‘All is Sound could not be a more apt title for this,’ says Mississippi. ‘Through saxophone, cello, piano, and flutes The Cosmic Tones Research Trio created a truly beautiful record. All is Sound breaks new ground. At its heart, it’s healing/meditation music, but the Gospel and Blues roots are in there too…as well as hints of forward-looking Spiritual jazz.
‘Delicate, profound melodies create peaceful, immersive soundscapes, which the group develops through their combined background in acoustic ecology, sound meditation, mindfulness, and active community involvement.
‘Following the steps of musicians such as Sun Ra, Alice Coltrane, and Pharoah Sanders, The Cosmic Tones Research Trio delivers music that is both restorative and sonically rich—each tone falling into a perfect place, as if by magic.
‘As sincere a record as you could ever hope for. Music is indeed the healing force of the universe.’

‘The deeply moving second LP by Portland’s The Cosmic Tones Research Trio. A follow up to last year’s beloved All Is Sound, this one sees the Tones adding more percussive elements and pushing their sound into more melodic song-based territory while keeping the ambient / spiritual effect. It’s pretty amazing.
‘Blending cello, alto sax, piano, flutes, and an eclectic palette of textures and percussions, the album channels a sacred energy that feels both ancient and forward-reaching. It is music for reflection, for movement, and for inner travel. Tracks unfold with patient grace, yet pulse with deliberate rhythms that ground the listener—echoing the ceremonial spirit of cosmic jazz and deep improvisational traditions.
‘This is not background music—it’s an invitation to engage fully, to breathe with the instruments, and to explore the liminal space where sound becomes prayer. With The Cosmic Tones Research Trio, Norfleet, Silverman, and Verrett continue to map sonic territories where the mystical and the musical converge.’

‘Heady, raw, druggy songs of love, dread, hardship, and yearning, recorded in Athens between 1932 and 1936, when Markos was already a master of the bouzouki. His forceful, clean playing compliments his hoarse voice and his stunning rhythmic sensibility, the result of his years as a champion zebekiko dancer. Tracks build and spiral outward, his open-note drones and melodic lines drawing calls of ecstasy and encouragement from his fellow musicians. These recordings mark the height of rebetika, the brief period between the music’s emergence on the recording scene in the early 1930s and government censorship of all lyrics starting in 1936. During the Axis occupation there was no rebetika recording, and though Markos had some hits in the years after the war, he never again attained this level. These are the dizzying, entrancing, and heaviest works of one of the great artists of the 20th century.’

A beguiling, one-of-a-kind blend of country, township jazz, and pop, from the heart of Zambia’s freedom movement, by ‘the first African voice on the radio for many Central Africans and the first kind of pop star for many Central Africans.’
Vocalist, guitarist, and bandleader Alick Nkhata moved effortlessly between lonesome country slide, big band pop, and air-tight vocal harmonies, all with roots in Bemba and other African traditional songs and rhythms. It’s a dizzying, inclusive, expansive blend from an artist and music archivist who became the voice of his nation’s fight for freedom. The lyrics and music represent the times — lonesome country laments like Nafwaya Fwaya and Fosta Kayi drift along the railways to urban centers and copper mines. Nalikwebele Sonka (I Told You Sonka) pairs honey-soaked yodels with a warning about the downward spiral of unemployment in townships, while Mayo Na Bwalya (Mother of Bwalya) is a mother’s plea to a traditional songbird for guidance of her wayward son. Songs like Shalapo, Kalindawalo Na Mfumwa, and his biggest hit, Imbote, infuse piano, big band horns, and even early electronic instruments into stunning syncretic pop masterpieces.’

‘It’s great that Zamrock is so well known for its incredible story and music, but that intense focus has a way of flattening the diversity of Zambian music and its history. So maybe we can’t necessarily say that Alick Nkhata led to Zamrock, but that rich history of mixing influences and creating new sounds in the copper belt started with Alick in lots of ways. All of that stuff is what people appreciate about Zamrock — that it was mixing sounds and that it was political in its own way. There’s a long history of that approach in the region, and it starts with Alick.’

‘Roman Norfleet and Be Present Art Group play deeply felt, sometimes earthy, and sometimes cosmic music. A trio (sax, drums, and organ) are augmented by additional percussion, soaring vocals, and even a vocal appearance by a toddler. Roman Norfleet and Be Present Art Group will take you where you need to go. A spiritual classic for the ages, following the lineage of Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders yet firmly rooted in the present.’

Roiling, cascading, highly charged, deeply emotional piano improvisations by this Dutch-born, Columbia-trained chemist, who was an early follower of Gurdjieff.
Nyland released sixteen transcendent albums — nowadays pretty much vanished — of spiritual pianism on his own Gage Hill Press, starting in the mid-sixties. Each LP came with stunning woodcut artwork by Nyland’s wife, Ilonka Karasz (who also designed covers for the New Yorker); and highly refined black-and-white photography.
Piano Studies 337 is a particularly tempestuous performance that Nyland himself recommended to Ansel Adams as a good entry-point to his music.

The word from Mississippi…
‘Relentless polyrhythms, call and response vocal poetry, melodic and layered horns, flute, and even accordion!!! A huge and rich sonic landscape, propulsive, energetic, and deeply soulful.
‘Every neighborhood in Dakar has its own Assiko band. They’re community groups, open to anyone who wants to join, as opposed to the legendary griot culture that only allows select families to take part.
‘These hyper-democratic bands can kick off a thousand-person street party at any moment. But they also operate as mutual aid groups, neighborhood security, impromptu after-school programs, and repositories of local music and lore.
The Assiko Band of Grand Yoff neighborhood is led by Djiby Ly (Wau Wau Collectif), who takes his role in the community seriously. He’s led iterations of the band for over a decade, and describes in detail each rhythm they play, its roots, travels, and contours. This Assiko band is particularly prolific and popular, and these recordings remind me of a good rock band - loose and rangy, you can hear the humor and warmth amongst the bandmates come through.’

Her 1972 private-press LP, plus two unreleased piano recordings, mapping out a deeply personal take on Ethiopian Church Music.
Here is Emahoy’s most directly sacred and spiritual music-making — and some of her most moving — self-recorded in churches across Jerusalem, on piano, harmonium, and pipe organ.
With extensive biographical notes by Thomas Feng. Beautifully remastered. Old school tip-on jacket with silver-foil stamping. Black or clear vinyl.

Precious 1964 recordings, top-notch though never previously released, part of the First Songs sessions for Folkways.

First-time-out for these early-seventies recordings — countrified drafts of some classic Hurley, with backing from Vermont mates the Fatboys, aka the Deranged Cowboys.

Half price.

‘The sacred music of peasants in Chile’s remote Central Valley: a communal form of worship and reflection, played in packed rooms throughout the night when work is done. The Canto has persisted for centuries in the voices of hundreds of men and women who conjure vivid visions of apocalypse, the divine, and angelitos (very young children who have died). But the verses are also rooted in the daily life in the valley — labour and drought, family, animals, and the life cycles of plants. To hypnotic accompaniment by guitar and the celestial, 25-string guitarron, countless entonaciones or melodies range across the 10-line rhyming decimas, in an ancient song form originating in Spain and found from South America to the Mississippi Delta. The combination is entrancing and transporting, cosmic and earthly at once.

‘The handsome gatefold jacket presents the visionary, apocalyptic art of Frederico Lohse, a baker from the village of Los Vilos, who painted on old flour sacks; with an eight-page booklet containing lyrics, photos, and extensive notes about the Canto tradition.’

‘One of the greatest, heaviest, and most sought-after guitar records from 1970s West Africa.’

‘Bamako, Mali, 1973: Rail Band, the official orchestra of the Malian state railway, drops their self-titled LP. It’s a relentlessly soulful and hypnotic blend of American funk, jazz horns, and Afro-Cuban music, steeped in centuries-old Mandé tradition.
Led by legendary trumpet and saxman Tidiani Koné and held aloft by the intricate web of Djelimady Tounkara’s reverb-soaked guitar, the Rail Band’s sprawling compositions embody West African storytelling traditions while exulting in the technology and modernity of a newly independent Mali. Vocalists Salif Keita and Mory Kanté are endlessly emotive, oscillating between silky ballads and funk screams. The band’s sound is filled out by layers of percussion, rolling guitars, and melodic horns filtered through the Caribbean.
‘Starting in 1970, the Rail Band played five nights a week, from 2 pm til the early hours, at the Buffet Hotel de la Gare. Their audience was an international array of businessmen, young partiers, and people of the Bamako night. The band was incredibly versatile, switching genres, rhythms, and styles to meet their crowd. It was a volatile mix, which would fall apart soon after these recordings were made. Here it is, one of the greatest bands to ever exist, at the height of its creative powers.’

‘Emahoy recorded these songs direct to cassette tape in her family’s home in Addis Ababa in the late 70s. She carried the master tapes with her when she entered permanent exile in Jerusalem in 1985. They stayed in her tiny cell at the Church of Kidane Mehret until her passing, in March 2023, aged 99.
‘I was on my way to see Emahoy and talk about the release of these songs when she passed away. While helping her family clear and pack her belongings, we found the original master tapes, from which this album is produced. Intimate, close, home recordings. You can hear Emahoy’s finger pressing down the stop button, the creak of her piano bench, birds out the window.
‘These are songs of mourning and exile. The Ethiopian Revolution of 1974 had changed her country so radically that Emahoy sang of missing home even though she was still physically in the country.
‘Emahoy wanted badly for these songs to be heard. She was proud of them, and even produced a tiny run of private press CDs sold at the gift shop of the monastery in 2013. But her family and those closest to her advised her against the release, worried about the intense backlash she’d receive for singing as a nun in the conservative Orthodox church.
‘Finally, these recordings get the release they deserve. We hope to do justice to the music and Emahoy’s legacy with this release — packaged in a reflective gold sleeve, with a sixteen-page booklet featuring lyric translations and photos of Emahoy’s life in the monastery in Jerusalem.’
(Cyrus, Mississippi Records).