Thelonious Monk
Brilliant Corners

Drummer-producer Teppo Mäkynen's celebrated alias The Stance Brothers returns with a properly groovy 7"/digi single "Resolution Blue / Where Is Resolution Blue?" on We Jazz Records, 19 June. The source of inspiration here is an original track by Timo Lassy & Teppo Mäkynen found on their self-titled 2019 We Jazz LP. The Stance Brothers mangles the track up into two different versions with crisp drums, catchy vibraphone riffs, distorted guitars and 100% signature Stance Bros groove, like only Teddy Rok can deliver it. The digi version adds a "bonus beats" type of treatment in "Teddy Rok Mass Appeal Edit".True to We Jazz style, the 7" comes with an old school heat-pressed labels and a generic brown paper sleeve.

A few years ago, West African music obsessive and Philophon label boss Max Weissenfeldt decided to make some roots reggae with his friend and fellow drummer Josie Coppola. Yet this would be no regular reggae, as they'd be working on songs by Ghanaian artist Y-Bayani (real name Yusef Hussain). Since then, the project has developed further with the addition of a second lead singer, Baby Naa (Naomi Addy), a clutch of talented musicians and a Ghanaian choir. The result is this debut album, a wonderfully hazy, sun-kissed shuffle that does a brilliant job in putting a new, Afro-centric spin on Jamaican roots reggae. The riddims are strong, the multi-lingual vocals superb, the musicianship spot on and the production authentically warm and weighty. In other words, it's an unlikely gem.

Our Swimmer is pleased to present the first official vinyl reissue of The Hilversum Session in over thirty years.Jazz iconoclast Albert Ayler took the experimental leanings of contemporaries like John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman as a starting point and then blasted them to stratospheric extremes, creating some of the most polarizing and brilliant music of the 20th Century. In particular, 1964 was a pivotal – and well documented – year in the free jazz artist’s career. After returning to New York, Ayler assembled a brilliant group with Sunny Murray on drums and Gary Peacock on bass, recording Spiritual Unity, Ayler’s first record for the legendary ESP-Disk’ label, that summer.Soon after that session, Ayler took his trio to Europe where they were joined by cornetist Don Cherry for a tour of The Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark. The Hilversum Session is a live radio session recorded on November 9th, 1964. At that point the quartet was months into its European tour and the interplay is extraordinary. On classic Ayler compositions like “Spirits” and “Ghosts” the band absolutely rip, with a kind of intuition and connectivity rarely heard, creating some of the most untethered and undeniably powerful music in the history of free jazz.

We live in divisive times. Multiculturalism rises hand-in-hand with racial tensions, and politicians seem powerless to even bring people within earshot of their convoluted message. It’s time for a different perspective.On his second studio album, More Arriving, Sarathy Korwar blasts out his own vibrant, pluralistic missive for the world to hear. This is not necessarily a record of unity; it’s an honest reflection of Korwar’s experience of being an Indian in a divided Britain. Recorded over two and a half years in India and the UK, More Arriving draws on the nascent rap scenes of Mumbai and New Delhi, incorporating spoken word and Korwar’s own Indian classical and jazz instrumentation. This is a record born of confrontation; one for our confrontational times.With this album, Korwar expands his politicised narrative to envelop the entire diaspora. “This is a modern brown record. The kind of record that a contemporary Indian living in the UK for the past 10 years would make,”Korwar says. “This is what Indian music sounds like to me right now.” It all begins with the title: “More Arriving comes from the scaremongering around Brexit,” Korwar says. “It’s a tongue-in-cheek play on the fact that there are more people coming and you’ll have to deal with it!” Through this defiance, Korwar takes clear pride in the knotty mix of his identity – harking back to the new India of the Mumbai hip-hop kids, as well as identifying with London’s cultural diversity. “I want the idea of brown pride to come through,” he says. “My voice is one amongst a thousand, but this record is a snapshot of something much greater than myself. It’s the chance to send a message.