高中正義
Seychelles (LP + insert with obi-strip)

There’s not another album on the planet that sounds even remotely like vibraphonist Khan Jamal’s eccentric, one-of-a-kind masterpiece, Drum Dance To The Motherland. Thirty years after its release, the album’s tapestry of sound, fearless abstractions, relentless grooves, cool swing, flashes of ecstasy, & pan cultural embrace remain powerful & beyond category. One of only three albums released on the Philadelphia-based Dogtown label, it was barely distributed beyond the city’s limits when it came out in the early ‘70s.Finally available again, a really stunning document of musical exploration, a classic session. In its improbable fusion of free jazz expressionism, black psychedelia, & full-on dub production techniques, Drum Dance remains a bracingly powerful outsider statement fifty years after it was recorded live at the Catacombs Club in Philadelphia, 1972. Comparisons to Sun Ra, King Tubby, Phil Cohran & BYG/Actuel merely hint at the cosmic otherness conjured by The Khan Jamal Creative Arts Ensemble & by sound engineer Mario Falana's real-time enhancements.

Strut present an exclusive collaboration between two jazz greats, Bennie Maupin and Adam Rudolph, on ‘Symphonic Tone Poem For Brother Yusef’, originally commissioned by the Angel City Jazz festival in Claremont, to mark the late, great Yusef Lateef’s 100th birthday on 9th October, 2020.The album weaves a magical, meditative path across five movements, combining electronics, saxophone, voices and Rudolph’s wide palette of percussion from hand drums to thumb pianos and gongs. “I learned so much from Yusef about intervals,” explains Rudolph. “Greats like Yusef, Ornette Coleman and Coltrane stopped using traditional harmonic forms and introduced systems of working with intervals. So, there was an intellectual process with this album, but mostly it was just intuitive. What I love about intuition is that it erases its own tracks behind it. On the 5th Movement of this album, I was working around a major seventh but 90% of what happened was instinctive. It is a unique moment; you can’t go back and recreate it.”Both artists bring unparalleled experience to the project. Detroit’s Bennie Maupin is best known for his work with Miles Davis on Bitches Brew, Herbie Hancock and The Headhunters and Eddie Henderson. Chicago percussionist Adam Rudolph was Yusef Lateef’s percussionist for 20 years and has worked with many other jazz luminaries including Pharoah Sanders, Wadada Leo Smith and Don Cherry. His work with Mandingo Griot Society during the ‘70s and ‘80s and, more recently, leading Hu Vibrational and Go Organic Orchestra constantly break new ground in the use and context of percussion.“Brother Yusef was a luminous being who continues to be an inspiration to so many of us,” continues Rudolph. “He was a great teacher, not only of music, but also of how to live as an artist and as a human being.”

SOUGHT-AFTER LP BY THE GEORGE OTSUKA QUINTET, RECORDED LIVE AT THE NEMU JAZZ INN AND ORIGINALLY RELEASED ON THE CULT JAPANESE LABEL BELLWOOD RECORDS IN 1975. REISSUED ON VINYL FOR THE FIRST TIME AND REMASTERED FROM THE ORIGINAL TAPES.

It comes in 2013 in Brazil, and is fastly become an important record for Folk lovers ! Providing a deep and meditative production ! Indispensable ! This is my first solo record. It was made during an unexpected but very welcome exile, in a land I wouldn't have predicted I'd linger for too long; the west of the west. From there on it's turning around, so I thought. My arrogance was to think that I'd be immune to the promised land effect, the invitation wasn't for me, I was passing through, and not particularly impressed. But the sense of distance and my newly acquired refreshing anonymity kept me staying, they felt useful. I found myself leaning on that distance, projecting onto it, the space echoing back to me with a new voice. There was my double, in the distance, a company, the only viable witness to that distance, a critic of what I was craving, a bully, a brother. This realization produced a dialog, an attempt to reconcile with this onlooker, a plan to think less and feel the way though, as the jockey craves to merge in spirit with his vehicle, to be guided by it. Cavalo means horse in portuguese, a word we also use for people who channel spirits in service, something normal to us in Brazil. Another instance of an amalgam between vehicle and vehiculated, and writing these songs felt like that, an attempt to merge these often conflicting voices, the mind and the gut.I was as a foreigner, enamoured by the new and yet still attached to the luggage I thought I had left behind, dragging things I thought I had abandoned. They say we travel just so we can come back, I say we do it to look back, even if we never return. Distance was a gift to me measured by a certain discomfort, a type of pain that floods without drowning, that washes. Maybe that's what saudade means. I don't feel I am ever possessed when I write but I do feel I am a vehicle to a voice I hear and sing back to in an ever so slightly failed attempt to portray it.I have repeatedly found myself a foreigner, so I grew up imagining I was brave for it, an explorer, moving from city to city every three years as a kid, pretending to have the forbearance and courage I ended up forging while secretly carrying the resentment of the imposed detours, of the wait to return. When I finally arrived back in Rio no longer a child and with an accent three times tampered I realized that my home town wasn't mine, that I had invented it in light of what I saw elsewhere, its memory a dream of scents and light that didn't seem to exist in space, maybe in time. I discovered myself a stranger, what I had been since I first left and knew to be temporary, what I realized was definitive. And it was a bitterness at first but it slowly turned into something sweet, warm, I felt free and grateful, I suppose I had to invent that too, cut the bushes to a new path. I departed again.I ended up finding myself in a type of desert, dry with foreign trees, a fake oasis, so I thought. I was happy to feel alone, overwhelmed with the void clear of familiar reflections, with immense silence, a mirage at last, the place where I wrote these songs from. I believe that everybody can feel foreign in one way or another; in the way that they feel they're perceived by others, in their bodies, their streets, in their fate perhaps, so I dream that this feeling turned into songs, a vehicle to me, a tool that served me and moved me, can also move you, serve yet others, with luck.To give room to the voice of this echo, amplify it, I opened up as much space in the music as I knew how, subtracted all undue, undressed arrangements, threw adjectives away. I used different languages to forge a new voice, one empowered by lack of vocabulary, without subterfuges, one that had to know what it wanted to sing. I also threw away the cover of the album. Everything that was inside protected by the cover came out, naked, clean of directions, added flavours, serving suggestions. Words, simply. And the simple beauty of the page revealed itself, black and white that we like to use as a synonym of things clear and exact, but that is where the infinite delight of interpretation resides, where the fertile gap is. A page is beautiful because it's only a possibility, it has to be entered to signify. Inside the sleeve only the music. And there was yet another distance: inside and outside, words and music. the thing and the name of the thing, me and my name in print. Between one and the other is the open hand, the train at the station, an opening in the veil, a familiar scent: the unpredictable mirror, echoing.Thank you for the chance.Rodrigo Amarante crédits

The Globeflower Masters Vol. 1 takes its inspiration from classic soundtrack and cinematic composers such as Axelrod, Morricone, Gainsbourg, Jean-Claude Vannier and Piero Umiliani. Created during Summer 2020, this album is the product of a fruitful collaboration between Brighton-based musicians Glenn Fallows (The Impellers / Andres y Xavi) and Mark Treffel (Blue States / The Soul Steppers). These seasoned performing and recording artists have put their abundance of experience and skilful musicianship into effect with aplomb on this album. This is as accomplished a debut release as you will ever hear, and dare we say, a future classic in the making.The Globeflower Masters project was borne from an idea Glenn had to create an album that leant on the influence of soundtrack and library composers - particularly of the late 60s and early 70s. This rich sonic palette had previously been innate in his writing and composition but, for this album, the direct inspiration was placed front and centre. After penning several sketches, Glenn contacted Mark to fulfil the vision he had for a complete sound. Mark had an arsenal of vintage synths, pianos and other fun toys which could supplement the drums, guitars and bass that Glenn had been working on. As the album progressed, the pair worked increasingly collaboratively, with each of them starting and sharing ideas to curate the final eight finished tracks.The results are an album of lush, warm, timeless productions that are drenched in strings and classical instrumentation. Awash with atmospheric excursions, it is a listening experience that moves you through moods whilst transporting you to a world of deeply evocative settings and imagined scenarios. The Globeflower Masters Vol. 1 resonates equally as well on a dark melancholic Winter's day as it does sound-tracking a halcyon Summer day. Though influenced by 60s and 70s productions the record is not a simple pastiche, feeling both simultaneously brand new as well as authentically retro.

In 1975, under the oppressive air of military dictatorship in Brazil, brothers Lelo and Zé Eduardo Nazario invited bassist Zeca Assumpção to join their musical experiments in a basement under Sao Paulo’s Teodoro Sampaio Street. As teenagers, the trio had already been playing together in Hermeto Pascoal’s Grupo, alongside guitarist Toninho Horta and saxophonist Nivaldo Ornelas, and it was while working together under Hermeto’s direction that the Paulista rhythm section (as they were then known) began to realise their own potential.With many nightclubs and venues closed in the mid-70s and government censors dictating the output of radio, TV and art galleries, many Brazilian artists fled during the years of dictatorship. But underground, Grupo Um were fusing avant garde ideals with contemporary jazz and Afro Brazilian rhythm; making phenomenally free and expressive music - in stark contrast to the sterile, conservative conditions being imposed above ground.Just like Hermeto Pascoal’s Viajando Com O Som from the following year, Starting Point was recorded over two days at Vice-Versa Studios, by revered engineer Renato Viola. The studio was one of the best in Sao Paulo and musicians communicated with engineers through cameras and a monitor, allowing the group complete immersion in the process. They also made use of the studio’s hemispherical tiled room, which served as an acoustic reverberation chamber.The album begins with Zé Eduardo Nazario’s thunderous drum solo on “Porão da Teodoro”, before clearing the clouds with the lone Berimbau which opens “Onze Por Oito”. Built around a hypnotic electric bass line, heady Fender Rhodes improvisations, and more rip-roaring drums, it’s a rapturous, electrifying freak-jam in 11/8.Like some invertebrate deep-sea curiosity, the free-form “Organica” is made up of Lelo Nazario’s playfully eerie prepared piano, with Zé Eduardo’s strange percussion flurries darting around Assumpçao’s outlandish double bass. The equally non-conformist, percussion-only piece “Jardim Candida” features many of Zé Eduardo’s home-made instruments, including a long saw blade played with vibraphone sticks and violin bow. While working with Hermeto, Zé Eduardo famously built his own all-in-one percussion set-up known as the “Barraca de Percussão” (Percussion Tent) - the first of its kind in Brazil, which he would also use on Hermeto Pascoal’s Viajando Com O Som and throughout his career.“Suite Orquidea Negra'' (Black Orchid Suite) was written by Lelo Nazario as the score for an imaginary movie - the story of a rare, black orchid which produced a substance meant to cure all diseases, but which had mysteriously disappeared from the laboratory… “As a screenplay it’s not very good” reflects Lelo in jest, “but the music ended up being very interesting, the way its parts are chained to one another carries a little of the mystery I imagined for the movie.”The album closes with the triumphant “Cortejo dos Reis Negros” (Procession of Black Kings) - a groovy variation on the Maracatu rhythm, with a two-note bassline underpinning piano improvisations, exultant wordless vocals, cuicas, slide-whistles and a very special guest appearance from Lelo’s dog Bolinha.Starting Point was to mark the inception of one of Brazil’s most daring instrumental groups. Their debut now sits in the lofty echelon of otherworldly 70s Brazilian music, alongside the likes of Marcos Resende & Index’s self-titled debut, Cesar Mariano & Cia’s Sao Paulo Brasil, Azymuth’s debut and indeed Hermeto Pascoal’s Viajando Com O Som. But just like all of those titles, which were either shelved or largely ignored at the time, Grupo Um - so radically ahead of their time - struggled to find a label to release their debut album. So Lelo kept the tapes safe in his archives, which is where they sat for almost half a century. Finally, almost fifty years later, this mesmerising piece of history is here, and it was only the beginning.Grupo Um’s Starting Point will be released by Far Out Recordings, on vinyl LP, with an insert featuring unseen photos and liner notes by the Nazario brothers, as well as a CD and digital release, 17th February 2023. créditsparu le 17 février 2023Lelo Nazario | piano, prepared piano, fender rhodes, percussion, voiceZé Eduardo Nazario | drums, percussion, berimbau, voiceZeca Assumpção | bass, voice