Cargo (2013)

Strange Cargo III is the fourth album by electronic instrumentalist William Orbit. The album matches elegant sequencer trance and understated organic instruments (piano, guitar) with ethnic-fusion and soft house rhythms. It's the only Strange Cargo record featuring vocals, with Beth Orton making an early appearance (more earth mother than neo-folky) on the beautiful ambient-trance single "Water From a Vine Leaf." "Into the Paradise" and "The Story of Light" are variations on the same form, while Orbit borrows from hip-hop and dub for "Time to Get Wize," with the toasting of Divine Bashim. While still tied to the '80s Fourth World aesthetic of its predecessors, on Strange Cargo III Orbit begins moving toward a more completely electronic form of music in keeping with the productions of his Guerilla label.

A massively comprehensive look at the earliest years of Ella Fitzgerald on record – the legendary recordings she made with the Chick Webb orchestra at the end of the 30s and start of the 40s! Ella was way more than just another singer with a band – as her presence in the Webb group really dominated its recording history, so much so that there were nearly five times as many Chick Webb singles with vocals by Ella as there were instrumentals by the group! Fitzgerald's placement was for good reason, too – as her singing abilities were landmark – almost more with the deftness of an instrument than most other singers who'd come before, and developed amazingly over the course of the seven years presented in the set. If you only know Ella from all her later famous sides – and plenty of those are wonderful, too – you'll find even more to love here – a beautifully remastered presentation of 187 titles that were originally issued on 78rpm singles, all collected here for the first time ever – with amazing notes, photos, and details on all the music. The set's not only a great illustration of the strength of the Webb and Fitzgerald team, but also of the way that Mosaic's talents for compilation can work especially well for the pre-LP years of jazz!

Places of Worship signals trumpeter and composer Arve Henriksen's return to Rune Grammophon and furthers his collaboration with both Jan Bang and Erik Honoré. Here his experimentations with sound, space, and texture offer listening environments that reflect various sacred spaces the world over, hence its title. While these tracks are impossible to separate from the influences of Jon Hassell's Fourth World Music explorations or the more murky moodscapes of Nils Petter Molvær, they are also more than a few steps removed from them. Henriksen never separates himself from the environmental information provided by his natural Nordic landscape. The lush, wild, and open physical vistas of its geography provide an inner map for the trumpeter and vocalist that amounts to a deeply focused series of tone poems.