Jazz Funky DL

Primarily known as an avant-garde jazz drummer, Tyshawn Sorey is also an adept classical composer whose music doesn't so much straddle genres as leap over them. Whether playing with his own groups, like his trio with pianist Kris Davis and saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, or with such luminaries as trumpeter Dave Douglas and saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell, Sorey has proven himself a mutative player with a sympathetic ear for highly impressionistic group interplay. So sympathetic, in fact, that he often melds so deeply into the overall group sound that you're left with less a sense of Sorey's own playing than of the group's.

His debut album for ACT, Irish Heart, saw his breakthrough as a guitarist and singer. Torsten Goods' multi-faceted, expressive voice is as much at home in blues as in swing and pop and in 1980 this is evident. "99" is a beautiful cover version close to Toto singer Steve Lukather's original recording, whereas "Don't Let It Get To You" reminds us of Al Jarreau and "So Are You" brings out the crooner in him. "I Need You So Bad" is an impressive duet with ACT colleague Rigmor Gustafsson. As they got on so well together during Goods’ appearances at her concerts in Sweden, Rigmor's guest performance was a "must"…

Masabumi Kikuchi - Susto +2 (1981) {2016 Japan Crossover & Fusion Collection 1000 Series SICJ 169}
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© 1981, 2016 Columbia / Sony Music Japan | SICJ 169
Jazz / Fusion / Jazz Funk / Keyboards

Reissue with the latest DSD remastering. Comes with liner notes. A great album of funky Japanese fusion – one of the few sets from the Japanese scene of the late 70s that got any sort of wider release in the US – and a treasure that we've loved for years! The set's got a really great sound – soulful and funky, but sharp too – in a lineup that features a variety of keyboards from Masabumi Kikuchi, plus work by Terumasa Hino on trumpet, Steve Grossman and Dave Liebman on saxes, and James Mason on guitar! The best cuts have a funky feel that's in the CTI/Kudu mode – perhaps mixed with a bit of Herbie Hancock keyboard jamming – and the album's a surprisingly lost funky gem in the Columbia catalog of the early 80s, with a much harder edge than some of the other work on the label at the time!

Double Up, Plays Double Up Plus features Ensemble Double Up, who first appeared on Old Locks and Irregular Verbs, which was voted the best jazz album of 2016 in both the NPR and Jazz Times Critics Polls. The New York Times declared that release “just as easy to picture in Pulitzer contention” and NPR called it “a masterpiece.” On board are holdovers Davila (tuba), Hoffman (cello), Filiu (alto saxophone, alto flute), Macdonald (alto saxophone), Weinrib (drums, percussion), but this time featuring the remarkable three-concert grand pianos of David Virelles, David Bryant and Luis Perdomo. The interaction between the three pianists lie at the heart of this piece, performing an intricate contrapuntal dance of varying attack, register, and density.

Kyle Eastwood's fourth recording takes the bassist into a populist mode, playing music much more on the contemporary side of the jazz dichotomy. Far from a mainstream or swinging date, the acoustic and electric bassist seems as if he's determined to compose music for the screenplay in his head from his time spent in Paris, France, where this was recorded. The fine drummer Manu Katche, keyboardist Eric Legnini, and trumpeter Till Brцnner are focused into making this music less standardized and more rhythm & blues oriented. It's produced by longtime collaborator Michael Stevens with help from the son of Miles Davis, Erin Davis, and sports the quadruple attachment to Eastwood's Rendezvous production company and Chick Corea's manager, Ron Moss.

After the quintet Toxic Parasites, and the eponymous CD released in 2013, saxophonist-clarinetist exchange instrumentation maintaining the same drummer. On the trio originally associated sax, organ and drums, arises by adding a guitar a formula strongly influenced by jazz history (Jimmy Smith, Brother Jack McDuff, Jimmy McGriff, but obviously as Larry Young). It is indeed in a context of effervescence, groove and cursiveness resulting feet and neurons in a desire for perpetual motion. Beaches on fast tempo, which cultivate the taste of vertigo in motion alternate with claimed melancholy moments, whether clarinets (Smooth Skin, Cape Cod) or alto sax, with an obviously tropism which causes the side of Ornette Coleman (Dreaming with Ornette, Silent March).

Building a bridge between jazz and experimental dance music, Brotherly were one of the most creative bands to emerge from Britain in the mid 2000s. Vocalist-pianist Anna Stubbs and multi-instrumentalist Rob Mullarkey studied jazz at the Leeds College of Music and Guildhall School of Music, and then became immersed in London’s club culture, particularly the broken beat scene that grew around nights such as Co-Op. Brotherly’s 2005 debut single ‘Put It Out’ reflected that influence, and in 2007 the duo released a full length album, 'One Sweet Life', followed in 2010 by 'Find First Light', and a collection of their standout tracks is now issued for the first time on limited edition vinyl (and CD/DL) as Analects.