Sisonke Xonti
UGaba The Migration

Nat Birchall follows up on his killer reggae roots album "Sounds Almighty" and returns with a couple of sides of blissful cosmic & spiritual jazz. Recommended!!!!

Ulla roots her style in improvised jazz and blues on a very welcome follow-up to her entry for our Documenting Sound series, and the sublime ‘Tumbling Towards A Wall’ LPUlla offers more precious room to breathe and space to think on ‘Limitless Frame’, dispensing a broader palette of instrumentation to evoke finer, ephemeral feels with a more timeless appeal. Her sound appears more porous to influence from strains of wistful jazz and blues here, vacillating and morphing her dreamlike ambient purview between parts of signature, aleatoric ambient pads and rustling room recordings, along with more classicist or traditionalist turns of guitars, sax and keys that call to mind K. Leimer via The Remote Viewer. It’s a perhaps surprising change in the winds of her music, and one we’re very happy to follow.In the artist’s own words “I made this music as a way to hug myself” and listeners can trust that hug will extend to them, too. She spends the first half of the record wrapping us up in clouds of pads, processed strums and fractured melodies, whisked to a gentle peak in the keening swoon of ‘Chest of Drawers’ around the middle, while the second half unravels into gorgeous loner arrangements. She captures the most wistful sensations akin to Annie Hogan’s parlour keys on ‘Something Inside My Body’, and crystalline trickles of guitars in ‘Clearly The Memory’, with the softly pealing wind of ‘Walk Alone’ calling to mind Loren Connors and Daniel Carter’s ‘The Departing of A Dream.’

Ernest RANGLIN / COUNT OSSIEEarth Sound Parts 1 & 2 FORTHCOMINGGay Feet/Jah Fingers Music

The Brkn Record is a new project led and produced by Jake Ferguson, the co-founder and bass player for the UK’s foundational deep jazz outfit the Heliocentrics. With fellow Heliocentrics co-founder and legendary drummer Malcolm Catto, Ferguson has been a regular collaborator with globally recognised artists including Archie Shepp, Mulatu Astatke, Melvin Van Peebles, Orlando Julius and many others. The Architecture of Oppression Part 1 represents Ferguson’s debut as a bandleader and orchestrator, and manifests as a committed and soulful response to ongoing and systemic anti-black racism, social oppression and state violence both at home in London and across the globe. Combining poetry, testimony and song with rich and cinematic backdrops, Ferguson has produced a sui generis sound that conjures flavours of Arthur Verocai, Ennio Morricone, classic library productions, Madlib-style deep-jazz beat science, and psychedelic soul. With bandmate Malcolm Catto on drums, Ferguson draws on their long years of collaborative experience in the Heliocentrics to build an album of striking texture and depth. But the album does not only reflect Ferguson’s full-spectrum musical prowess, experience and vision. It is equally a manifestation of his longstanding and high-profile work as a frontline activist for racial justice and social equity in London and beyond.

Award-winning bassist Daniel Casimir and vocalist Tess Hirst release their debut album via pioneering London-based record labe Jazz re:freshed. Following the success of Daniel Casimir's critically acclaimed debut EP 'Escapee' which featured Hirst on vocals and fellow rising stars on the scene Moses Boyd, Joe Armon-Jones and Shirley Tetteh, this album - 'These Days' is inspired by the duo's London surroundings, delivering thought-provoking lyricism, neo-soul and modern jazzCasimir, a former Birmingham Conservatoire student, has collaborated with Julian Joseph, Jason Rebello, Benet McLean, Lonnie Liston Smith, Nathan Facey, Shane Forbes, Chihiro Yamanaka, Ashley Henry, David Lyttle, Nubya Garcia, The Tracey Quintet (Meantime Jubilation), Tom Harrison (Unfolding In Tempo), Jasmine Power (Stories And Rhymes), Camilla George and Art Blakey Jazz Messenger saxophonist, Jean Toussaint.Named Young Jazz Musician of the Year by the Musicians' Company in 2016, Casimir has received plaudits for his arrangements and recital, while Hirst has made a name for herself with her vocals on the jazz circuit having moved between London, Leeds and LA to hone her craft. What sets Hirst apart as a musician is not only the originality of her music but her perspective of herself as an artist. She is an Ethnomusicology Graduate of SOAS and her writing style walks us through her upbringing in West London and down the halls of academiaCasimir and Hirst fuse traditional jazz sounds into beautiful compositions, narrating their way through a political and cultural landscape across these twelve tracks. The frenzied groove heavy'Security' addresses the need to trust one another and how we protect ourselves personally, while the rich atmospherics of 'Freedom' combined with Hirst's vocals, explore liberation and the rejection of duty - from a female perspective.At the heart of 'These Days', Casimir plays with a passion and power that resonates throughout each composition. His knack for complex chord changes are highlighted in 'What Did I Do', bringing an energy and enthusiasm to the track while Hirst decries our changing capital. Elsewhere, references to John Agard's poem 'Listen Mr. Oxford Don' in 'The Magic Money Tree', explore the past and its relevance to now while a re-imagining of Charles Mingus' 'Fables Of Faubus' further ensures this theme remains central to the essence of the album.Daniel Casimir and Tess Hirst have already received radio support from BBC Radio 3, BBC Music Introducing and Jazz FM, along with coverage in the London Evening Standard and Jazzwise Magazine

The trio hail from Modena, the Northern Italian motor city. As with the Ferrari and Maserati cars that are designed and manufactured in Modena, Strata-Gemma produce a music of beautiful symmetry.Strata-Gemma create jazz for the head, the heart and the body. Their sound is shaped by the ambient adventures Miles Davis and Ron Carter engaged in alongside the electronic pulse Mo' Wax and Ninja Tune carved out of clubland. Add to this a touch of Nino Rota's Fellini film scores, employ a pinch of Balkan and klezmer brass arrangements, and you have an instrumental trio who create music so fresh it stimulates the senses.Strata-Gemma are a collaboration between Billy Bogus, Luca Cacciatore and Andrea Moretti. The trio first took shape as a club jam between DJs and musicians. Their ability to create atmospheric music, pulsing with rhythm but never solely reliant on beats, music that breaks free and explores sonic possibilities, quickly won notice and lead to the trio playing their freeform music in clubs, music venues and festivals across Italy.