Pharoah Sanders
Moon Child

“Dance Ancestral” est la dernière addition à l'œuvre distinctive et en pleine croissance de l'artiste prolifique John Carroll Kirby. Kirby a fait ses débuts sur Stones Throw en 2020 avec “My Garden”, un album influencé par le jazz, le New Age et la musique ancienne, qu'il a synthétisé dans sa signature sonore unique et immédiatement reconnaissable. Depuis, il a sorti l'album instrumental pour Piano Conflict, la bande originale du long métrage “Cryptozoo” et la suite jazz fusion Septet. Pour “Dance Ancestral”, Kirby a invité le producteur canadien Yu Su à se joindre à lui pour produire un disque au son plus électronique.John Carroll Kirby has worked with the likes of Solange, Frank Ocean, Sebastian Tellier and many more, but he's equally celebrated as a solo artist who returns to Stones Throw for his fifth LP. This time around, the album has been made in tandem with incredible Canadian artist Yu Su, who lends her touch to the production around Kirby's infectious keys. The album is largely instrumental save for an uplifting guest spot from Laraaji on opening track 'Dawn of New Day', but as with previous Kirby albums he has more than enough to say in the conviction of his playing. Ever chameleonic, his sound on Dance Ancestral is removed from the solo piano ambience of Conflict, but as ever Kirby's deep-rooted musicality soars, buffeted by Yu Su's fantasy confections. If you're in search of something to make you feel good, this record has positive energy for days.John Carroll KIRBYDance AncestralStones Throw US

To write these few lines, we spoke to saxophonist François Jeanneau, an old friend of Jacques Thollot who also played on several of his albums, including the “Watch Devil Go” which interests us here. He told us a story which, according to him, sums up the personality of Thollot. A noted studio had reserved three days for a Thollot recording session. The first morning was devoted to sound checks and putting some order in the score sheets which Jacques would hand out in a somewhat anarchic manner. Then everyone went for lunch. When the musicians returned to the studio, Thollot had disappeared. He wasn’t seen again for the three days. When he reappeared, he had already forgotten why he had left, The music of Jacques Thollot is in the image of its’ author: it takes you somewhere, suddenly escapes and disappears, returning in an unexpected place as if nothing had happened.Four years after a first album on the Futura label in 1971, Jacques Thollot returned, this time on the Palm label of Jef Gilson, still with just as much surrealist poetry in his jazz. In thirty-five minutes and a few seconds, the French composer and drummer, who had been on the scene since he was thirteen, established himself as a link between Arnold Schoenberg and Don Cherry. Resistant to any imposedframework and always excessive, Thollot allows himself to do anything and everything: suspended time of an extraordinary delicacy, a stealthy explosion of the brass section, hallucinatory improvisation of the synthesisers, tight writing, teetering on the classical, and in the middle of all that, a hit; the title-track - that Madlib would one day end up hearing and sampling.“Watch Devil Go” was in the right place in the Palm catalogue, which welcomed the cream of the French avant-garde in the 70s. But it is also the story of a long friendship between two men. Jacques Thollot and Jef Gilson had known and respected one another for a long time. Though barely sixteen years old, Thollot was already on drums on the first albums by Gilson starting in 1963 and would play in his big band (alongside François Jeanneau once again), ‘Europamerica’, until the end of the 70s.In a career lasting half a century and centred on freedom Jacques Thollot played with the most important experimental musicians (Don Cherry, Sonny Sharrock, Michel Roques, Barney Wilen, Steve Lacy, François Tusques, Michel Portal, Jac Berrocal, Noël Akchoté...) and they all heard in him a pulsation coming from another world.Jérôme "Kalcha" Simonneau

Wonderful LP from Helsinki based multi instrumentalist and producer Jimi Tenor. For 'Order Of Nothingness' Jimi has recruited rhythm geniouses Ekow Alabi Savage and Max Weissenfeldt, fashioning their own brand of experimental afrobeat and jazz.

Tramp Records continues their pilgrimage to the soulful fringes of spiritual jazz and progressive rock and funk with their 3rd and 4th volumes of their "Peace Chant, Raw, Deep and Spiritual Jazz" series, and the world could not be more ready.As we turn together on this tiny blue ball hanging lonely in space, and as we together face existential threats ranging from climate catastrophe, the rise of brutal authoritarian regimes, the breaking of the industrial storm and the imminent collapse of empire, not to mention the raging covid-19 crisis and the continuing racial and social struggles across the globe, we are thrust into a society-wide grand awakening that has been in the making for a very long time. Of course, our musical teachers have trod this path before us, and have worked out solutions to these problems, the songs of the Peace Chant series ring out loud and clear as our ancestors' proof of concept. They say history repeats herself, maybe it's because we weren't listening the first time. Thanks to Tramp Records, we have been granted another opportunity.Today, the musical and spiritual truths enshrined within the spiritual jazz diaspora seem to be more and more sought-after, and crucial at a time when we as a society seek higher and farther for those bold truths. With each generation, that truth doesn't change, and the artists featured in the series speak those truths along a continuum that ranges from the late-60s up to the present day.Volume 3, the first LP, features artists who use their medium to welcome the return of the sacred feminine as in Lenny Marcus Trio's Mother's Day, and speak on afrocentric themes like Roland Hayes with his heartfelt Africa The Beautiful. Mineral King renders epic orchestral rock while Natural Life takes us even further on a ten-minute epic quest from a progressive fusion head, to searing tabla, into virtuosic guitar jamming and finally dropping into heady fuzz-soaked riffs and free-jazz fusion with their theme song. Rama Dyushambee sings a devotional song about divine source and healing, while Jule Farmer's Muhammad Ali stands strong at the crossroads between black spirituality and black power. Black Is provides a vibey lo-fi flute jazz meditation in their Themes and Variation while The Supa Lowery Brothers provide the requisite hard modal freedom funk.Peace Chant is the center of the mandala, representing the nucleus of the post-bop, modal jazz, avant-garde, transcendental, spiritual, ethnic, and freedom music universe without necessarily suggesting anything immediately identifiable as any of the above. This is the soundtrack to the raising of human consciousness and the salvation of society's very soul.We give thanks to Tramp Records for leading our thirsty hearts to this rich fountain.

Pour fêter les 15 ans du Label Chinese Man Records, le Groove Sessions Vol.3 se refait une beauté, avec une édition collector limitée : vinyles rouges, free download et quelques surprises visuelles cachées à l’intérieur par le truculent Julien « Ouikid » Loïs!