Spiritual jazz fusion from San Francisco, impossible to find soon after it was privately pressed in a tiny run back in 1983, and highly collectible nowadays. ‘If you like John Heartsman, Aposento Alto or Minority Band, don’t miss a true killer record.’

Meditative, devotional music pondering racism and ancestorship, co-produced by Meshell Ndegeocello. Featuring the saxophonist’s usual quartet, plus vocalists for the first time — including Ganavya — who shine.

The trio of Roland P. Young, Aisha Khalil and Glenn Howell, recorded in 1975 at 1750 Arch, in Berkeley, California.

“There was a vibe in the air that we connected with,” recalls Young, “along with other kindred spirits world-wide. What appeared to be ‘experimental’ was reaching for sounds and emotions that were unfamiliar. We often performed at rallies in support of various causes: Black Liberation, Women’s Movement, Anti-War Movement, Gay Liberation. While the music came out of the Black Liberation struggle our ultimate goal was a blending of cultures.”

‘A fascinating glimpse of the trio in action. It testifies to the energy that Infinite Sound channelled into their music, but also to their imaginative breadth and expressive versatility… with Howell’s buoyantly springy and resilient bass taking on a strong pivotal role around which Young’s horns and Kahlil’s voice dance and spar and soar and play. Well-defined rhythms dissolve into textures; melodic shapes soften into shadings of timbre or flare into exuberant bursts of tonal colour. The music’s mood swings unpredictably from flamboyance to introspection; pacing shifts spontaneously from languor to urgency. Moments of musical allusiveness, sly quotation or stylistic reference, mutate into passages of wild inventiveness.’

The Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra was created in 1971 by the legendary pianist François Tusques. L’Inter Communal compiles extracts from concerts given between 1976 and 1978, revelling in the political engagement which lit up free jazz and popular music in that period.
According to Tusques, the Spanish singer Carlos Andreu was a griot ‘who created of new genre of popular song improvised with our music, based on events going on at the time.’
The opener Blues Pour Miguel Enriquez invokes Thelonious Monk in an uproarious homage to the Chilean revolutionary. Another song is entitled L’heure est à la lutte’... The time to fight is now.

From 1981, the further excursions of ‘the people’s jazz workshop’, in the words of founder Francois Tusques.
Le Musichien is an Afro-Catalan adventure, free as a bird, headed for the outer spaceways. Tusques sings together with the Spaniard Carlos Andreu, riding the grooving bass-playing of Jean-Jacques Avenel, percussion from Kilikus, the saxophones Sylvain Kassap and Yebga Likoba, and Ramadolf playing trombone.
Les Amis d’Afrique was recorded the following year, at the Tombées de la Nuit festival in Rennes. Tusques and bassist Tanguy Le Doré weave the backdrop of an explosive new brotherhood of breath, in the tradition of John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders: Bernard Vitet on trumpet, Danièle Dumas and Sylvain Kassap on saxophones, Jean-Louis Le Vallegant and Philippe Le Strat on… yes… cannons.

Camae Ayewa aka Moor Mother, trumpeter Aquiles Navarro, drummer Tcheser Holmes, saxophonist Keir Neuringer, and bassist Luke Stewart.
Raw, organic punk-jazz,  trying out electronics and synthesizers for the first time.
‘Irreversible Entanglements’ fearless music takes to task the police, American politics, capitalism, and racism (The Nation).
‘The jazz ensemble evokes our American topography, both physically and psychologically, by capturing what’s in the news and what’s underneath that surface’ (Pitchfork).

‘Documenting a 2023 West Coast tour, this double LP goes deep. On 2023-05-12 Set II, the rhythm section gives Collier plenty of space to develop long, soulful saxophone lines that are full of invention and dynamic variation, culminating in a climax of squawking multi phonics, woody bass runs and multi-directional drumming. Best of all is a riveting set dedicated to Don Cherry, where Collier vocalises freely through a megaphone, setting off its alarm at key points’ (The Wire).

‘You’re never too old to learn something new. Reed credits bebop with keeping him and his friends out of reform school because they were too busy listening to records to get into trouble. Finding fame as a writer, he returned to music circuitously, eventually taking the plunge at aged 60 to study jazz piano. Diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2006 he hastily assembled a quintet to fulfil a lifelong ambition of recording an album. He made the record (and recovered). Cash-strapped during COVID, he became a composer to generate funds money for his plays, enlisting his daughter Tennessee as narrator. 
‘These humble origins and a genuine love and natural talent for music are what underpins The Hands Of Grace.  Consisting of works written for Reed’s play The Slave Who Loved Caviar alongside new original compositions, it brings in close friends and family to accompany his casual, unvarnished playing style that’s so genuinely heartfelt it feels as if you could be sat alongside in their living room. The music carries a lived-in simplicity yet it also holds something ambiguous that draws it away from the predictable. Music papers rustle, a living room chair is dragged up to the keys whilst Reed’s wife Carla contributes violin and daughter Tennessee recites her poetry on standout How High The Moon.  This is a poignant family affair with no-one left out, ending on a touching tribute and voicemail from their late daughter Timothy.’

With Tyshawn Sorey and Linda May Han Oh, exploring Iyer originals, Geri Allen’s Drummer’s Song and Cole Porter’s Night and Day.

Reduced LP price, briefly.

Quintessential NYC loft action from 1977, with such a killer line-up: Julius Hemphill, Abdul Wadud, and Pheeroan aKLaff.
‘For those of us into the obscure, lively corners of free music, it’s an essential gem,’ says Foxy Digitalis.
“These guys are all heroes of mine. I’ve learned so much (still learning) from all of them. To hear them all together like this is a real gift. What a combo! I can’t believe this happened more than forty years ago. It sounds like the future. I’m so thankful the tape was running to document this extraordinary moment” (Bill Frisell).

‘Four years after a first album on the Futura label in 1971, Jacques Thollot returned, this time on the Palm label of Jef Gilson, still with just as much surrealist poetry in his jazz. In thirty-five minutes, the French composer and drummer, who had been on the scene since he was thirteen — recording Gilson LPs when he was just sixteen — established himself as a link between Arnold Schoenberg and Don Cherry. Resistant to any imposed framework and always excessive, Thollot allows himself to do anything and everything: suspended time of an extraordinary delicacy, a stealthy explosion of the brass section, hallucinatory improvisation of the synthesisers, tight writing, teetering on the classical, and in the middle of all that, a hit, the title-track — which Madlib would one day end up hearing and sampling.
‘In a career lasting half a century, centred on freedom, Jacques Thollot played with a roll-call of key experimental musicians (Don Cherry, Sonny Sharrock, Michel Roques, Barney Wilen, Steve Lacy, François Tusques, Michel Portal, Jac Berrocal, Noël Akchoté...) who all heard in him a pulsation coming from another world.’