Maisha

The third release from Night Dreamer’s essential “Direct-to-Disc” sessions sees an incredible meeting between legendary US saxophonist Gary Bartz and leading UK spiritual jazz ensemble, Maisha, featuring two Bartz classics and three brand new joint songs written by both Bartz & Maisha in close collaboration.

There is spirit and fire in the music of The Zawose Queens. There's the vibrations of the ancestors, coming through on traditional instruments — soaring chizeze fiddle, buzzing illimba thumb piano, ngoma drums that chatter and thunder — and voices that go deep, high and out there. There's the connection to nature, to ceremony and ritual, in their dance-inspired fusion, their blend of the organic, harmonic and modern-day electronic. There are lyrics that tell, in their native kigogo, of the passion for music, the wonders of life. Of pride in environment, in tradition. In their East African roots.

There’s something universal in the appeal of an escape – of finding somewhere to relax and explore your ideas. It’s a feeling which connects together the different parts of Maisha’s debut album. A deep record which provides grist for serious spiritual rumination, the music prompts internal reflection as much as it reflects the surrounds which shaped it. Each of its tracks provokes a feeling of intense revery which is timeless, on the one hand, but realised through a confluence of sounds and circumstances which are undeniably of the present.

A primer on London’s bright-burning young jazz scene, this new compilation brings together a collection of some of its sharpest talents. A set of nine newly-recorded tracks, We Out Here captures a moment where genre markers matter less than raw, focused energy. Surveying the album’s running order, it could easily serve as a name-checking exercise for some of London’s most-tipped and hardworking bands of the past couple of years. Recorded across three long, fruitful days in a North West London studio, the results speak for themselves: they’re a window into the wide-eyed future of London’s musical underground.

Drummer, composer and producer Jake Long announces the release of his debut solo album City Swamp via New Soil on 17th May. Conceived as a soundtrack to a film that doesn't exist, City Swamp is a dystopian suite of meticulously reconstructed jazz improvisations from some of the UK's finest instrumentalists. Drawing on the hypnotic groove of electric-era Miles Davis, the album announces the Maisha founder as an artist in his own right, breaking new ground on what is a heady and conceptually adventurous debut.

"I Am Panda" is the latest release from the inventive, unclassifiable Chiminyo, whose highly original approach to drumming and production was laid bare on last year's We'll Never Know.

Auteur-compositeur-interpreter Oscar Jerome from south London announces his highly anticipated debut album "Breathe Deep", which is to be released on July 10, 2020 via Caroline Internationale.