Before I get to the promotional blurb on the website for Mahorka Records, I can give my thoughts on the album. Christophe Bailleau’s Insight and Vision crosses so many genres that one would think, based on the description, that the music would be unlistenable. Nothing could be further from the Continue Reading
Downloads
Various Artists – Ostinato Records: Synthesizing the Silk Roads: Uzbek Disco, Tajik Folktronica, Uyghur Rock & Tatar Jazz from 1980s Soviet Central Asia
I know it must be troublesome to actually click on the link when you can read most of the review from the comfy confines of social media, but this time I implore you to actually click on the link and read the story of how this album came to be. Continue Reading
The Brooklyn Sounds – Libre-Free
Though it has tones of underground and perhaps even a type of mafia culture (certainly the imagery of Hector Lavoe records could spread that misconception), salsa is fun music by its very nature. It’s danceable, rather passionate at times, and full of horns. The Brooklyn Sounds are a long-forgotten group Continue Reading
Luca Calabrese – I Shin Den Shin
MoonJune Records is one of those labels that consistently excels, especially in progressive rock and maybe even more so in jazz fusion. The latest release by Luca Calabrese is from 2024 and has six tracks of the sort of high-quality fusion you would expect from the label, and its focus Continue Reading
Ray Russell Quartet – The Complete Spontaneous Event: Live 1967-1969
Though I have heard a fair number of British jazz records, all excellent, Ray Russell is one who escaped me. I regret that now, considering how absolutely smoking this set is. From the Jazz In Britain Bandcamp site: “The tracks on this album were recorded between 1967 and 1969 and Continue Reading
Various Artists – Staying: Leaving Records Aid to Artists Impacted by the Los Angeles Wildfires
2025 started with horrible fires in California. From Staying’s Bandcamp site: “Everything has changed, and it is changing still. The early days of 2025 (an already baleful year, vis-a-vis America’s darkening political horizon) have wrought heretofore unimaginable destruction in the land we now call Los Angeles. The wildfires that began Continue Reading
six by seven – The Closer You Get (Reissue)
Nottingham, England’s six by seven are heirs to the post-punk mantle whose sound compares well with The Stooges with a more amped up feel on some tracks, but on others, the sound has a swaying, gentle quality reminiscent of Joy Division’s more tender moments. This will be seen as a Continue Reading
Hyldýpi – D V A L I
Hyldýpi is the project name for Icelandic composer Herbert Már Sigmundsson. The music is a gentle sort of ambient touched with New Age influences. Respect to Neotantra Records out of Italy for releasing this, as it’s a pleasant listen.
P.E. Hewitt Quintet – Jawbones
There is no information about who P. E. Hewitt and Quartet are, but they deliver a fine modern take of West Coast jazz.
Sverre Knut Johansen – Distant Shore (30th Anniversary Edition)
Thirty years is a very long time to manage missing the work of a critically acclaimed artist like Sverre Knut Johansen. His work on this album sounds like a combination of the better aspects of New Age and early electronic music, a more relaxed version of progressive rock and a Continue Reading