Another five-star, stone classic. Check his bass clarinet scorching into the Monk tribute, to start. Fire! The rhythm section — Anthony Williams and Richard Davis, Stravinsky’s favourite bassist — is stupendous.

The two 1961 New Jazz masterworks, with Mal Waldron, Ron Carter, Booker Ervin and co.

Still sealed.

Killer.
Fire Music, salsa-style. Dazzling, in-your-face Latin jazz from 1971, steeped in Afro-Cuban tradition, and blazing with political militancy. Palmieri’s signature hard trombone sound is augmented with baritone saxophone, organ, trap drums and electric piano, and Monk and Tyner come more to the fore in his own playing.
According to percussionist Bobby Sanabria, the opener La Libertad Lógico was ‘an anthem for young Puerto Ricans like me.’ Drummer Nicky Marrero says that Palmieri’s use of the snare drum was designed to emulate a machine gun. Freedom is the only sensible option, declares this terrific music. Revolt.
Ismael Quintana recalls that the title track, ‘of all the songs I recorded with Eddie Palmieri, this has to be the most influential. That song was played and requested everywhere we would go in Latin America… The lyrics were about trying to cope with the injustices in the world. It meant let’s get out of this crazy mess and so much negativity that we live in, and let’s go to the mountains.’
Ronnie Cuber and Charlie Palmieri are here… Quintana and Marrero… and Chocolate Armenteros, one of the greatest trumpeters ever to walk the earth.
A classic. Hotly recommended.

Hypnotic semi-acoustic mantras with spirits, bells and percussion from the driving opener to live favourite Silent Prayer. With Ethan Miller on sitar (Somewhere Between) and melting heads on the closer.

Respite from his recent firestorms, this conjures from spellbinding acoustics and drones galore something meditative and darkly unsettling by turns. Fine vocals and shredding axe work from Elisa Ambrogio.

‘The first thing is how unhinged it all sounds. The album brews and boils with an ominously dark tone in a desolate space, dense with energy, guitar overdriven past the point of sanity, slamming drum accents, vocals cutting through in what seems to be comprised of another, as yet unheard, language. Yet, inside the apparent wild abandon and destruction is a strict internal logic of construction that unveils itself upon listening…’ With Noel Von Harmonson from Comets On Fire on drums, and Rob Fisk from Badgerlore sharing the bass-playing with San Francisco psych legend Charlie Saufley.

Pals being Micah Blue Smaldone, Glenn Jones, Michael Gangloff and Nathan Bowles (both of the Black Twig Pickers), and Harmonica Dan. The great ‘Jack Rose’ was hitherto hard-to-get.

Lowdown lap steel and Telecaster collaborations with D. Charles Speer and The Helix, inspired by Link Wray,

Classic big-band Puente from 1962, including the indomitable scorcher Oye Como Va.