Back catalogue: All genres

Review: BBE is the kind of label you can trust with any kind of reissue project, and when they call upon DJ Spinna and Kai Alce to look back over the foundations of house music, you know you're about to get a masterclass. This intermittent series has seen the two US DJ/producers picking through seminal house joints, editing the most crucial mixes to fit on a 7" as a neatly presented series for anyone wanting to point out exactly what house music really is. This time around they've turned to Sandee's 'Notice Me' - a Latin house joint from 1988 which rocked clubs like Tunnel and Palladium in NYC and Riviera in Chicago upon its original release.

Review: It would be fair to say that the latest edition in BBE's 'J-Jazz Masterclass' series of reissues is exceedingly rare. In fact, when it first appeared on Smile Records in 1976, only 100 copies of Hideto Saski-Toshiyuki Sekine Quartet's "Stop Over" were ever produced. The album's rarity is impressive, but it's the quality of the all-acoustic set of hard-bop workouts that makes it an essential purchase. As you might expect, there's plenty to set the pulse racing throughout, from the high-octane rush of opener "Carole's Garden", where dizzying piano solos catch the ear, to the similarly hectic and arguably even more rush-inducing "Stop Over" (a ten minute cut of epic proportions), via the sweet, sparse and contemplative "Soultrane".

Review: Japanese-British avant-jazz greatness notably graced the singular hall of London's Cafe OTO in September 2019; drummer Takeo Moriyama and pianist Masahiko Satoh performed for the first time at the esteemed experimental music venue as part of Peter Brotzmann's four-day festival at the venue, and saw their peers, bassist Leon Brichard and tenor saxophonist Idris Rahman, join them for several pieces. While Satoh and Moriyama both formed part of the blistering Yosuke Yamashita Trio - whose output helped spur a critical period in the development of free and modern jazz in Japan - Rahman and Brichard functioned, for a moment, as their contemporary British doppelgangers as splinter members of one of the UK's most notable experimental jazz groups, Ill Considered. The result is a blisteringly free, metrically rule-flouting live performance born of a real confluence of greats.

Review: BBE Music continues to delve into the exceptional back catalogue of Detroit's Strata label. Overall, there's not a huge amount there, with just ten albums released during the imprint's tenure. Nevertheless, what's there has plenty worth diving into, not least the stunning cover designs by iconic jazz poet John Sinclair - aesthetics to set the mood, make no mistake.
Sphere's Inside Ourselves was the third record put out on the platform. Recorded live at the Detroit Institute of Arts on 28th June 1970, and like much of the Strata stuff, this is about boundary-free jazz that captivates and compels the listener as much as it seems to entrance and possess those playing it. Indicative of the overall standard that came out of the camp itself, collective memories of Sphere themselves seem hazy, but John Dana, Jimmy Peluso, Keith Vreeland, Eddie Nuccilli and Larry Nozero made up the outfit, so props to them.

Review: Isao Suzuki produced Approach in 1986. It manages to be both stylish and sophisticated as well as experimental and brave in equal measure as it pairs the serene with the thunderous across six superb songs. For that reason, it is next in the BBE Music J Jazz Masterclass Series. The young and multi-talented Isao Suzuki was joined by drummer Masahiko Togashi, keys man Hideo Ichikawa and guitarist Akira Shiomoto to cook up these contemporary jazz cuts with bendy bass, intriguing melodies and intricate percussion all taking you deep into their own new world.