Tags: Psychedelic Jazz

Review: Melodies International is a real favourite label here at Juno HQ, headed up famously by Floating Points and finds including Mafalda. The third volume of their Melodies record Club is as good as anything the label has put out to date: it features a trio of jazz cuts selected by the one and only Hunee. First is Digital Justice's 'Theme From "It's All Gone Pearshaped"', a 13 minute live jam packed with synth action. On the flip is a spiritual piece from harpist Dorothy Ashby and Frantz Tuernal's 'Koultans'. Says Hunee, "these three distinct pieces of music tap into different layers of my memory."

Review: It's quite hard to comprehend that such a pivotal album in the history of free jazz has taken this long to be reissued. Originally coming out in 1980, Visions Of The Third Eye is a landmark piece of work which saw the untamed terrain of free jazz being navigated with a certain soulful, spiritual bent which lands differently compared to a lot of other works in the genre. New Life Trio was made up of monumental drummer Steve Reid, guitarist Brandon Ross and bassist David Wertman, and on this record they broke down barriers but never at the expense of the feeling. Now Early Future have faithfully reissued the album with an appropriate level of grandeur, remastered and featuring a 20-page zine with interviews, essays and more.

Review: Jazzman recently served up a big and freaky old collection of Halloween themed jazz sounds from Greasy Mike. Now the venerated digger and collector opens up his archives once more for another deep dive, this time under the heading of 'Shipwrecked On A Tropical Island.' As such these are Afro-tinged jazz sounds with shimmering steel drums and gently breaking waves. There are Afro-Cuban spinners like Phyllis Branch's 'Babalu' and samba shufflers full of soul. An epic and escapist collection that takes you to another world.

Review: 'Available Forms' is the latest masterwork of the musical project Tobor Experiment, led by Giorgio Sancristoforo, an Italian sound artist and music software designer based in Milan. Active since 2007, Sancristoforo's work has largely centred on highly technical odysseys in avant-disco, exploring surreal takes on the ambivalent promises made by the tide of technological advancement, channelled into a that has been described, perhaps quite cleverly, as 'moogsploration'. Coming after a 12-year hiatus on gatefold LP, Sancristoforo returns to his go-to label Bear Funk for yet another foray into this retro-modernist vision, mixing genre-bent jazz, electronica, nu-disco, and psychedelic influences.

Review: Manu Dibango's grooves will never dull with time. The Cameroonian sax man made some of the most infectious, feel-good funk to ever transmit from the African continent, and here's one of his heavy-hitting high-watermarks, reissued by Soul Makossa. African Voodoo originally came out in 1972, a year that saw nearly all Dibango's most revered jams cut loose on an unsuspecting public. These sessions were recorded in France with Yvan Julien on trumpet, Slim Pezin on guitar, Jacques Bolgnesi on trombone and Lucien Dobat on drums to name but a part of the line-up, but of course it's Dibango holding court on the vibes, marimba, sax and organ who brings the unmistakable magic to the music.

Review: A remarkably sleazy new compilation from the digger's delighter known as Greasy Mike, who has generously opened up his 'vinyl dungeon' for the purpose of letting us in on just a small slice of his wax "harem". Ah yes, the sensual and voluptuous pleasures of Middle-Eastern jazz on wax. Unmatched. The choice cuts on this comp, one of many from Mike, this time catalogue the works of Middle Eastern jazz unknowns, championing their work starting from the genre's inception.

Review: Experimental jazz meets electronic on this hybrid chimera of an album, wherein Gozen Atila aka. Anadol saw to a troupe of Istanbul jazz musicians recording over her pre-made synth jazz compositions. The sonic result is a strange recollection of Byzantine backstreets, noir sonic judders and hauntologic Persian dirges. It's enthralling because it's hard to break down where electronics end and live elements begin; 'Eciflere Gel' is a toe-tapping, hi-hat shuffling backlit crime-drama jazz bit, while 'Ablamin Gozleri' is completely different: a hauntingly electronic folk song. 'Istasyon Plajinda...', meanwhile, is a time-stopping and doomy ambient soundscape cut. Via everything from organ automation to subversion of tradition, Anadol has created a masterpiece.

Review: Misha Panfilov is an Estonian composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer, based in Funchal, Portugal and Atlantico is a stunning showcase of his work on the Miraaz label. He mixes up psych, prog rock, jazz horns and international rhythms right from the opening moments of the dramatic 'Verticle.' Things take a more wistful folk bent on the jaunt that is 'Alegria Em Movimento' with more expansive jazz stylings taking over on 'Caleidoscopio'. This one comes on heavyweight vinyl and with an insert, plus great artwork, so is a real treasure.

Review: Nephews of Phela debuted in 2005 with 'Mulah 2' but haven't done anything that we can find since. This mysterious outfit have now resurfaced with this vinyl-only limited edition 12" of fascinating electronic Afro sounds that are hypnotising and intoxicating. 'Innaghetto' opens with some hefty percussion over corrugated basslines and raw slapping hits. It's got a playful flute adding a little light to the otherwise mood vibes. 'Ozymandias' is a lively tune with twisted funk sounds and hints of Ethiopia in the magical melodies that lead you late into the night.

Review: Horacio Chivo Borraro is an Argentine saxophonist who toured with many bands and artists in the 1960s and 70s. His album Blues Para Un Cosmonauta is a curt four-tracker of naive-not-naive free jazz and avant-garde spiritualisms, all of which, in theme, collapse the boundary between actual space exploration and that of the figurative astral plane. A comparatively rare jazz record, now reissued in greater numbers, its mystique is backed up by its musical dubiousness, with quizzically trilling synths on the title track, or the potent and full-bodied electric pianos on 'Cancion De Cuna Para Un Bebe Del Ano 2000', spreading both confusion and delight.

Review: To mark the 20th instalment in their popular and ongoing series of collaborative albums, Jazz Is Dead, Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad have decided to serve up fresh remixes of cuts from the series' bulging back catalogue. Given the series love of fusing jazz's past and present, it's a concept that makes perfect sense. The resultant rubs are uniformly inspired, too, with our picks of a very strong bunch including Shabaka Hutchings' fantastic revision of Henry Franklin hook-up 'African Sun', Mophono's psychedelic, dancefloor-ready tweak of Tony Allen collaboration 'Don't Believe The Dancers' (which comes complete with heavy drums and hazy, Fela-esque horns), Theon Cross's drum & bass style re-imagining of 'Phoenix' (featuring the Midnight Hour), and Bei Ru's duty, head-nodding hip-hop interpretation of Katalyst collab 'Reflections'.

Review: Brazilian saxophonist and composer Glaucus Linx and French percussionist and composer Antoine Olivier are a long-standing and fruitful musical pair. They are known for their unique mix of Afro-Brazilian Candomble rhythms and jazz, and they never sound better than on this album Kan. For the first tie ever the album is now on vinyl and it comes on Brazilian DJ, producer and MIMS resident, DJ Tahira's brand new label in collaboration with Memoria Discos. The sounds manage to be ancient and ancestral as well as contemporary and futuristic. The brilliant 'Canto de Xango' is a standout tune here amongst many.

Review: Legendary Italian drummer Tullio De Piscopo's quintet offered up the magnificent Future Percussion in 1978. It is a cult classic album for collocates and anyone else that now gets a deserving reissue owing to its hard to fid and expressive nature. It is a fantastic suite of cuts with rare musicality and expressive jazzy sax solos, splashing cymbals and rousing drum work. These are powerful evocative pieces that can elicit everything from rage to romance, tears to sweat. Music like this will never age.

Review: Opa's Back Home was first reocrded in 1975 but not released until 1996; it was the fourth and final album by the esteemed Uruguayan fusion band, whose preferred admixture was usually some melted pot of funk and samba, making for an impressive heuristic building on their intuitive recalling of their mutual upbringing in South America. Mysteriously (for reasons unknown to the band), Opa's debut was shelved and remained so until the mid-1990s. But the story goes that it was recorded after renowned label producer and owner Larry Rosen heard the band playing in a Brooklyn nightclub; with this in mind, Back Home makes for an ironic title, since the sonic turn expressed by the band is not one of homesickness, but rather that of an immersion in New York's metamorphous music scene ('Brooklynville' has an instant proto-hip-hop vibe, if not for its original urban field recording, then certainly for its bulbous broken funk twang). Now reissued on vinyl and CD via Far Out, you won't want to miss this round trip.

Review: Soyuz follows up their 2022 debut Force Of The Wind with a stark but subdued reissue of their second album, Ii, released three years earlier in 2019. The album captures a pivotal evolution in the band's career, the recordings giving a snapshot of what would become their sound on Force Of The Wind, yet with echoes of avant-psychedelic-pop footprints from yester years. Produced at a time when bandleader Alex Chumak had moved from Minsk to Kyiv, torn between the need to try something new and the homesickness it brought about, Ii nicely captures the slow burn of homesickness extended across a long bouts of travel and transience, through stylistic recollections of Mikita Arlou, Ethiopian jazz and Italian library music.

Review: Les Abranis are a pioneering Algerian band known for having mixed up traditional Berber music with Western rock, folk, disco and funk. At the same time they never lost sight of their Kabyle heritage and as such really made a mark on the Maghrebi music scene all across the world from Algeria to France. This new collection Amazigh Freedom Rock 1973-1983 comes five years after Chenar le Blues/Avehri and is a deep dive into the band's discography. It spans everything from their early garage-rock experimentations to lush orchestrations and North African fusion gems from the 1980s.

Review: This is a black vinyl version of a reissue that we also have on gold vinyl of Soyuz's '2' album. Originally released in 2019, this album marks a significant phase in the band's evolution, offering a glimpse into the sound that would define their later work while retaining traces of avant-psychedelic-pop influences. Produced during bandleader Alex Chumak's transition from Minsk to Kyiv, the LP reflects the tension between exploration and homesickness. Drawing from influences like Mikita Arlou, Ethiopian jazz, and Italian library music, the album eloquently captures the melancholy of long-distance travel and transience, creating a sonic narrative of emotional flux.

Review: Spanish funk-rock group Barrabas formed in the 70s and had big success through that decade and the next. Drummer and producer Fernando Arbex lead the band and fomented a fusion of Latin rock and jazz-funk initially, before moving into a more disco orientated sound later on. Power was the band's second album and it came in 1973 with country-tinged tunes such as 'Boogie Rock', high speed funk workouts like 'Keep On Moving' and then more jazzy library sounds such as 'The Horse.' The second half of the album touches on busy dance floor funk like 'Casanova' and more stripped back and deep cuts like 'Children.'