Pama International
You Are So Beautiful

Another killer release by Jazz Is Dead imprint, this time with the legendary compagnon of Gil Scott Heron, the OG Brian Jackson... One happy thing to be grateful for during otherwise trying times is finally getting to hear and enjoy new work by a man whose music is familiar to millions even if his name is less so. Indeed, Gil Scott-Heron continues to cast such a wide shadow that even many of his biggest fans often seem to forget that there's another name next to his on the bulk of his albums, the name of a man teamed up with Gil as a teenager and proceeded to ride out the decade as his writing partner, keyboardist, arranger, and bandleader for their Midnight Band. That man's name is Brian Jackson. His considerable backlog of unheard material reveals a stillenergetic and still-vital icon of the music wing of the Black Liberation movement. Prepare to hear from a musician whose work has contributed to the enhancement of all our lives in some form or another with the latest installment of the Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge's Jazz Is Dead series.

Habibi Funk presents a selection of works by Algerian-born, Amazigh artist Majid Soula. Majid’s music blends the best of Arab-disco, highlife and groovy funk into something wholly unique.Born in Kabylie, Algeria - a place that remains fundamental to his career - Majid Soula is a self-made musician, artist and producer. With no formal music education, Majid’s tenacity has led to a career that is still blossoming. His synths, driving drums, guitar & strong lyrics make a unique sound. A strong proponent for the rights of the Amazigh, he has a band that to this day plays shows, most linked to cultural events of the Amazigh diaspora in France, as well as in Belgium, Russia the UK and Sweden. He was part of a new wave of widely popular and successful Kabyle artists in the 1980s, such as Ait Menguellet, Lounès Matoub, Takfarinas, Idir and many more.Habibi Funk as a label is dedicated to re-releasing music from “The Arab World”, but this release shows how reductive this term can be, as the countries from North Africa and West Asia being summarized under this term include a vast number of languages and identities. Obviously, headlines sometimes come with limited space, and one can’t avoid using terms that paint a half-finished picture. That being the case, however, we are even more happy that Majid Soula liked our idea to work on a release of a selection of his music with us. The tracks here are incredible and need to be introduced to a new generation of listeners.For Majid Soula music is more than just entertainment. He considers himself an activist through music, and foremost a “chanteur engagé”, as he says of himself: „I take my inspiration from the daily life of my people and I share all their aspirations, mainly the official recognition of Tamazight as a language, culture and identity.”He still works on new music in his small home studio in Belleville and occasionally plays concerts for the Amazigh community of the city.We sincerely hope that for you reading this and listening to Majid’s album, his music will have the same revelatory feeling it had on us, and that this will be part of a momentum that will allow Majid to keep on working, playing, and sharing his message for many years to come.

Rare tracks taken from key albums from Spanish / Balearic Islands musician Joan Bibiloni’s extensive career focusing on the period 1982 to 1989. This will continue the NuNorthern Soul Selected Works series, following on from the x2 Ryo Kawasaki EPs released. One of those was a RSD release in 2017.Vinyl will be black, sleeve notes will come from interviews conducted by Marc Rowlands plus the RSD release will contain a poster of the front cover sleeve artwork.

SOULEANCEP'ti Sega EPPura Vida Sounds

As the final chapter in the initial run of Jazz Is Dead releases, Remixes JID010 continues the creative catharsis of an exhilarating new chapter in jazz music. Adrian Younge & Ali Shaheed Muhammad tapped nine iconic creators to reimagine their personal favorites from Jazz Is Dead’s catalogue to-date, who created striking new versions of songs by Marcos Valle, Roy Ayers, Gary Bartz, Azymuth, João Donato, Doug Carn, Brian Jackson and The Midnight Hour. Holding the line taut like a bass string, Younge & Muhammad only invited those special musical alchemists who have previously participated in Jazz Is Dead happenings, or those who are slated to share that stage soon: Cut Chemist, DJ Spinna, Georgie Anne Muldrow, Akili, Shigeto, Pink Siiffu, Dibiase, Natureboy Flako, and Kaidi Tathum. It’s a family affair.The album blasts off with Kaidi Tathum’s reinvention of Marcos Valle’s wistful beachside stroll, transforming “Gotta Love Again” into a strutting, pulsating excursion equally at home in the club and headphones. Building off of Valle’s mellifluous vocalizations, Tathum harnesses the composition’s polyrhythms to build a soulful, jazz-house track that floats over ethereal synths and stutter-steps to a propulsive beat entirely unimaginable, yet true to the spirit of the optimistic and effortless original.On his remix of Gary Bartz’s “Soulsea” Cut Chemist taps into the big-beat atmospherics of his old running partner, DJ Shadow, to craft a moody, echo-laden, percussive down-tempo saxophone meditation. Creating drama over bombastic beats, Cut Chemist layers Bartz’s searching sax refrains over sparse keyboard bars. Brian Jackson’s mellow masterpiece dedicated to the recently departed jazz vocalist, “Nancy Wilson”, receives an epic overhaul by producer Shigeto with help from harpist Ahya Simone and DJ Dez Andres. More than tripling the original’s duration while adding layers of new sounds, Shigeto’s remix weaves in and out of movements that alternately showcase Jackson’s soulful flute work, Simone’s sparkling harp and Andres’ bubbling percussion. Imagine if Dorthy Ashby and Hermeto Pascoal dropped in on Miles’ In A Silent Way sessions...It might have been a foregone conclusion that Adrian Younge & Ali Shaheed Muhammad would give their Jazz Is Dead series the remix treatment, but that doesn’t mean this is your average remix album. Just like Younge and Muhammad fused their aesthetic with the musical masters they invited to collaborate with for Jazz Is Dead, the DJs, producers and musicians tasked with remixing songs from the catalogue tapped into the same jazz ethos, resulting in imaginative and sometimes radically reimagined versions of the originals.

“Yīn Yīn hop and bound along, being whisked up by the pure joy of their experimentation, unafraid to see how far from home it takes them...eccentric, boundary-bashing, genre-melding groove.” – The Line of Best FitYĪN YĪN’s dazzling second album dives even deeper into dancefloor propulsion and space travel atmospherics than their lauded debut The Rabbit that Hunts Tigers (2019).While there is an expanded sonic richness on the new album as samples, drum computers and otherworldly synthesizers intertwine with the band’s taut playing, more than anything The Age of Aquarius is a simple, direct appeal to dance. The record’s groove manifesto can be put down to YĪN YĪN’s experiences on the road, where the positive energies picked up from their audiences fed back into a sound that increasingly “kept people moving.”Funk and disco beats. Electro experimentation. Global retro vibes.A shimmering, cinematic sweep.