Lloyd McNeill
Tori

Gem ! This expanded version of the album features eight extra tracks recorded during associated sessions. It is released in its original Prism Music Unit artwork for the first time and is packaged with the original house bag designs, an original mini-booklet decribing the tracks and an over-sized booklet featuring rare photos and new liner notes by Francis Gooding of The Wire.

You need to hear this at least once in your life.

The Invisible Sessions new album Echoes of Africa is the first on the newly launched Space Echo label out of Italy and is richly rooted in black music. It's been 15 years since a breakout release put this group on the map and now trombonist and multi-instrumentalist Gianluca Petrella and poet, rapper and MC Martin Thomas Paavilainen (aka Benjamin "Bentality" Paavilainen) link once more to great effect as they use jazz as a vehicle to convey their messages of cultural synergy, unity and love. Afro-beat and Ethio-jazz, funk, psychedelia, and modal music all colour the most compelling grooves.

Herbert started his now cult domestic house album series back in 1998. Around The House was the first one, then came Bodily Functions in 2001 which was made from, well, recordings of internal noises generated in Herbert's own body. The maverick British producer now continues the series ahead of the much anticipated summer premier of his decade-in the making Symphony of Noise documentary. Musca finds the producer collaborating with eight singers to make for both intimate late night sound and club ready tunes that are lush, sophisticated and seductive. Word is, making this album was solace for Herbert, and is surely going to provide just as good a place to retreat for those of us listening in.

Untouchable deep, spiritual jazz once more on Black Jazz from Doug Carn, with the soaring vocals of his then wife Jean Carn. Untouchable stuff!Of all the artists who recorded for the Black Jazz label, keyboardist and composer Doug Carn was the most prolific, releasing four albums for the label. 1972's 'Spirit of the New Land' was his second Black Jazz release, but the first one (of two) to co-feature his wife, vocalist Jean Carn. Features trumpeter Charles Tolliver, co-founder of the Strata-East label; saxophonist George Harper, who played with Herbie Hancock and Jimmy Smith among others; trombonist Garnett Brown and drummer Alphonse Mouzon (founding member of Weather Report). This is beautiful, uplifting, spiritual jazz classic!

On June 3rd Gondwana Records present ‘Next Time Could Be Your Last Time’ – the debut album by Forgiveness, AKA Jack Wyllie, JQ and Richard Pike. Described as “not really jazz, not really new age, not really ambient or electronica”, instead they welcome you into a synaesthesia-inducing technicolour fantasy, full of wondrous emotive beauty.This genesis began with the sharing of music, burgeoning friendships, and the mutually-inspirational benefit of the collective power of a group dynamic, with each spurring the next on to heighten their already expansive skills.Intertwining the acoustic, electric and digital, utilising instruments and tools from across the decades, their synthesized Shangri La is a place where craftsmanship meets musicianship, even including sections notated on sheet music. The mood whilst recording, however, was one of loose freedom and enjoyment, with parts displaying a light-hearted playfulness. A world where shiny electronics meet flute and sax motifs, subverting them into something new.Jack Wyllie is best known for his work with Portico Quartet, Paradise Cinema and Szun Waves as well as collaborations with artists such as Luke Abbott, Adrian Corker and Charles Hayward. Whilst JQ has released on Boxed and Lo Recordings, with his music also remixed by Loraine James, Sun Araw and Foodman. Richard Pike has had multiple records on Warp as a member of PVT, collaborated with Modeselektor and Ital Tek, recorded under his alter-ego Deep Learning, and founded the tape label Salmon Universe, all whilst composing scores for TV drama.Wide-ranging influences on the LP include 70s era ECM and Miles Davis, Spencer Clark/Star Searchers, Ansel Adams, Steve Reich, H Takahashi, Don Slepian, The Blue Nile, Talk Talk’s ‘Spirit Of Eden’, Michael Gordon’s ‘Rushes for 8 Bassoons’, Sir Simon Rattle’s documentary ‘Leaving Home’, Horoshi Yoshimura, Ulla Strauss and Disasterpeace, plus new developments in vaporwave and software experimental.Hitting the centre at the ven diagram of these interests, the record converges the trio’s individual sound worlds into something singular. Primarily purveying a sense of endorphin-flushed tranquillity, they build synthetic, bucolic, lysergic landscapes, which although imbued with processed plasticity also contain multi-stranded depths of textural field.