Jeff Parker
The New Breed

Interresting Franch Lp released on "Le Chant du Monde " in 1977. Focus on popular lyrics with light and jazzy arrangement, this album is well pressed. This is the kind of records taht are so happy to discover because this music is original.

Mind-blowing session of Spiritual Jazz recorded in NYC in 1984 led by Haitian genius Alix Pascal blending traditional Ra Ra elements with modal/spiritual melodies.The result was like nothing else coming out of Haiti or the Haitian exile community in the US at the time. Dark, mystical, lyrical and abstract, with its otherworldly shifting rhythms, Dilijans came off like a Haitian version of Bitches Brew. The album sounds less like a stylish mini-jazz performing in a hotel dancehall than like a cry of ancestors emanating from the spirit world to lament over the complications of modern Haitian society.Ayizan: In the cosmology of Haitian Vodou, the goddess of the Earth, relocated to the Caribbean from her original home among the West African Fon people. She represents one of the four primal elements of nature, along with Loco (Wind), Legba (Sun), and Agwe (Water).Ayizan: In the world of music, an ambitious music project marrying the haunting resonances of Vodou with the harmonic sophistication of modern jazz and progressive rock. The brainchild of Haiti-born multi-instrumentalist and arranger Alix “Tit” Pascal, the fundamental goal was to re-conceptualize the articulation of rhythm in Haitian popular music.To say that rhythm is the heart of Haitian music is understate things: Rhythm is the heart, the lungs, the skeleton, the musculature, the pores, the brain and the soul. Indeed, Haiti’s perennially popular social music, kompa, takes its name from the Spanish compás—“beat”—for the steady, throbbing pulse of the tanbou barrel drum that has remained its central animating force for more than six decades.That basic beat, that compas direct has remained consistent, but there have been various attempts to complicate it, to problematize it, such as the efforts by the genre’s sainted originator Nemours Jean-Baptiste to inject the traditional rara festival music into the kompa mix.

“Sun Ra said he came from Saturn, because white America treated him like an alien, like a creature from outer space, so he became one, an anarcho-emperor of the fantastic, who made it to the moon before America or Russia, because the moon was nowhere near as far out as he could really go.“ – Paul MorleyStrut and Art Yard join forces for a special release to mark what would have been Sun Ra’s 100th birthday with ’In The Orbit Of Ra’, a new collection presented by the longest serving member of the Arkestra and current bandleader, Marshall Allen. Bringing together Ra highights from over 25 years of music, the album is the first internationally released compilation to provide an introduction to the music of Sun Ra, mastered from the original tapes with extended and unreleased tracks.In addition to the track selection, the release features recollections and contributions from some of the core Arkestra line-up including Marshall Allen, Michael Ray, Knoel Scott and Danny Ray Thompson. For the music, the selection takes us through the huge variety and intricacy of the Arkestra’s work covering the ‘60s to early ‘80s, from the celestial blues of ‘Spontaneous Simplicity’ and ‘Plutonian Nights’ to the urgent jazz of ‘Rocket Number Nine Take Off For Planet Venus’ and ‘Dance Of The Cosmo Aliens’. The album features an exclusive previously unreleased Sun Ra track from the Art Yard archives, the acoustic ‘Trying To Put The Blame On Me’ recorded live in Rome in 1977, along with a previously unreleased Part 1 of ‘Reflects Motion’ from 1962 and an unheard extended version of ‘Island In The Sun’ from the late ‘60s

We Jazz Records presents "Pu:", the boundary-breaking solo debut of bass player Ville Herrala, to be released on 21 February 2020. Herrala utilises only the double bass but approaches the instrument from various different perspectives. The end result is an inspired set of 14 miniatures, each pushing the concept forward in a highly personal way.The first single "Pu: 12" presents a rhythmic approach with echoes of from the world of minimal classical music and electronic music. Bowed tracks such as "Pu: 2" offer another perspective, as does the second single "Pu: 10", going back to the essence of the instrument and opening new doors while doing so. Each of the tracks is a compact musical adventure unto its own.Ville Herrala will perform live in Helsinki on 19 March, supporting the Kenny Barron & Dave Holland Trio at a We Jazz presented event at Savoy Theatre and at Turku's Bar Ö on 5 March.Ville Herrala (b. 1979) is one of the most higly-regarded bass players working in the Finnish scene. He's known from the ranks of such top ensembles as PLOP, Jukka Perko Jazztet, U-Street All Stars, Jukka Eskola Orquesta Bossa and UMO Helsinki Jazz Orchestra, to name but a few.