Shivkumar Sharma Hariprasad Chaurasia Brijbhushan Kabra
Call Of The Valley

Cult Berber musician Hocine Chaoui is a musical whirlwind, a tornado that sucks up and spits out electronic, folk, rock, world, afro, tribal, trance, electro and country music at high speed. This is a remastered version of his Ouechesma album which was drawn from Oriental Music Production's archive of regional Algerian cassettes. It was made on traditional instruments with his own unique vocal chants and a glut of mad effects and drum machines. The beats are incessant, dense, physical. The vocals add another layer of intensity and the whole thing is as wild and crazy as it sounds.

In November 1976, Jef Gilson’s phone rang. What a surprise! It was Serge Rahoerson, one of the musicians he had met in Madagascar at the end of the 60s and who had played on his first album “Malagasy”. Rahoerson announced that he was in Paris for a few days. Immediately, Jef wanted to organise a recording session, starting the next day. He thought of a trio including Serge, Eddy Louiss on organ and cellist Jean-Charles Capon, who had also been on one of the trips to Tananarive and so had also known Rahoerson there.Unfortunately, Eddy Louiss –who had already played with Gilson and Capon on the album “Bill Coleman Sings And Plays 12 Negro Spirituals” in 1968- had to drop out at the last minute: he was delayed by a session with Claude Nougaro. Jean-Charles Capon had also become a sought-after studio musician since his trip to Madagascar in 1969. He appeared on several key albums on the Saravah label including the now famous “Comme À La Radio” by Brigitte Fontaine, “Un Beau Matin” by Areski and “Chorus” by Michel Roques, without mentioning the album by his own Baroque Jazz Trio. He was also to be found with Jef Gilson for his album on Vogue with the ex-drummer from Miles Davis’ first great quintet, Philly Joe Jones, or also in the orchestra led by Jean-Claude Vannier for the album “Nino Ferrer & Leggs”. He also played regularly on albums by Georges Moustaki.Jean-Charles Capon and Serge Rahoerson found themselves thus in the studio, with Jef at the controls. He had decided to record the rhythmic structure right away. He would find the soloists later, that didn’t worry him. Serge Rahoerson was on drums. Though a saxophonist by training, Jef remembered that Serge was also capable of great things behind a drum kit: he was the improvised drummer on their cover of “The Creator Has A Master Plan” on the album “Malagasy”... The great memories came flooding back (the nod on the title “Orly - Ivato”), and the old magic worked again.Brought in momentarily from Europamerica, Gilson’s new big band, in which JC Capon also played, the saxophonists Philippe Maté, from France (another Saravah stablemate) and the American Butch Morris (soon to be a key member of David Murray’s band) were invited to record their parts later and Gilson mixed it all as if it had been one single session (as he had already done on other albums, with the tracks by Christian Vander recorded before the creation and success of Magma).The album would not appear until 1977, on Palm, Jef’s own label, and was dedicated to the memory of Georges Rahoerson, Serge’s father, who had also played on the album “Malagasy” and who had died prematurely at the age of 51 in 1974.“I only received my own copy of the album in 1981 when I came to live in France definitively”, a still-moved Serge Rahoerson told us in 2013. “I was playing in a club one night and Jef turned up by surprise with a copy of the album for me, I was so pleased to see him again. When I arrived in France, I told everyone that I had played with Jef Gilson a few years previously, and I was surprised to learn that so few people knew of him. For us, he was of one of the great jazz visionaries.”Jérôme “Kalcha” Simonneau

Un projet aux accens Balkan / Middle East qui va faire plaisir à tous les amoureux du genre. Dynamique, dansant, la musique D'Hallouminati nous transporte de la Grèce et ses régions avoisinantes ! Rebetiko moderne ! Hallouminati have been scurrying round the UK's party scene since 2010, leaving a trail of sweaty dancers, grinning audiences and a faint whiff of olive oil. Since then, their musical reputation has made a dent on the live circuit at boat parties on the Thames, Spiegeltents, European tours and countless beer - soaked watering holes across Great Britain and Ireland.They have busked on the streets of Amsterdam with the same intensity as they do to the huge crowds who have seen them at some of the country’s biggest festivals such as Boomtown, Bestival and Kendal Calling. They have maintained that reputation by following one simple rule keep that party going.Formed in Derby, the seven-piece are now based in Nottingham via London via Cyprus. Armed with a barrage of bouzoukis, brass, guitars, keys and deranged beats, they delicately mix the gritty realms of skankin' ragga punk with traditional Greek rembetiko vibes for a diverse and unforgettable live show that connects with every soul and spirit in the audience. Young or old, introvert or extrovert, Hallouminati will throw their arm over your shoulder, hand you an Ouzo, and have the whole club throwing their limbs all over before you can shout “Opa!”This tour sees them showcasing their debut album, a manic selection of party tunes and tales from the outsiders. Released on London's Batov Records, they've focused their collective energies on a barrel of tunes based on the three B's: Beats, Brass and Bouzoukis.They've kept it debauched, but the fun’s only just begun.Recorded at BSV studios, mixed at Studio Zmaj, mastered at Statinski MasteringAll music and lyrics by Hallouminati - except Track 5: Lyrics by Ben Halford

Gonzalo Benitez and Luis Alberto Valencia were kingpins of the musica nacional movement in Ecuador. Check them out on the cover, on a rooftop in Quito’s Old Town, surveying their dominion. In 1970, when Valencia collapsed onstage during a performance of the yaravi Desesperacion — ‘My heart is already in ashes’ — and died four days later, aged 52, his coffin was carried through those city streets on the shoulders of his fans.They began singing as a duo in their mid-teens. During twenty-eight years together they recorded more than six hundred songs, for Discos Ecuador, Nacional, Granja, Ortiz, Rondador, Onix, Fuente, Real, Tropical, Fadisa, RCA Victor — and of course CAIFE.Their exquisitely romantic harmonising is a sublime blend of collected forbearance and abject self-annihilation, underpinned and elaborated by the heart-piercing, improvisatory guitar-playing of Bolivar Ortiz. Effectively the third member of the group. ‘El Pollo’ sets the tone and intensity for everything that follows: listen to his soloing at the start of our opener, Lamparilla.Musically a pasillo — a cross between a Viennese waltz and the indigenous yaravi rhythm — Lamparilla draws its verses from a poem by Luz Martinez from Riobamba, written in 1918 when she was 15, under the influence of Baudelaire and Mallarme. Another pasillo here, Sombras is one of the best-loved songs in the musica nacional canon, setting lines about undercover sex and loss by the Mexican poet Maria Pren, which were considered pornographic on publication in 1911.And Benitez & Valencia looked back still further, to the indigenous roots of Ecuadorian music, as the key to its future. Carnaval de Guaranda is their take on a song dating back to the era of the Mitimaes, a broad group of Bolivian tribes conquered by the Incas and displaced to Ecuador. ‘Impossible love of mine / I love you for being impossible / Who loves what is impossible / Is the truest lover.’Lovingly presented in a gatefold sleeve with spot-gloss, and printed inners, with stunning photos and expert notes. Excellent sound, drawn from original tapes, by way of Abbey Road, D&M and Pallas.