Ambiance II Fusion
Come Touch Tomorrow

Helen Umebuani Nee Nkume was born in 1943 at Nbiabike Amekpu Ohafia. Though her father was a prominent member of the community, her family moved to the bigger city of Umuahia, capital city of Abia State, while she was still young. She received her education there and while in secondary school she met her future husband, Umebuani Onwuzulike. Their marriage was blessed with three wonderful children.Helen started her musical career in the early 70s, forming a group known as the Young Timers. They recorded their first couple of Highlife albums for Tabansi, both of which became hits in the east side of the country. By the late 70s she self-produced and released her two best albums: "Young Timers Band" and "Vol.IV", which were pressed in very limited editions and distributed mainly in the area where the group was active, Umuahia and its surroundings.The music on those albums have a certain progression to them. The "Young Timers Band" LP is mostly still steeped in the highlife mood that distinguishes her earlier work but one track, "Umo Imo Special", stands out from the rest. It's a fusion between highlife, jazz and afrobeat and totally dance-floor friendly - what we would call “Countryside Afrobeat”."Vol.IV" has a more defined Afro Funk sound but the tracks "Music" and "Onye Ije" are clearly among the most loved of that Countryside Afrobeat genere. (We'd like to note here that on this last track we decided to maintain its original sound as much as possible. In fact, the production is somehow quite lo-fi, with the music relatively low and in back compared to the up front vocals, a style that we believe was intended by the group.)By the early 90's Helen had become born again and started performing on gospel Albums, eventually becoming one of the most successful Nigerian gospel musicians of the 90's.Helen Nkume albums are some of the most elusive produced in Nigeria during the 70s and finding her family has been as complicated as finding clean copies of her albums!We remember the first time we found her orange album. We didn't know what it contained but something about the cover shouted “pick me up”! We were in a village near Umahia, had no light nor way to listen to it on our turntable but when a cover speaks to you that way - you have to trust it. Once we got back to our room we played it and were happily surprised. Our minds started mulling over the idea of making something special and we started to talk with all our friends, musicians and artists in the area in order to find some info about her. For 2 years though – nothing, apart from discovering that she had passed away in early 2000. Luckily our good friend Austin from The Combats was able to locate her daughter and son in Umuhaia and we were finally able to license the music from them. Sadly, not much material was left, only one very, very damaged picture.

"There are not many things that can hurt me more than people stealing my music." Late last year, Soul Supreme announced in a formal statement that he was—and still is, while completing this record—in a legal battle with a Norwegian producer and a money-grubbing indie label. A case to reclaim ownership over his masters. Industry rule #4080 in full effect.People who know Soul Supreme, know he’s a music man at heart. So the silver lining of the lawsuit is that Poetic Justice emerged from it. After all, artists like Soul Supreme best express themselves through music. This is his way of coping with the dreadful situation; a heartfelt album to take you along for the ride.Mind you: that doesn’t mean that this is a moody listen coming from a place of frustration and resentment. Far from it. Soul Supreme is confident in his case and that shows in his work on Poetic Justice. The music moves, grooves, throbs, and hits more than ever before. With thematic twists and turns to express how he’s been experiencing the legal fight.“I have decided to create a positive outlet for what is a very negative event in my life,” he writes in the album announcement. “I wrote music that reflected how I feel going through this process. No matter what the legal battle results in—I know I have made something beautiful and honest out of this terrible experience. At least for myself but hopefully for others to enjoy it as well.”Stealing Soul Supreme’s music is one thing, but Poetic Justice shows that no one can take away his spirit.—Danny Veekens

When his mother brought Stanley Turrentine’s Salt Song LP back from a trip to Canada, Julien Lourau, then a teenager, was impressed by the scope of the sound and the groove of the saxophone. He was also charmed by the lush arrangements and funky sound of the record, typical of releases on the CTI label. Created by producer Creed Taylor, CTI left an imprint in the minds of 70s jazz fans much like Blue Note did in the 60s, and it even ended up releasing work by artists who started out on this mythical label such as Stanley Turrentine and Freddie Hubbard. The two even shared the same sound engineer, the great Rudy van Gelder.Yet CTI, though highly prolific during its 15 years of activity, has not benefitted from the same aura as its predecessor.“To breathe life into this album, I listened to a wealth of CTI releases and discovered some I had never heard before. I noticed, oddly, that many of today’s musicians know very little about CTI - a label unfairly considered as minor.”The choice of tracks was determined by Julien’s personal tastes, always keeping in mind a desire to help people discover them yet focusing on the joy of actually playing them too.“The album is made up of 9 pieces. Mathieu Débordes got everything down to the nearest note before we even attempted to play them. CTI didn’t hold back in fuelling their compositions with brass and violins, but I erased this aspect and pared things down to a bass, drums and two keyboards.”English drummer Jim Hart, someone Julien worked with during his London years, propels the group - from hard-bop polyrhythms with “drum & bass” inflections to a reworking of classic Red Clay.Sylvain Daniel on the bass and Arnaud Roulin on the analogue keys are two musicians close to the saxophonist, and that he met when they were students in 1999 while organising a master class at the Conservatoire de Nantes. Since then, they have become his esteemed companions.The collaboration with young pianist Léo Jassef began on this recording, where he also plays the Prophet 5. The dynamic and overlap of the many keyboards played by Arnaud and Léo bring the record a richness of timbre and harmony that the strings and brass provided on the CTI recordings.For the final track on the record, Julien called upon his friend of 30 years, guitarist Bojan Z, for a fresh, Gospel take on Love and Peace, a track recorded by Quincy Jones in 1969, which here, is dedicated to Bojan’s recently departed brother.“When it comes down to it, this album really is as I had imagined it, with, luckily, a few unexpected turns. I created a playlist I then claimed as my own. But in the end, I must admit that I would have loved to have composed some of these tracks.”

Snoopy is hard to follow up. The same brilliant musicality is lavished on Orange — a combination of unmistakably original, skittering drum programming, startlingly fresh instrumental interjections, creepily invocatory voices, and dubwise treatments — giddily imbued with the dark arts of ritual and seance. But Orange is more gripping, focussed and urgent, more intense and ambitious. Next level.Its first quarter presents a trio of forays in suspense.Bassline squares up like an epic psych-funk grinder, with a moody guitar line traversed by ticking drum patterns and faint electric crackle. In no time the guitar is staggering and stammering under the duress of echo and distortion, and over-run with percussive electronics and the first of the voices massing in the music’s head. The mood has quickly become more trepidatious. We're deeper underground; it’s gloomier, wetter.Shred propulsively ratchets up the tension and menace. Glazily tentative xylophone is played against slashing, nervy cello. The voices are more strangulated and sick now. Flutes and chimes evoke the same kind of beautiful, contaminated efflorescence which is pictured on the LP’s front cover.Voice Of The Spider makes easier progress across this cavernous, shadowy, dripping terrain, with funky pads and Nasty, eighties, No Wave electric bass; woozy chimes, non-plussed keys, singing-in-tongues.Pink Mist marks an arrival, or unbottling, with annunciatory church-organ and choral voices from the off, and a newly relaxed, head-nodding kosmische rhythm.Mandarin is a short, beat-less and voice-free interlude for piano and bass. It's reflective and nostalgic, ambivalent and inconclusive, with a lovely snatch of melody. A bridge half-way.Would You Like A Vampire is a triumphant, mesmerizing go at New Folk, with strummed acoustic guitar, descant song, and jazzily restless drum programming (including a tasty bass-bin trembler). Amazingly, Conrad Standish is joined at the mic by none other than Bridget St John. Together they sing 'Earth is Paradise’ so repeatedly and tremulously — and the song is cut off so abruptly at the end — it seems as if the verb is teetering on the past tense, and hymn fading into valediction and catastrophe.Similarly Storm Rips Banana Tree begins idyllically enough, with a CS-&-Kreme-style raga… before something like an immense, obliterative drill starts up. Harpsichord and organ — by James Rushford — and flutes, and clapping, distant chanting and insectile percussion steadily leaven the dread, till finally all that is left is lapping water.It’s an epic, deeply immersive, compelling, thought-provoking, twenty-minute finale… the coup de grâce.

ROBERT WYATT before his successful solo career was the original drummer/vocalist for SOFT MACHINE.This EP was recorded on a 4 track at WYATT'S house in the summer of 1992.All instruments and vocals are by ROBERT.A Short Break is a musical scrapbook.A glimpse of half thought ideas,and hints of melody and atmospheres.Armed with a lone piano,a set of symbols,an organ,some basic percussion,and his plaintive voice,WYATT'S pieces are melancholy,sad,and contemplative.An essential purchase if you re a true fan.