Spiritmuse Vinilo y CD

Review: Surya Botofasina's new album, Ashram Sun, follows his acclaimed debut Everyone's Children and marks his first major release since touring with Andre 3000 and contributing to New Blue Sun. This album is a tribute to Surya's spiritual and musical upbringing under Swamini Turiyasangitananda, also known as Alice Coltrane, at California's Sai Anantam Ashram. Ashram Sun is a profound work of spiritual jazz and it features close collaborators Carlos NiNo and Nate Mercereau with production by the prolific NiNo, whose vision is central to today's progressive jazz scene. This album is an immersive world of classy, spiritual and meditative jazz sound.

Review: Spiritmuse Records presents Journey to Nabta Playa, the dialogic result of Angel Bat Dawid and multidisciplinary artist Naima Nefertari, as they team up to honour the ancient Nubian astrological site of the same name. An ancient Neolithic site in Egypt's Nubian Desert predating Stonehenge, Nabta Playa incorporates a stone circle whose lithic configuration aligns with celestial events. Fittingly, then, this clash-of-titans record astrologises celestial electronics and divines ancestral predestinations, sewing a starry sonic tapestry - in Bat Dawid's terms "this is not just an album, it's a constellation". Picking up where Don and David Ornette Cherry left off with 'Bishmillah', and carrying out such further original, summative sonic burial and resurrection rites such as 'Black Stones Of Sirius' and 'Procession Of The Equinox', we hear a dance of featuring flute, clarinet, and vibraphone, and enraptured voice.

Review: Celebrating 50 years of Kahil El'Zabar's Ethnic Heritage Ensemble's legacy, Open Me, A Higher Consciousness Of Sound And Spirit is their new full-length LP, ever-shifting the many gears and tempos of the jazz-blues continuum, in a dialectical state of perpetual spontaneity. Billed as an album of both ancient and future music in the same breath, it blends El'Zabar's original compositions with motifs from timeless classics by Miles Davis, McCoy Tyner, and Eugene McDaniels. A healing vision of haphazard improvisations and percussive buildups to sublime peaks, all core members - Kahil El'Zabar, Corey Wilkes and Alex Harding, backed by James Sanders and Ishmael Ali - make for an essential contribution to the spiritual sonosphere.

Review: Percussionist Kahil El Zabar and tenor saxophonist David Murray have long been keen collaborators. Since laying down their first joint album in 1989, they've collaborated on countless recordings and live performances, each helping them carve a deeper and more distinactive niche within spiritual jazz. Their latest full-length excursion, "Spirit Jazz", may well be their best collective work to date. Joined by bassist Emma Dayhuff and keys-player Justin Dillard, the pair work their way through a septet of fresh compositions that combine the free-wheeling, intergalactic spirit of spiritual jazz with grooves and arrangements that are far more accessible than those offered up by their contemporaries. It's an alluring combination.

Review: Yet more futurist jazz tones and rhythmic harmonies come straight from the mind of Kahil El'zabar, the musician and bandleader whose avant-garde practise centres on the artist's own black African roots. Channelling every instrument from kalimba to 'spirit bowls', a near-endless line of El'zabar's ancestral spirits are invoked, as dual tributes to spirituality and city life are laid bare actoss a chilled-out but grandiose 9 tracks, from the opening 'A Time For Healing' to the tributary 'Eddie Harris'.