The Dwarfs of East Agouza
High Tide In The Lowlands

Idris Muhammad is an American jazz drummer and bandleader, and is one of contemporary music's most sampled drummers. The 1976 album 'House Of The Rising Sun' is likely to have contributed to his reputation in that regard. More than likely, the sampleability of the record boils down to Muhammad's sheer rhythmic tightness. We're sure he'll have never had any cymbals thrown at him in his time. Six long jazz-funk pieces adorn this LP in ultra-crisp quality, bringing out his tight, rubbery, nothing-more-nothing-less approach to the craft.

A fantastic and rare album by the Afro soul maestro. These files were recorded in 1971 at Pathé-Marconi studio (Boulogne-Billancourt) for professional sound illustration intended for the cinema, television, and advertising. At the time, jazz musicians were interested in and experimented with all genres, and started to convert solely to what soon to be called "rare groove", somewhere between soul, jazz, and Afro funk with a hint of Latin clave. These tunes have not aged and the sound will be considered as "huge" by many cratediggers. These recording were not supposed to reach the club or radio audience, they were freer sessions, a moment for the musicians to open their imagination and test their "Afro something", like Manu Dibango liked to say. These recording sessions included the best of the French soul scene at the time: Yvan Julien (trumpet), Slim Pezin (guitar), Jacques Bolognesi (trombone), Lucien Dobat (drums), Emile Boza (percussion), Manfred (bass), and the conductor himself at the vibraphone, marimba, saxophone, organ. This album is a wonderful return to the future and should satisfy the need of the Afro soul aficionados.

After almost two years from the LP "Morphé", Pellegrino returns with a single of his Zodyaco ensemble project and its distinctive musical identity between Mediterranean mysticism and Latin splendour.Quimere, title of the single, are a metaphor for an inexpressible desire, an impossible dream, two interpretations of a song in the shadow of the sun that warms up Naples at the sunset of its summer, that invisible wall that divides souls, or perhaps an impossible love suspended between the stars and their reflections on the sea.

Emerging from Lower Franconia's hidden reverse, Johannes schebler, known as ambient-poltergeist "Baldruin" and surreal folklorists Christian Schoppik & Katie Rich of "Brannten Schnüre"-fame have puzzled and amazed outernational audiences from the stranger end of the avant/lo-fi spectrum in recent years. The trio is now collectively dreaming as "Freundliche Kreisel",reaching for terra incognita rather than common ground on their most bewildering and accessible outing to date. Arch-pontifices of the electro-acoustic and outsider-art realm, they fill in gaps and invent missing links on the go with somnambulistic ease, confusing the hypersensitive and hyaline timbres of contempo-electronic aesthetics with the naïve charm of Germany's obscure Kassettentäter and mutant-NDW.Think Daniele Mana and Lorenzo Senni digitally rewiring the 4-track recordings of Gareth Williams' Flaming Tunes or sometimes, much scarier, it feels as if it's the other way round. There certainly is an air of whimsical yet post-ironic romanticism to the songs contained here, a madcap, tongue-in-cheek ghost story as filtered through the transcendental senses of a childhood perspective. This attitude is best personified in the disarming innocence of Katie's vocals whose intonation touches on nursery rhymes as much as on dirges and bizarre 'schlager' kitsch.Heirs to the tradition of magic realism, examining fragments of an arcane sacred mundanity like a crack in the concrete of everyday life, Freundliche Kreisel dwell on this often neglected microcosmic topography, yielding an adventurous and visionary piece of a decidedly Franconian next-level post-modern folklore.

Brian Jackson JID008 is the first full album released by the great man in 20 years and it's a testament to his multifaceted talents that while there are moments throughout that hint at his game-changing history and track record, for the most part it reveals a musician whose considerable lessons learned from the past only serve to keep his eyes firmly fixed on the future. It's a masterclass in unbridled and open-minded creativity, no different from what Brian did half a century ago. The ease and comfort with which his ideas integrate with those of musicians a generation younger than him bears this out. To listen to this album is to hear a hot up-and-coming musician who also happens to be a major jazz-funk legend.