‘By turns gleeful, sensitive, urgent and ruminative, this is a brilliant set that plays to the trio’s formidable strengths… Hearteningly delightful contemporary music-making’ (The Guardian).
‘A spare, de-cluttered, étude-like qualitymusic of sometimes unassuming but penetrating emotion and structural focus… full of the detail given to artists with powers of judgment to match the command of their instruments’ (Jazzwise).

Eniola Famodimu’s flesh-eating UK house monster back to stalk the earth, more than twenty years on.
Co-produced and mixed by Chris Simmonds — hardcore HJ massive in those days.

Spine-tinglingly yearning, yet dignified, rootical rocksteady classic — one of Phil Pratt’s top tunes, limpidly delivered by Lynn Taitt — with an ace Tommy McCook version.

Full-on, sex-hungry, hard-grooving, into-the-future electric blues. Check out Muddy dancing in his last minute on stage. Otis Spann led the closer — a torch-carrying setting of Langston Hughes — because Muddy was so knackered.

‘Tony Williams was barely twenty-three when he put the Lifetime trio together in 1969, only five years past his stint as the engine of the Miles Davis Quintet. Emergency!, the group’s sprawling double-album debut, paired Williams with organist Larry Young and a little-known British guitarist named John McLaughlin, and the record still stands as one of the founding documents of jazz-rock fusion — loud, unruly, ahead of where the rest of the music was standing.
‘The original Polydor LP, mixed by Gene Radick and mastered by Lee Hulko, caught that ferocity on tape but never quite in the grooves; low end swallowed the drums, and the whole thing arrived compressed into something closer to sludge than three musicians clearly having the time of their lives…
‘Mastering engineer Michael Brändli did this thingamajig Reference restoration and set against the 1969 pressing the gap is not subtle. Williams’ drums, once smothered under tape hiss and organ bleed, now hit with real transient snap. His cymbal work—skittering, argumentative, never just keeping time—finally gets the room the LP never gave it. Young’s Hammond pulls apart into distinct registers instead of one low howl, and McLaughlin’s guitar sits up front without the digital harshness that dogged later reissues too…
‘The 1969 LP sounded like a fight recorded from the next room, three musicians throwing punches through plaster. Brändli’s remaster tears the wall down. Nothing about the performance has changed; everything about hearing it has’ (All About Jazz).

‘As deeply rooted in soul’s past as you’d expect, but it never feels self-consciously retro… strikingly raw, racked with very real emotion’ (The Guardian).

No surprise that JC is murder over this scorching do-over of Winston Riley’s Nothing Is Impossible rhythm, as nailed originally by the Interns / Viceroys.

Terrific, gospelised, soulful disco by Gwendolyn Dennison, produced for P&P by Arthur Manning and P. J. Wyatt, making a change from Greg Carmichael or Patrick Adams.
Theo and Floating Points both rinse it.

With Larry Young, Elvin Jones, and Bobby Hutcherson.

‘Young is exceptional, very much on form, and Hutcherson makes an enormous contribution to a slower-paced and more meditative session than he’d normally favour’ (Penguin Guide to Jazz).
‘Bittersweet and beautiful, Street Of Dreams will be enjoyed by anyone who loves Idle Moments’ (All About Jazz).

Illmatic cultists mithered about this 1996 follow-up, but it’s aged magnificently, and they were wrong.
‘Amidst production from heavy hitters like Dr. Dre, Havoc of Mobb Deep and DJ Premier, Nas weaves evocative narratives of gang warfare, downtrodden neighborhoods, drug deals gone awry, and gangsta triumph, against a backdrop of samples from Sam Cooke, Etta James, the Isley Brothers, and even Chuck Mangione. With guest turns from Lauryn Hill, AZ, Foxy Brown, and Mobb Deep; classics like Street Dreams and If I Ruled The World.’

Outstandingly soulful Barry White productions from 1974, with fine songs by Tom Brock, and Gene Page pon spot.
(A Case Of) Too Much Lovemaking… What Am I Gonna Do… Biff… Boof.

LP fresh in.

Fifty-six fearless forays deep into the consecrated crates.
ALC does what he does best, with Roc Marciano rocking the pulpit; Budgie wheels back to the UK scene, dazzlingly rallying Knucks, Novelist, JayaHadADream, Joe James, Ragz Originale, Natanya, Qendresa, and full crew.
The CDs are resplendently dressed like a Bible, with foil debossing, the full monty. Lovely stuff.

Lovely, rootsy, melancholic, multifarious music from Angola. Check the sublime, chugging proto-house of Kazum-zum-zum, to start, with its twist of Afrobeat; then the hypnotic Fourth World marimba of Kizomba Kya Kisanji; then the expressive soul of Dembita, flowering out of Baden Powell… Warmly recommended.

Transportingly sublime, dazzlingly virtuosic Carnatic chanting in Sanskrit about female divinity, accompanied by mridangam drums, bells and tambura drone. Beautifully recorded, in Chennai. The chorus singing is the coup de grace.
Ravishing, restorative music; hotly recommended.

Over three hundred pages: numerous previously-unpublished photographs of Sun Ra and the Arkestra by Hartmut Geerken and Val Wilmer; a fully revised discography by Chris Trent, co-author of The Earthly Recordings Of Sun Ra; articles by Amiri Baraka, Chris Cutler, Robert L. Campbell, Salah Ragab and others; and newly gathered, full-colour images of hundreds of Sun Ra album covers, posters, handbills and ephemera, including reproductions of rare, hand-drawn, hand-coloured LP sleeves.
French fold cover, metallic foil blocking on cloth, hardback; 290mm x 245mm.
Fab. Pricey, but it’s a must, let’s face it (and Amazon has the previous, inferior edition for a grand).

‘Previously unreleased recordings made over several nights of the Wailers’ West London residency in June 1976, during their Rastaman Vibration tour. Highlights include a transcendent version of Roots, Rock, Reggae, a rarely-performed Bend Down Low, an extended version of Crazy Baldhead, and a thirty-minute encore that incorporates a twelve-minute Get Up, Stand Up.’