Nonetheless

Madrid's Alacran was the brainchild of drummer and guitarist Fernando Arbex, who enlisted fellow Spaniards Oscar Lasprilla on keyboards and vocalist/bassist Ignacio Egaña. Their self-titled debut was their only album, and the opening track, "Sticky," was their only single. Recorded in 1969 and issued with no promotion on either side of the Atlantic, the album nonetheless captured the attention of the youth culture in their homeland and in parts of the rest of Europe…

Charles Mingus - 7 Atlantic Album Collection (1957-61) [7CD] {2007 Japan Mini LP Remaster}
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© 2007 Atlantic / Warner Music Japan | WPCR-25143~49 | 24-bit remaster
Jazz / Post Bop / Bass

Pithecanthropus Erectus was Charles Mingus' breakthrough as a leader, the album where he established himself as a composer of boundless imagination and a fresh new voice that, despite his ambitiously modern concepts, was firmly grounded in jazz tradition. Mingus truly discovered himself after mastering the vocabularies of bop and swing, and with Pithecanthropus Erectus he began seeking new ways to increase the evocative power of the art form and challenge his musicians (who here include altoist Jackie McLean and pianist Mal Waldron) to work outside of convention.

Steve Lacy - Five Facings (2008) {Jazzwerkstatt jw025}
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© 2008 Jazzwerkstatt / FMP | jw025
Jazz / Free Improvisation / Saxophone / Piano

This set, recorded between April 4 and April 8, 1996, teamed soprano saxophone giant Steve Lacy with five different pianists. Half the cuts were composed by Lacy, three by Thelonious Monk, and one improvisation by Van Hove and Lacy – the least interesting work included here, because it didn't work. The first five tracks would have made an album for any jazz fan, and the rest, while interesting, don't touch the first half, and perhaps that's because the first two pianists are Marilyn Crispell and Misha Mengelberg. Two pieces by Lacy, "The Crust" and "Blues For Aida," start things off with Crispell playing an inspired counterpoint to the artist during the melody, moving into a piano solo that combines a total shift of Lacy's compositional thought into an almost purely classical realm (Bruckner anyone?) before entering into a dialogue that brings the work back to the jazz tradition, and there is no seam.

(2-CD set) The Music Machine are one of the most respected and best loved American bands of the 1960s, renowned for their powerful sonic assault and intelligently crafted repertoire. Big Beat's Ultimate Turn On compilation from 2006 anthologised the monochromatically-garbed combo's hit Talk Talk era, and now we turn our focus to the latter half of the Music Machine's career…

Grachan Moncur III - Mosaic Select (2003) {3CD Set Mosaic MS-001 rec 1963-1967}
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© 1963-67, 2003 Blue Note / Mosaic Records | MS-001 | 24bit remastering
Jazz / Post Bop / Trombone

Mosaic Records – that venerable jazz and blues collector's label that issues completely necessary packages by legendary, if sometimes obscure, artists in limited editions on both LP and CD – is a name synonymous with the finest quality in sound, annotation, and packaging, and they are branching out. Mosaic Select is a side label dedicated to bringing to light the work of musicians whose role in the development of jazz was seminal but whose catalog was small, or whose work was neglected or otherwise overlooked. These editions, in two or three CD sets, just like their other boxes, are numbered and limited.

Sometimes, if you want to live the dream, you need to let the dream come to you. Just ask composer Rob Simonsen, who began playing the piano at a young age, picking out melodies he heard in his parents’ record collection, before he began composing for himself. “I daydreamed a lot when I was young,” he remembers. “I’d sit at the piano, and it was very much about escape: letting my mind wander, exploring.”

There's always an air of pretentiousness that accompanies classical performances of pop and rock classics, and most performances are quickly dismissed to the muzak-filled realms of elevators and doctor's waiting rooms. The fact that classical violinist Nigel Kennedy has dropped his first name for this set (to become Kennedy) doesn't bode well. Which makes it all the more surprising that this collection is quite good. Teaming up with producer Jaz Coleman (who has previously reworked Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin in the same vein) and the Prague Symphony Orchestra, Kennedy's violin replaces the vocals of Jim Morrison. Fortunately, lurking underneath Kennedy's guise as a rebel lies the thing which first brought him so much attention: his ability to play exquisite music, both technically and emotionally…

Sal Nistico - Heavyweights (2002) {Milestone MCD-47096-2 rec 1961-1962}
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© 1961-62, 2002 Jazzland / Riverside / Milestone / Fantasy | MCD-47096-2
Jazz / Hard Bop / Modal Music / Saxophone

Not every young tenor saxophonist who started recording as a leader in the early '60s took the modal post-bop plunge or explored avant-garde free jazz. Sal Nistico, for example, was very much a '40s/'50s-style bebopper, and his primary influences were Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, Sonny Stitt, and early Gene Ammons. Assembled by Fantasy in 2002, this 75-minute CD contains two albums that Orrin Keepnews produced for Nistico in the early '60s: 1961's Heavyweights (the saxman's first album as a leader) and 1962's Comin' on Up.

A box grouping the ballets of Piotr Tchaikovsky may not be particularly original, but this Decca reissue of Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker performed by the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra under Valery Gergiev nonetheless requires extra attention. The new liner notes by Julian Haylock coming with the set fail to remind us that these ballets were either created for St. Peterburg's Mariinsky or made famous by that theatre and to this day never left its repertory.