‘Oud-player with The Handover, Eissa was mentored by two legendary figures in Egyptian music: composer and multi-instrumentalist Abdo Dagher, and oud master Hazem Shahin. The music here is heavily rooted in both Egyptian classical music and a number of different folk music traditions, but it goes its own way, through expansive and intricate original compositions.
‘The epic title track, where Eissa plays oud exclusively, takes up two thirds of the album. It seamlessly transitions into heart-stopping recitation of the thirteenth century poet Baha´ al-din Zuhayr… serious, loving, tender and insistent, all at once. Impressively visionary and virtuoso, but at the same time warm and close.
‘A future classic.’

Norway’s finest hardanger fiddle player, performing traditional tunes from her native valley Hallingdal.
Wonderful.

Ecstatic, cosmic soul from 1981, swirling into space on flurries of brass, two-step bass, and TM’s overdosed-with-joy falsetto.

Classic deep Detroit house; featuring Marc Kinchen’s extended club mix.
Plus Carl Craig’s reconstruction of Help Myself.

‘Richly harmonic explorations in just intonation, using a sparse but finely detailed palette of organic atmospheres, metallic shimmer and off-kilter rhythms. Sample-based hip-hop, the minimalism of Terry Riley and Jon Hassell, as well as dub techno and post-rock; all in the house. Glassy pads, gamelan metallophones, clarinet and guitar dissolve into fluid, dreamlike forms, suggesting vast coastal landscapes, charged air, the calm after a storm…’

Pre-Revolution, psychedelic, funky prog from Iran, 1972-79. Loads of music, restored from K’s original master tapes; lavishly documented.

‘Charles Lloyd pays homage to his dear friend and longtime collaborator, master-tablaist Zakir Hussain. The album is built around studio recordings made in Mumbai in 2009 for an interrupted project featuring an expanded ensemble with drummer Eric Harland, Carnatic singer Vijay Prakash, Rakesh Chaurasia on bansuri, Sabir Khan on sarangi, Ranjit Barot on keyboard, and Niladri Kumar on sitar.’

This 1954 vocal LP was the trumpeter’s idea. Pretty much everyone in the studio was sceptical, but Baker stuck to his guns during the numerous takes required to iron out his tuning. ‘I thought it was bullshit,’ recalled his close collaborator, pianist Russ Freeman. ‘Louis Armstrong and Jack Teagarden sang like jazz singers. This was ballads. Totally meaningless.’ Metronome magazine pilloried Baker’s ‘abysmal vocal deficiencies’, like ‘a four-month-old baby’s lack of coordination because he can’t walk.’
Punters loved it. The same year, audience polls in Down Beat magazine made him best trumpeter and best vocalist, above Miles Davis and Nat King Cole. This LP became his best-seller, over the decades. Its version of My Funny Valentine is arguably definitive.

The sexual and racial politics of its reception run fascinatingly deep. Baker’s ‘white’, ‘effeminate’ singing style demurs a throw-down with ‘expressive’, ‘black’ machismo. (Bob Dorough, Mose Allison, and Michael Franks are fellow travellers.) ‘A lot of people thought — foolishly so — that because of the way I sang, I, y’know, liked fellas or something,’ Baker once remembered, nervously. According to his biographer James Gavin, the album made him the first jazz musician with a ‘strong homosexual following’. Pacific Jazz producer Dick Bock’s marketing survey in 1955 found that most of Baker’s fans were women who wanted to hear him sing. It was a massive hit in Brazil, too, coursing into the bossa nova movement via admirers like Joao Gilberto and Nara Leao.

This is terrific.
Brimming with saudade, an atmospheric, engrossing, organic blend of the gorgeous folk music of northern Ecuador’s indigenous communities, and tentative, crafted, soulful electronica.

‘Mala Fama is a Kichwa sound-artist from Ibarra, Ecuador, inhabiting — and creating — multiple worlds at once, while being rooted in Indigenous pride and power. Jichushka is a Kichwa word meaning lonely, or abandoned. Here, grief is re-cast as a pathway to liberation.
‘The album was recorded between 2016-2022. Home studio sessions facilitated close collaboration with a network of artists drawn from Andean musical lineages such as marimba, vallenato, and cumbia — including Afro-Ecuadorian group Duo Anjoa, vocalist Catalina Ortiz from coastal Esmeraldas, Ibarra-based multi-instrumentalist Luis Lema, and Quixosis. The album builds on peaceful ambient compositions as much as heavy sequencing, inviting melancholic remembrances of times and spaces that no longer exist.’

Warmly recommended. Like nothing else. Check it out!