Amoeba Music

Debut album from this modern Belgian quartet from Antwerp. They fuse modern exploratory jazz with elements from psychedelic rock, soul, hip-hop, dub and electronic music. Mostly upbeat jazzy grooves, along with some straight up funky beats courtesy of drummer Klaas De Somer’s propulsive percussive pulses. His playing is anchored by Fré Madou’s bobbing bass, while Bram Weiters adds piano, keys, and synths. Group ringleader Andrew 'Chi' Claes (who is also a researcher & teacher at Antwerp’s Royal Conservatoire & Royal Academy of Fine Arts) plays sax, Electronic Wind Instrument, & synth, and also produced & mixed the album. Recorded in a few different studios and at a couple of live performances, the eight pieces feature an intensity that stems from their heady improvisations, which give it a special energy and a very spontaneous feel. A stellar first release from this crew, each of whom are active members in at least a couple of other groups. RIYL: electric-era Miles Davis, Yussef Kamaal, Makaya McCraven, The Comet Is Coming, Nubya Garcia, Kamasi Washington, & BadBadNotGood. Read more

Excellent new collection of rare, exploratory music from France in the 1970s and 1980s, featuring a dozen eclectic tracks that incorporate elements from spiritual jazz, earthy afro-latin percussion grooves and tribal drumming, esoteric asian & middle eastern stringed instruments and reeds, progressive rock, psychedelic folk, and hints of electronic / synthesizer music. A couple of tracks have vocals, but most of the pieces here are all instrumental. Lots of incredible work, most of which defies proper classification. A wonderfully compiled selection of original music that still sounds fresh and exciting today. Read more

Wonderful late 2022 release by this Ukranian-born jazz harpist based in London, on her third solo album and first with the HipHarpCollective ensemble featured here. She arranged and produced all the tracks here, a nice mix of originals and classic covers, with soulful, funky jazz grooves and excellent interplay from everyone involved. All instrumental except for a couple of tracks with vox. Highlights for me include tracks originally penned and performed by fellow jazz harpist Dorothy Ashby, John Coltrane, and Duke Ellington, though her own tracks are all quite nice too. Very fluid playing throughout the session by her talented band, and a beautiful sounding recording too, with lots of dreamy jazz harp action. Read more

Incredible collection of the 3 classic mid-70s albums by this incredible Afro-Latin spiritual jazz ensemble with ties to the local SF community. Formed in 1972 by Idris Ackamoor, Margaux Simmons and Kimathi Asante (all students of Cecil Taylor at Yellow Springs Ohio), they later moved to the SF Bay Area before breaking up in the late 1970s. These records feature dynamic, African-inspired jazz akin to the The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Pharoah Sanders, Sun Ra, and other similar groups with global influences and free jazz elements. Lots of flutes and thunderous tribal percussion, super cosmic stuff! All 3 albums here are great, and the bonus disc with a live recording from the KPFA studio is excellent too. Ackamoor remains active in the SF art & music community, and he also restarted the Pyramids group in 2011 with mostly new personnel. Incredible music from a legendary group. Read more

Gorgeous, stately new release of Indonesian traditional folkloric music, performed by this excellent Sundanese ensemble featuring some talented artists from West Java. Reminds me of both Javanese Gamelan music and Indonesian Kroncong music, especially the vocal style, instrumentation, and the scales played by everyone involved. The lovely, lilting vox here are by the renowned singer Ani Sukmawati, performing here in the classical style of Tembang Sunda. Yusdania plays Kacapi Indung, and Dede Suparman plays Kacapi Rincik (these are both zither like instruments from Indonesia which are used especially in this kind of music). Burham Sukarma plays the suling, a bamboo ring flute from Sunda (aka Western Java) in Indonesia. He was also the musical director behind the session, and actually lives in San Jose and leads the great local Degung ensemble Pusaka Sunda. Overall, this is a beautiful album of languid tunes in a traditional style, lovingly performed with passion. Read more

This single CD issued in late 2022 compiles the 2nd and 3rd albums (Dost 1 & Dost 2) by this talented artist with Turkish roots who is now based in Berlin, Germany. She (Derya) sings and plays the saz (a long-necked string instrument aka bağlama), which is also used in Ottoman classical music, Turkish folk, and music from Azerbaijan, Syria, Iraq, & the Balkan region. She and her ensemble create psychedelic Turkish rock songs with great grooves and nods to the 1970s classics of the genre like Erkin Koray, Ersen, & Baris Manco, plus modern groups like Altin Gun. Lots of saz melodies and solos, some fun synth leads, groovy bass and drums, along with some truly gorgeous vocals, sung in Turkish. Read more

Modern, finely crafted French music with a retro flair, composed and recorded by self-proclaimed “studio rat” Emile Sornin. This is his third solo album, with obvious nods to notable pillars of the classic French pop tradition of the 1960s and 70s, but with a few modern twists in the production department. Brings to mind Serge Gainsbourg’s classic Histoire De Melody Nelson (and Jean-Claude Vannier’s other adventurous work as producer & arranger), along with other fellow innovative French composers like François De Roubaix & library music studio wizard Bernard Estardy. There are significant contributions from drummer Vincent Taeger, bassist Maxime Daoud, and Sami Osta, who helped to produce and mix the album. Lots of brass and a full string section are present in the dense, expertly layered arrangements, along with many keyboards & synths, but it all gels quite well. Read more

Brand new gem from Brazilian singer & songwriter Roger José Cury. After a pair of solo albums in 2014 & 2018, and two collaborations (one with Seu Jorge from 2020 & one with Arlindo Cruz from 2015), this new 2023 album is a real masterpiece, a classic sounding Brazilian album in the spirit of the early samba-funk & MPB of the 1960s and early 1970s. The funky acoustic guitar playing and vocal stylings of Jorge Ben looms large as perhaps the biggest influence here, along with some similar material from that classic era. The album also features expertly crafted string arrangements by the legendary Arthur Verocai. Overall, a killer record that feels timeless. Lots of perfect grooves and a very positive, upbeat vibe to most cuts. RIYL: Jorge Ben, Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Arthur Verocai, Seu Jorge, Tim Bernardes, Sessa.  Read more

Highly percussive afro-latin music from the islands of Guadeloupe in the Caribbean, recorded by a small group of elder statesmen from the region. Songs & lead vocals are by Moise Polobi, a 69 year old singer & drummer who has played the djembé-like Gwo Ka drums since his childhood. He was especially inspired by the drums of the léwoz, traditional rural music from Guadeloupe & Martinique. All the tracks here were produced & mixed by Liam Farrell, a French-Irish musician who drummed with some notable French bands in the 80s (Les Rita Mitsouko, Les Wampas, and Taxi Girl). He produced hip hop & trip hop during the 1990s & 2000s, including a dozen solo albums as Doctor L, and worked with Fela’s drummer Tony Allen on the Psycho on Da Bus project in the early 2000s. He also produced and mixed Congolese group Mbongwana Star’s From Kinshasa in 2015, and Les Amazones d'Afrique’s Amazones Power in 2020. Similar, spaciously produced modern global jams here, this is an excellent recording of percussive tunes. Read more

Cool compilation of work from this French composer, dating from 1974-1991. Lots of robotic sounding electronic drum machines and cosmic synthesizer work here that evokes outer space. There’s a notable Library Music vibe to much of this, with some traces of classic sci-fi soundtrack music, psychedelic rock, funk, disco, & quirky electronic pop. Mostly instrumental, with vox on one space-disco cut. Overall a really fun record. RIYL: Italian library composers like Pierro Umiliani & Alessandro Alessandroni (among many others), the electronic side of Krautrock (Cluster, Kraftwerk, Klaus Schulze & Tangerine Dream), modern 1990s electronica like Mouse On Mars or Aphex Twin, or that recent collection by French disco-funk producer Daniel Vangarde (Vaults Of Zagora Records Mastermind). Read more

Fantastic new album of ambient electronic music from this duo. Kokubo is a Japanese sound designer and composer of ambient & new age music who has been active since 1980 and has over 50 albums to his credit. He has worked extensively with synthesizers and various environmental sounds. Esperti is an Italian-born Swiss trombonist now living in Japan, whose music touches on jazz, classical, ambient, & world music idioms. This is their first collaboration, yielding some phenomenal ambient soundscapes & cosmic synth workouts blended with breathy flutes, ethereal trombone zones, cosmic chimes, & what occasionally sounds like some sort of space frogs or a powerful galactic wind blowing through the universe. Some of it reminds me of Budd & Eno’s lovely collaborations on Plateaux of Mirror or The Pearl. RIYL: Midori Takada, Hiroshi Yoshimura, Eno & Budd, Light in the Attic’s great Kankyō Ongaku comp, along with ambient and new age music in general. Read more

Excellent collection of classic instrumental cumbia, chicha, and salsa from Peru… lots of incredible, fun, upbeat, groovy tunes with amazing lead guitar work! Top reissue label Analog Africa compiles a winner again as expected, and their liner notes are super detailed too, as usual. Also includes some great archival photos of the artists included and various album covers & ephemera of the time. A handful of tracks have some brief spoken vox (all in Spanish), but even those are mostly instrumental overall, aside from a few seconds here and there. Truthfully, there’s not a bad track on the disc, and the mastering sounds bright and clean throughout despite the occasionally substandard recording technologies that were used to record them at the time. RIYL: that great recent Saturno 2000 collection on Analog Africa, The Roots Of Chicha comp from Barbès Records, or classic latin music in general (salsa, cumbia, chicha, merengue, etc.). Killer stuff! Read more

Lovely new 2023 album from this trio of musicians who all have roots in the Indian subcontinent. Aftab and Ismaily have Pakistani roots, while Iyer’s family are from India. Iyer has a storied career in jazz going back to his initial pair of releases in the mid-90s on local label Asian Improv Records, both recorded during his time studying at UC Berkeley. Aftab has 2 solo albums and some collaborations so far, while Ismaily has played on over 200 albums by various artists including 2 Foot Yard, Jolie Holland, Marc Ribot, & Secret Chiefs 3. As a group, they improvise this set, focusing inward to find a spiritual connection and landing on a minimalist musical mantra with magical dimensions. Iyer’s slowly flowering piano motifs meld with Ismaily’s supple percolating bass, while synths and electronics add subtle additional color and texture. Aftab’s voice is husky and rich, unleashing deep emotional resonance from minimal lyrical content, often simply by repeating brief lines of Urdu poetry. This is a truly gorgeous release… subtle, delicate music that rewards patient listening. Read more

Sophomore LP from this Brussels quartet, whose name translates as “junkyard” in Belgian. They expertly incorporate “junk” percussion and other cool homemade instrumentation into their exploratory psychedelic music, blending jazz & various world music traditions (esp. North African & Afro-Cuban styles) to create a vibrant, exciting hybrid of their own. Lots of flutes and other wind instruments (including many crafted from PVC pipes and the like), the thump, klang & clatter of repurposed percussion made from ordinary household objects, plus thumb piano, cymbalom-like string instruments, berimbau style instruments, and washtub bass to fill in the low end register. These instruments give them a truly unique sound, and they’re all talented enough as musicians to not have it sound like just a gimmick. All instrumental, and some neat use of odd time signatures and exotic scales too. RIYL: Codona, Uakti, Arthea, Harry Partch, and excellent local instrument builders like Tom Nunn & Peter Whitehead. Read more

This trio / collective based in the high deserts of Reno, Nevada turn in an excellent 2nd album after releasing a nice debut on this same Italian label back in 2021. They traffic in heady, well-produced, cinematic instrumental funk & soul music, with additional nods here to Exotica, Ethiopiques style jazz-funk, Afrobeat, and various other global grooves from the 1960s-70s & beyond. It sounds both classic and modern at the same time, and every track here is a groover. Lots of percussion, and also a lush 17-piece orchestra augmenting the trio’s initial productions. RIYL: The Sorcerers, Heliocentrics, Budos Band, Sven Wunder, classic exotica artists like Martin Denny & Les Baxter, soundtrack and library music, & artists on great modern labels like Colemine, Daptone, Dunham, & ATA. Really wonderful stuff! Read more

Archival release of a previously lost 2002 recording from a pair of South African music legends and a Swedish soul / jazz collective. Positive lyrics, uplifting vox, & South African style harmonies, with musical stylings that range from jazzy, souful grooves and funky afrobeat to laid back reggae rhythms. Has lots of dubby production touches, and it all sounds quite nice. Vusi Mahlasela is an African folk singer, is often called “The Voice of South Africa,” and his great early sociopolitical songs were a powerful inspiration in the anti-apartheid movement. Norman Zulu is a singer, songwriter and was also a member of South African vocal group Eyethu in the early 80s. Jive Connection are a band from Sweden who have collaborated with Mahlasela several times, backing him on shows in both Sweden and Africa over many years. The tapes for this session were only discovered recently, a classic that never was but now is here in 2023. Super groovy feelgood music! Read more

Superb collection of classic dub riddims from the classic archives of Coxsone Dodd’s legendary Studio One (aka Jamaica Recording Studio) in Kingston, Jamaica. These cuts are from 1972-1981, and appear to be mixed by engineer Sylvan Morris. Morris was one of a handful of different mixers who were featured on various albums credited to the artist known as “Dub Specialist” during the 1970s, all under the supervision of Dodd. This collection is compiled by Soul Jazz label owner Stuart Baker. A handful of tracks have some sparse vocals interspersed in them, but the rest are instrumental, featuring lots of great dubby grooves with suitably spacy effects. RIYL: King Tubby, Scientist, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Prince Jammy, and other classic dub. Read more

An eclectic set of rare and mostly unknown tunes, unearthed by noted UK record collector Paul Hillery. Packed with an assortment of obscure gems, mostly from the 1970s, but with a couple of more modern gems woven in. The 19 cuts here range from stoned psychedelia, hazy progressive folk-funk, sunny blue-eyed soul, and languid beach-tinged jazz rock, with many pieces veering between styles and blending genres at will. I don’t love everything here, but there are a number of very interesting tunes. There’s probably something here for everyone, so dig around and find your jams. For me, the latter half of the compilation is where the gems all are. Some of the records these tracks come from are extremely rare, selling for crazy prices online (if they ever even show up for sale), including some rare private press albums that were initially pressed in very limited quantities and never reissued, even during the CD boom. Read more

Brand new debut release of delicate, beautiful, mostly somber indie folk from this talented 23 year old POC singer & songwriter from the Chicago area, released in April of 2023. She’s got a wonderful way with words (she was America’s National Youth Poet Laureate from 2019-2020), and there are lots of really neat poetic turns of phrase here that caught my ears. Her lyrics contain some really striking imagery & thoughtful sentiments. Subtle, unhurried, mostly acoustic arrangements frame her powerful voice, which ranges from a lovely low register to a powerful upper range, and her masterful use of melisma adds even more nuance to these gorgeous melodies. Hard to compare her to anyone specific, but I think fans of other indie folk will enjoy this, though there’s a wonderful jazzy edge too. Produced by Kara herself, along with a Chicago based crew including KAINA, Nnamdï, & Sen Morimoto. Overall a truly great first album! Read more

Fantastic debut from this Indian musician based in Kochi, a major port city on the Malabar Coast of India in Kerala. Incredible musical range and diversity are on display here, from traditional Indian folk music & improvisational jazz elements to electronic & experimental zones, but it’s all hybridized into something truly unique. He plays sax, guitar, percussion, & synths, and crafted these unusual pieces to have a simple yet somehow lush sounding cinematic vibe. His many experiences collaborating with filmmakers, performance artists, and theatre groups is an obvious influence on the sounds here, giving them a very “visual” and tactile energy, and sometimes even sounding a bit like video game music. I find it hard to compare this to other artists, but I can say that it is highly original, very beautiful, human music that makes me feel something real. Highly recommended! Read more