-winning radio show Gospel Memories.
Features Edith Moreno, The World Wonders, The Helen Hollins Singers, Solomon Burke, Genobia Jeter, The Lady Lois Snead with the Interdemoninational Mass Choir of Atlanta, GA, Charisma, The Stan Lee Revue, The Sensational Williams Brothers, The 4th Of May, James Cleveland And The Cleveland Singers, The Hollywood Stars, The Steele Family, and Glenn Jones And The Modulations.
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2LP
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HJR 215LP
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Wonderful, previously unreleased recordings by Derek Bailey and his guests at Company Week in 1983. What's remarkable throughout this album is the respect and affection the musicians show for each other, exemplifying the dictionary definition of "company" as "the fact or condition of being with another or others, especially in a way that provides friendship and enjoyment." It starts with "Landslide", a brilliant, spiky, spluttering, twanging reunion of Music Improvisation Company members Evan Parker (tenor sax), Hugh Davies (electronics), and Jamie Muir (percussion). Next up, "Seconde Choix", with Joëlle Léandre's close-miked prepared bass and Bailey's acoustic guitar seemingly heading in different directions before coming together miraculously in just four minutes. The opening of "First Choice", a duet between Bailey and Muir, is a revelation for those who moan that the guitarist plays too many notes. His patient and truly exquisite exploration of harmonics is beautifully counterpointed by Muir's metallic percussion. On "Pile Ou Face" (Heads Or Tails) Davies concentrates on his high register oscillators, carefully shadowed by Parker's soprano until Léandre's deft, springy pizzicato lures them into the playground. "JD In Paradise" is a surprisingly delicate wind quartet, with John Corbett's trumpet, fragile and Don Cherry-like, punctuating the sinuous interplay between Peter Brötzmann and J.D. Parran (on sopranos, flutes and clarinet), while trombonist Vinko Globokar growls approvingly in the background. Igor Stravinsky's magnificent definition of music as the jeu de notes comes to mind listening to Bailey's duet with cellist Ernst Reijseger (executing fiendish double-stopped harmonics with staggering ease). Technical virtuosity has never sounded so effortless -- it is, as its title "Een Plezierig Stukje" simply states, a fun piece. On the closing "La Horda", Bailey and Reijseger team up with the horns for what on paper looks like it could be rough and rowdy sextet but which turns out once more to be a thoughtful, spacious exchange of ideas, shapes, and colors.
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2CD
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HJR 077CD
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The latest volumes in this highly acclaimed series presenting the music of the Windrush generation: the post-war, London recordings of West Indians and West Africans, in the first wave of modern migration to Britain. Volume 7: Calypso, Palm Wine, Mento, Joropo, Steel & Stringband overflows with diverse musical styles, including steel band, string band, calypso, joropo, and mento. Features Lord Beginner, The Lion, The Mighty Terror, Dai Dai Simba, Willie Payne & The Starlite Tempos, Louise Bennett, Marie Bryant, Nigerian Union Rhythm Group, Calypso Rhythm Kings, Bill Rogers, Lili Verona, Billy Sholanke, Lord & Lady Beginner, West African Rhythm Brothers, and Trinidad Steel Band. Volume 8: Lord Kitchener In England, 1948-1962 is devoted to the great calypsonian Lord Kitchener. Double-CD comes with a forty-page booklet, including numerous stunning photographs, and brilliant new writing by Kitch's biographer, Anthony Joseph. Sound restoration at Abbey Road; pressed at Pallas.
"One of the delights of the age" --Songlines.
"a witty and joyous testament" --Guardian.
"impeccably curated and packaged" --Wire.
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10"
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HJP 092EP
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"Hebi" is tough, stomping, mesmerizing romany funk, riding Far East from the Baltic Sea on clopping hooves of uranium, with synths from spaceways further out still. Weakheart deejays will scatter, but Sotofett has road-tested this on dubplate for six months, tearing up parties and dancefloors. Deeply meditative, desolately beautiful, "Haru" will stop you in your tracks. Osaruxo's violin could be a rebab or a shamisen, a reed instrument or a voice. Ravishing music.
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2LP
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HJR 077LP
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2024 restock. The latest volumes in this highly acclaimed series presenting the music of the Windrush generation: the post-war, London recordings of West Indians and West Africans, in the first wave of modern migration to Britain. Volume 7: Calypso, Palm Wine, Mento, Joropo, Steel & Stringband overflows with diverse musical styles, including steel band, string band, calypso, joropo, and mento. Features Lord Beginner, The Lion, The Mighty Terror, Dai Dai Simba, Willie Payne & The Starlite Tempos, The Mighty Terror, Louise Bennett, Marie Bryant, Nigerian Union Rhythm Group, Calypso Rhythm Kings, Bill Rogers, Lili Verona, Billy Sholanke, Lord & Lady Beginner, West African Rhythm Brothers, and Trinidad Steel Band. Sound restoration at Abbey Road; pressed at Pallas. Gatefold sleeve; full-size leaflets.
"One of the delights of the age" --Songlines.
"a witty and joyous testament" --Guardian.
"impeccably curated and packaged" --Wire.
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2LP
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HJR 078LP
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2024 restock. The latest volumes in this highly acclaimed series presenting the music of the Windrush generation: the post-war, London recordings of West Indians and West Africans, in the first wave of modern migration to Britain. Volume 8: Lord Kitchener In England, 1948-1962 is devoted to the great calypsonian Lord Kitchener. Gatefold double LP with insert, including numerous stunning photographs, and brilliant new writing by Kitch's biographer, Anthony Joseph. Sound restoration at Abbey Road; pressed at Pallas.
"One of the delights of the age" --Songlines.
"a witty and joyous testament" --Guardian.
"impeccably curated and packaged" --Wire.
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2LP
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HJR 214LP
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For the 1983 edition of Company Week held at London's I.C.A. in May of that year, guitarist Derek Bailey once more invited a typically eclectic collection of guests. Cellist Ernst Reijseger is a mainstay of Dutch new jazz (ICP Orchestra, Clusone Trio...), American wind virtuoso J.D.Parran a veteran of the Black Artists' Group and Anthony Davis and Anthony Braxton ensembles, while saxophonists Evan Parker and Peter Brötzmann, as titans of European free improvisation, need no introduction. French bassist/vocalist 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. He and British electronics pioneer Hugh Davies served time with Karlheinz Stockhausen, and before a brief stint with Robert Fripp's King Crimson, percussionist Jamie Muir was, with Davies, on the very first (Music Improvisation) Company outing in 1970. Bailey once described playing solo as a "second-rate activity"; while at the other end of the spectrum, large improvising ensembles can, if they're not careful, descend into the musical equivalent of a rugby scrum: dangerous, but thrilling -- listen to what happens when Brötzmann comes barreling into the final track here. Sometimes one instrument takes center stage, as Parker's circular-breathing soprano does at the beginning of "Trio Five", but knowing when to lie low, as he does in the brief austere "Trio 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 "Trio Four", but the trombonist is all over the place on "Trio One" -- transcribe what Globokar does here and it might be the most difficult trombone music ever written -- with Léandre racing up and down her bass and Davies all spikes, squeaks and squiggles, after which "Trio Two" is a lighter affair, Parran's flute and Léandre's vocals twittering together while Derek's acoustic twangs merrily along. With a touch of dry Bailey humor, two of the seven tracks 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 too many cooks don't necessarily spoil the broth but sure as hell spice it up.
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7"
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HJP 091EP
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Red hot gospel soul from 1983. Only ever issued as a test white-label; never before released commercially. 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 the Savoy singles.
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3LP
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HJR 213LP
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More buried treasure from the 1982 Company Week at London's I.C.A., seven more epiphanies (previously unreleased!) to add to the six on Epiphanies I-VI (HJR 212LP) and the 48-minute ensemble Epiphany (HJR 211LP). Fred Frith's diverse activities as composer and educator in recent years shouldn't let us forget he's 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 an extended techniques tour de force, 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, condenses a whole lifetime of musical exploration into a mere twelve minutes. Elsewhere, on "Eighth", violinist Philipp 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 caressing it out from the keyboard. Those that moan that improvised music is more about finding extraordinary new sounds and less concerned with exploring nuances of pitch, both horizontally (melody, yes) and vertically (harmony), should listen up. "Ninth" is a spikier affair, with Lewis giving a whole new meaning to the word embouchure, 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's 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. The word that comes to mind here most often is virtuosity, not just in terms of simple ability on one's chosen instrument(s) but also in knowing just how and just when to display it -- not surprisingly it was Fred Frith who coined the term "virtuoso listening". That's what these folks do, and ever so well: be a virtuoso listener yourself and check it out.
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2LP
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HJR 212LP
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Ever played that game where you imagine you can invite a few people from any period in human history to a dinner party guaranteed to produce rich, stimulating, and provocative conversation? Derek Bailey did it for real, musically, in his Company Weeks. In July 1982, his guests at London's I.C.A. 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. In addition to the stellar group improvisation Epiphany (HJR 211LP), they also recorded enough material for two more full-length albums, of which this is the first. That line above about conversation presupposes that music is some sort of language -- a thorny proposition indeed on which whole books have been written. Suffice it to say that if it is a language -- music certainly communicates, that's for sure -- it's not an Indo-European model: the only way music can express the notion of past tense is by repeating something, so that listeners can identify it as something they've heard before. Improvised music, however, is forever "in the moment", as improvisers like to put it, i.e. the present tense -- and the present tense has never been more wonderfully communicative than it is in these six epiphanic improvisations. Yoshizawa and Oppens (both on the keyboard and inside her piano) bounce ideas off each other like ping-pong balls ("First"); Tippetts, Wachsmann, and Bailey do extraterrestrial cubist flamenco ("Second"); Lewis and Frith rumble at everyone magnificently ("Third"); Tippett and Oppens kaleidoscope the entire history of the piano into just over 15 minutes ("Fourth" and "Fifth") with added seasoning from LeBaron and Wachsmann, and on the closing "Sixth", Akio Suzuki, despite describing himself elsewhere 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, as well as vocalize into the tube). Yoshizawa and Bailey give him a real run for his money though, and it all builds to an ecstatic swirling, grinding climax, with Suzuki whooping and hollering wildly. Is it language? You decide. Is it rich, stimulating and provocative? You bet. What a dinner party! Bon appetit!
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7"
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HJP 089EP
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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 fervor 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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