Jazz

limited gatefold heavyweight vinyl LP

Pop Sensation - A groovy and sensual rhythm for a laid back evening with spring reverb Fender guitar and space echo Moog as featured guests.Sounds In The Night - Walking at night into the city after the rain when every sound seems to reverberate on the wet concrete. Modulating guitar over ambient dark jazz and noir.

Matthew Halsall's landmark new album "An Ever Changing View" is an expansive, immaculately conceived project which presents Halsall’s signature blend of jazz, electronica, global and spiritual jazz influencesBlack Vinyl 2LP with printed inner sleeves and white foiled reverse sleeve tracklisting. Download code includedHalsall who has been hailed as one of the leading figures of the UK jazz renaissance has never seen himself as part of any one sound or scene: he builds his own sonic universe instead. An Ever Changing View finds him at his most experimental yet, once again expanding his sound and production techniques to create his unique brand of deeply meditative music.During the album's creation, he was staying in both a beautiful architect’s house with breath-taking sea views and a striking modernist house, where he composed what he saw “like a landscape painting”. In these new environments, Halsall wanted to capture “the feeling of openness and escapism” and to approach making music again from scratch. “I hit the reset button and wanted to have complete musical freedom,” he says. “It was a real exploration of sound.”It was hearing jazz on the dancefloor as a teenager that first opened up new possibilities in Halsall’s mind and his music has long drawn on his love for the spiritual jazz of Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders and contemporary electronica from the likes of Warp Records and Ninja Tune. An Ever Changing View melds those forms in a way that feels heady and, at times, even otherworldly. One of the album’s starting points was Halsall’s ever-expanding box of percussion, from congas and kalimba to various clusters of seeds, bells and chimes, which he sampled and looped to use as a foundation for the songs – a first for him and his band. Elevating, charming, totally modern jazz tracks jostle with deft warm magic realism; and laid back grooves with hand percussion, deep bass and the gorgeous glisten of the Fender Rhodes meet hip-hop beats. Halsall himself sparkles, illuminating his beautiful tapestries of sound with lithe, glistening elegiac trumpet.An Ever Changing View comes in a package as striking as the music, with handmade fonts designed by Ian Anderson of The Designers Republic and the specially commissioned tapestry by artist Sara Kelly is a stunning and harmonious complement to the record's sound

2023 REPRESSA stunning follow-up to his late 2018 release. Mostly recorded live at the Apollo Hotel Amsterdam in 1991. This is a compilation of the ''Apollo Hotel CD box'', that Ronald made himself, for family and friends..Some words from the label:From 1986 until 1992, Ronald had a residency in the lounge of Amsterdam’s Apollo Hotel. He would play there 5 days a week, for 5 hours a day. In 1991, throughout several sessions, he recorded himself on a cassette recorder. The recordings were ranging from re-interpreted cover versions to multiple own compositions.The Apollo was particularly known for its sophisticated and elegant crowd. Guests would come to meet in the lounge to talk business, or end the day with a drink at the bar - dancing was never an option.Listening to the album, one must wonder how some of this music would go hand in hand with a place like that. It seems Ronald gets lost in music and returns in unequally balanced patterns. Lounge sounds meet drum computer rhythms, punchy baselines, distorted space noises, reoccurring clarinet interludes and improvised piano solos.Back then, just as now, Ronald never liked to be the center of attention. He simply tried to interact with the surrounding as a provider of the mood - as he explains himself.Instruments Live:Grand Piano, Yamaha QX1 Sequencer, 2x Yamaha TX7 Tone Generator, Drumtraks Sequential Circuits, Clarinet, VoiceAdded at home: Yamaha DX7 Sounds, Roland R-8Space Train: Kurzweil Piano, Yamaha DX7, Roland R-8, Soprano Sax, VoiceRecorded live at the Apollo Hotel Amsterdam in 1991, except 'Space train', which was recorded in Ronald’s living room.All instruments played and arranged by Ronald Langestraat.All tracks written an composed by Ronald Langestraat, except 'Lowdown' which was written by David Paich & Boz Scaggs, 'Give and take' which was written by Michael Shrieve, Tom Coster & Carlos Santana and 'Orpheus' which was written by David Sylvian.

Essential South African jazz, funk and soul - An anthology dedicated to the legendary Black Disco ensemble. Distilling the group’s recorded output into a single commemorative document, Discovery 1975-1976 compiles cuts from the lauded Night Express album alongside rare gems from the group’s long-out-of-print first and third albums. The newly remastered selection features previously unissued single versions of the mighty “Night Express” itself, a funk juggernaut with piercing flute whistles and rapturous sax cries as well as “Dawn” from the album Black Disco 3, a trippy, flute-driven awakening of soft light and gentle colours.With a Yamaha organ and a dream, Pops Mohamed started his musical journey in the mid-1970s as the bandleader and composer of Black Disco, creating a hip melange of chill-out jazz with futuristic drum machine sounds and spiritual overtones. His cosmic organ transmissions were accompanied by two of the most sought-after session players on the South African scene, the sax and flute wizard Basil Coetzee, who had risen to fame in 1974 as one of the soloists on the hit “Mannenberg,” and Sipho Gumede, the young bass prodigy who was already rubbing shoulders with the old guard at the outset of his career. Backed at first with polyphonic beats from Mohamed’s electric organ and later taking on a drummer, Black Disco created a signature sound and a trilogy of innovative albums in a burst of studio creativity between 1975 and 1976.On the heels of their epic various artists compilation, As-Shams Archive have produced a doozy of a compilation of some very essential South African jazz.