Henri Texier
Chance

For fans of spiritual and cosmic jazz, the release of a new studio album from the Sun Ra Arkestra is big news. While the legendary ensemble has continued to perform worldwide since the passing of bandleader Sun Ra in 1993, the vast majority of their releases have been either live albums or archival recordings. Swirling, then, is a significant step forwards for the collective under the stewardship of Marshall Allen. Musically, it's as far-out, poetic, otherworldly and exciting as you'd expect, with new versions of live favourites such as 'Door of the Cosmos', 'Rocket Number 9' and 'Satellites Are Spinning' being joined by interpretations of lesser-known Sun Ra compositions and fresh Allen originals.

High Pulp are an 8-piece band that emerged from the Royal Room, a legendary Seattle Jazz club where they held “Funk Church” jam sessions in 2017.Their signature sound is a Psychedelic fusion of Hip-Hop, Funk, Jazz, and Soul which come together with complex, well thought out arrangements and progressive style. After successful sessions and premieres with prestigious station KEXP, and being at the forefront of the Seattle music scene, they’re now ready to branch out and take their sound worldwide.With 3 volumes planned covering some legendary artists and composers, Mutual Attraction Vol. 1 starts out on a spiritual jazz journey. Three iconic musicians are covered: Pharoahe Sanders, Sun Ra, and Alice Coltrane. These artists have woven their influences into the DNA of High Pulp and are by no means an easy group to tackle, but the band manages to do so with forward thinking grace.The project features rich textures and cinematic grooves alongside trippy guitars, lush Rhodes keys, and soulful horns. With their refreshing take on improvisational 60s and 70s-inspired music, there just aren’t many bands making music like this right now.

REPRESSED 2021! "Alèmayèhu Eshèté is no less than one of the great voices of the heyday of modern Ethiopian music, the swinging sixties which, in this country, went on until the fall of the Emperor Haile Sellassie 1 in 1974. On a par with Tlahoun Gèssèssè, Bzunèsh Bèqèlè or Mahmoud Ahmed, Alèmayèhu is a star at the top level of the constellation that once lit up the wild nights in the capital."

November 2016, 10 years of OTPMD. Vincent Bertholet, still resolute, finally realises his old dream of a'real' orchestra. And thus was born the project to expand the known horizon. The orchestra became XXL by assembling accomplices from the first hour, who had never really disappeared from view, and an English string section met along the way.From now on, they will be 14 on stage. An anniversary tour, prestigious stages and makeshift squats, unrestrained agitation as in the first days, and a larger chorus, more percussive than ever. The multi-headed Hydra gives voice in concert and the frail stages that host it groan under its weight. Nevertheless, it is in the studio that the foundation of a new adventure is forged. Back to England, in the imposing and magnificent building that houses Real World Studios. After Rotorotor (2014), John Parish is again at the controls.It's called Sauvage Formes, a shrewd title, because everything here is as geometric as it is organic. The incisive rhythms, doubled in XXL, trademark of the pack, mingle with the unusually melancholy brass. The guitar riffs express themselves in minimalistic cascades, and since the number of strings has tripled, they allow themselves the luxury of entwining with each other, like a carnal embrace without epilogue. The voices, more numerous than usual, recite, chant, lead the dance and poeticise, sometimes in French, sometimes in English, and, in the same spirit, the chorus takes the opportunity to shape the pediment of hymns to elsewhere.These 8 songs as beautiful as they are adventurous, it seems to be a story of a voyage, a torn logbook. On the horizon however, neither boat, nor rickety plane, neither map nor compass. Is it because the continent that is mentioned in these texts and melodies is not a known place, but rather a dream world, a land of asylum for rebels and the insubordinate, for the daring and the benevolent

Oh! Friends of good nature!A thousand welcomes of great warmth from Ka Safar! And that, at a truthfully splendorous time, for hither, by crying throws comes the birthing of our own very first long playing reference, named ‘Ancient Tribal Hearts’. And beyond even that, as echoed by the Brace Heads upon the Great Iberian Deer, through her smouldering grace and benevolence, arrives our bounty, to you,dear listener!Ancient Tribal Hearts: An age in the making - such as the great pyramid’s themselves! From the seminal morning of the first Ka Safarian sunrise, to the falling of this past Hunter's Moon, a lowly tuneful scribe burned oil those many nights at his great tablet made of precious and magical metals, forging hieroglyphic pathways where the Ka Safarians would gather, and from thence, make their unanimous and untold journeys onward, outward, inward, allward...The transit to Pangea is set!Oh! Blessed friends!Pray, let us now step aboard this wondrous ship!Ka is the Spirit, and Safar is the Journey.Your devoted scribe,Humanji Di’Pangea

For his sophomore album, alto saxophonist Marcus Joseph, presents a project entitled Beyond The Dome, a body of work that explores themes of personal and external limitations, the idea of what binds us to who and where we are and the transcendence of perceived obstacles to become our authentic selves.