Portico Quartet
Terrain

Piero Umiliani is an Italian jazz musician, most famous also for his dalliances in scoring many film soundtracks. The compositions here, have been credited to Rovi (another alias used by Umiliani). This LP made by ten tracks that could have been the perfect soundtrack of a 'Commedia Sexy All'Italiana' (a genre characterised by sex-based plots and bawdy jokes). At that time in Italy disco had still an exotic appeal and was considered apt to accompany a genre of movies that was at once erotic and comic. Discomusic is some sort of a white version of a sound that is inherently black, a unique record within Umiliani's discography. The track Discomania became popular as the closing theme of 90- Minuto, a famous Italian football TV show, bringing Umiliani's music to millions of Italian households.

Full stereo and remastered version of this classic Sun Ra album originally from 1969 - fantastic edition!

Be With is delighted to present Jorge López Ruiz’s El Grito (Suite Para Orquesta De Jazz), eternal Argentinian magic released on CBS in 1967 that must be one of the most sought-after South American jazz LPs.The work of a genius artist living under an oppressive dictatorship, erased by the government of the time, this is buried treasure in every sense and it’s been a rare record for over 50 years. But it isn’t just being hard to find that has pushed up the prices of those few original copies that survived, this is a foundational record in the development of jazz in South America.Yet this is not challenging jazz. There are certainly avant garde, free jazz flourishes, but the hard bop characteristics make this a very accessible album: easy to listen to without being easy listening. And López Ruiz’s love of film brings a definite cinematic feel.This Be With edition of El Grito sounds sensational, if we do say so ourselves. Working with audio from the original analogue tapes, the vinyl mastering chops of Simon Francis are on full show here in what he considers to be some of his best ever work for Be With. Pete Norman’s cutting skills have made sure nothing is lost. The tortured artwork has been restored here at Be With HQ as the finishing touch to helping this revered work find a rightful place in every protest art collection.

Tramp Records continues their pilgrimage to the soulful fringes of spiritual jazz and progressive rock and funk with their 3rd and 4th volumes of their "Peace Chant, Raw, Deep and Spiritual Jazz" series, and the world could not be more ready.As we turn together on this tiny blue ball hanging lonely in space, and as we together face existential threats ranging from climate catastrophe, the rise of brutal authoritarian regimes, the breaking of the industrial storm and the imminent collapse of empire, not to mention the raging covid-19 crisis and the continuing racial and social struggles across the globe, we are thrust into a society-wide grand awakening that has been in the making for a very long time. Of course, our musical teachers have trod this path before us, and have worked out solutions to these problems, the songs of the Peace Chant series ring out loud and clear as our ancestors' proof of concept. They say history repeats herself, maybe it's because we weren't listening the first time. Thanks to Tramp Records, we have been granted another opportunity.Today, the musical and spiritual truths enshrined within the spiritual jazz diaspora seem to be more and more sought-after, and crucial at a time when we as a society seek higher and farther for those bold truths. With each generation, that truth doesn't change, and the artists featured in the series speak those truths along a continuum that ranges from the late-60s up to the present day.Volume 3, the first LP, features artists who use their medium to welcome the return of the sacred feminine as in Lenny Marcus Trio's Mother's Day, and speak on afrocentric themes like Roland Hayes with his heartfelt Africa The Beautiful. Mineral King renders epic orchestral rock while Natural Life takes us even further on a ten-minute epic quest from a progressive fusion head, to searing tabla, into virtuosic guitar jamming and finally dropping into heady fuzz-soaked riffs and free-jazz fusion with their theme song. Rama Dyushambee sings a devotional song about divine source and healing, while Jule Farmer's Muhammad Ali stands strong at the crossroads between black spirituality and black power. Black Is provides a vibey lo-fi flute jazz meditation in their Themes and Variation while The Supa Lowery Brothers provide the requisite hard modal freedom funk.Peace Chant is the center of the mandala, representing the nucleus of the post-bop, modal jazz, avant-garde, transcendental, spiritual, ethnic, and freedom music universe without necessarily suggesting anything immediately identifiable as any of the above. This is the soundtrack to the raising of human consciousness and the salvation of society's very soul.We give thanks to Tramp Records for leading our thirsty hearts to this rich fountain.

Represencing was Joshua Abrams' second album back in 2012, and it is still a collection of superb avant-jazz. ❤The record is filled with deeply involving grooves, pulsing energies and his tracks are rich with a kaleidoscopic interplay of sensory perceptions that mangle space and time. The album';s centre piece was once again the guimbri, a North African bass lute which the artist first started to play during the late 90s after a trip to Morocco. It makes for a record with healing qualities as it empties your mind of everything and places you in the here and now, the twisting and turning of Joshua's amazing rhythms.

Originally released in 2017 under his pseudonym No Quantize, Bird Syndrome, the first album of the french artist NxQuantize, is now being reissued with an additional remixed version. As a symbol of a new beginning , the talented musician and producer based in Marseille changes his alias and joins the Omakase Recordings music label to give a rebirth to his trip-hop opus tainted with jazz and electronic music.For this occasion, several artists who come from a broader musical spectrum have reinterpreted the Bird Syndrome’s nine tracks through a series of hip-hop, ambient, electronica and dance music remixes. The richness of this expanded release reflects the production process of NxQuantize next album, currently in progress...Discovering or re-discovering Bird Syndrome is like diving into the poetic and introspective world of an incredibly skilled musician in search of freedom, emotions and magic.