Jazz | Fusion 470 Items

Raphael Rogiński’s Plays John Coltrane and Langston Hughes is an expanded reissue of his 2015 album, previously unreleased on vinyl and long out of print on CD. It has only grown in stature over the years, for Rogiński’s solo guitar interpretations – or reimaginings – of John Coltrane, which draw on the guitarist's unique and immediately recognizable style, rooted in jazz, blues and global folk idioms. Part of a series called Populista, the album was originally released by Warsaw imprint Bôłt Records. Curator Michał Libera describes the series as “dedicated to mis- or over-interpretation of existing music”. Rogiński’s Plays John Coltrane and Langston Hughes fits perfectly into the concept, given the distance that the guitarist travels from the original form of Coltrane’s compositions, although, as Libera notes, it was “simply handed to me as a finished work”. Approaching Coltrane’s singular, spirited music with a perspective formed outside the jazz tradition, Rogiński slowed the songs down, extracting polyphonic tensions, and striving for an intimacy and mysticism that transcends genre. The way the music turned out struck the guitarist as a revelation. “Suddenly these songs became full of glowing moving pictures, with a melancholy, but also with something like promise,” he says. Rogiński says, “At that time, I lived in an apartment with the branches of a fig tree growing into it. I sat in 35-degree heat under its leaves, on the carpet, and discovered the polyphony of this music. I met a broken person on the street around this time. She moved in with me for a few days, a victim of an ultra-religious family from which she had escaped. She slept on the couch recovering, and I started playing. As if for her. I had to breathe light into her life and I did what I do best, and that is how this music came into being.”

Established in 2013 by Valentina Magaletti and Tom Relleen, the duo operated until 2020 as a creative laboratory for the London-based musicians to explore beyond their traditional musical endeavours. They sought to deconstruct their usual sonic frameworks, venturing into a novel and unfamiliar auditory landscape. Their work seamlessly integrated various forms of multi-instrumentalism, traversing the realms of industrial, jazz, psychedelia and minimalism.

In celebration of the 10th anniversary of Tomaga's debut album, 'Futura Grotesk', Hands in the Dark are re-releasing the long sold out record in a limited edition of 500 copies. The reissue will be accompanied by the first-ever vinyl pressing of the band's inaugural EP, 'Sleepy Jazz for Tired Cats', featuring new artwork and 300 units available.

Vinyl LP pressing. 2017 release. On the heels of his acclaimed 2016 recording, Cuong Vu Trio Meets Pat Metheny and his 2014 collaboration with electro-acoustic pianist-composer and Director of the School of Music at the University of Washington Richard Karpen on their Ellington-Strayhorn tribute That The Days Go By And Never Come Again, trumpeter-composer Cuong Vu joins forces with guest guitarist Bill Frisell on Ballet, a tribute to renowned composer-arranger Michael Gibbs. With regular Vu 4Tet bassist Luke Bergman and drummer Ted Poor, the four exchange ideas in the moment in a collective fashion on the expansive opening track, "Ballet," which gradually morphs into a kind of quirky, dissonant blues waltz featuring brilliant solos from Vu and Frisell. Regarding this exhilarating Vu 4Tet project, Vu says, "This was a very collective/equal opportunity effort, so we just played and dealt with the cards collectively as they were dealt. I think it just comes down to the collection of players and our individual aesthetics coming together and trying to find a common goal/language." They succeed in triumphant fashion on Ballet, the second collaboration between Cuong Vu and Bill Frisell (their first was Vu's 2005 ArtistShare album Mostly Residual).

Limited 180gm vinyl LP pressing. 2017 release. For his follow-up to 2016's purely improvised studio recording Strength & Power (a cooperative quartet album featuring pianist Jamie Saft, bassist Trevor Dunn and drummer Balazs Pandi), the ever-adventurous trombonist-composer Roswell Rudd made a decided shift in direction on his first RareNoise Records release as a leader by embracing jazz standards he has loved and played throughout his long and illustrious career. Accompanied by the brilliant pianist Lafayette Harris, upright bass virtuoso Ken Filiano and soulful vocal sensation Fay Victor, the 81-year-old jazz master delivers with rare potency and poignancy on the aptly-titled Embrace. This intimate, drum-less quartet session is brimming with conversational playing between all the participants, with Rudd and Victor partaking in some particularly interactive exchanges on jazz classics like Billy Strayhorn's "Something to Live For," Charles Mingus' "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat," Thelonious Monk's beautiful ballad "Pannonica," the standard "Can't We Be Friends" and the traditional "House of the Rising Sun."

Released in 2014, Humbert Humbert's 8th original album "Mukashi Boku wa Mijime Datta" is being made into an LP! The album includes the title track "Boku no Ohisama", which serves as the theme song for the Cannes Film Festival Un Certain Regard entry "Boku no Ohisama". It also features self-covers of songs provided to NHK E-Tele's children's program, such as "Honmatsu Tentoumushi" and "Pont Neuf no Tamago", as well as covers of masterpieces left by the little-known music producer Noboru Abe, including "Nani mo Kangaenai" and "Oi Oi". Sound produced by Tim O'Brien and recorded in Nashville, this album is a must-have for fans, boasting different artwork from the CD version. This release is a limited edition, so don't miss out!

The album Ashac, initially released in 2017, a true gem that Discogs speculators have been coveting, is finally getting a repress.

"Before he developed into a star composer and arranger, Tom Scott was an ambitious 19 year-old saxophonist looking for his big break in 1967. The opportunity came when legendary jazz label Impulse paired Scott with 9-piece vocal group The California Dreamers and allowed the young musician to take the helm as a band leader, with The Honeysuckle Breeze as the spectacular result. Out of print on vinyl since last reissued in 2018, the album features Scott leading a stellar lineup of sessions players-Bill Plummer (sitar), Glen Campbell (guitar) and Carol Kaye (bass) among them- through warm, smooth versions of songs by The Beatles (She’s Leaving Home), Donovan (Mellow Yellow), Joan Baez (North) and Jefferson Airplane (Today), which many will recognize from its sampling in the Pete Rock & CL Smooth classic T.R.O.Y."

When The World Was One is something of a companion piece to Matthew Halsall"s 2012 album Fletcher Moss Park (much of the music was written at the same time) but draws more explicitly on Halsall"s love of spiritual jazz and Eastern music as well as his own studies in meditation and travels in Japan. Beautifully recorded at Hasall"s favourite studio, 80 Hertz in Manchester, and engineered by Brendan Williams and George Atkins it features the recording debut of Halsall"s large ensemble, The Gondwana Orchestra, which utilises the exotic flavours of harp, koto and bansuri flute and Eastern scales to create a global palate for Halsall"s life-affirming sounds.

Jorge Ben is a name that any lover of Brazilian music will be very familiar with. He is widely regarded as the James Brown of Brazilian music and is famed for writing the Brazilian anthem ‘Mas Que Nada'. For the duet ‘Carolina, Carol Bela' he teamed up with the singer and guitarist Toquinho. Toquinho is best known for his collaborations, as composer and performer, with bossa nova poet Vinicius de Moraes.

'Carolina, Carol Bela' featured on the album Toquinho by Toquinho. It was originally released in 1970 on the small independent Brazilian label, RGE. The song was sampled by DJ Marky and XRS for their Drum & Bass track ‘lk’ (V Recordings, 2002). This went on to be a huge chart hit across the world, and a number one hit in the UK.

João Donato is a Brazilian jazz and bossa nova pianist. He has collaborated with many of the greats of Brazilian Music, including Tom Jobim, Astrud Gilberto and Gilberto Gil. He was one of the few Brazilian artists who went over to perform in the States during the bossa nova boom of the late 60’s. The song ‘A Rã’ was originally released on his seminal album Quem é quem, (emi, 1973), an album that is full of great tracks and was considered as one of the 100 best albums of all time by the Rolling Stone magazine.

180g vinyl / limited pressing of 500!