Category: FEATURED RELEASES
Every year their are a number of highly-anticipated releases that vinyl collectors and music fans cannot wait to listen in full, however some of my favorite releases are the ones that I didn’t see coming, and completely blow me away. This is certainly the case with the debut recording from the London-based cosmic groove quintet Natural Lateral.
It’s been quite a busy year for Mark de Clive-Lowe. Already he has released two recordings with his brand new Japanese cosmic jazz group Rōnin Arkestra, and two additional albums that made up his Heritage project. For his final release of 2019, the Los Angeles-based multi-instrumentalist and producer presents his CHURCH Sessions, which MdCL describes as “equal parts jazz club, dance party and live remix experiment.”
Longtime Chicago jazz scene veteran, and newly residing New York City-based trumpeter and composer Jamie Branch follows-up her breakthrough and highly acclaimed 2017 debut Fly Or Die with a new brilliant full-length album on International Anthem titled, Fly Or Die II: Bird Dogs of Paradise.
Following up on her breakthrough 2017 album La Saboteuse, British-Bahraini trumpet player and composer Yazz Ahmed returns with a brilliant new record, titled Polyhymnia.
Over the past few weeks, the newer Paris-based jazz label Komos have released four brilliant records paying tribute to iconic artists that highly influenced the French jazz scene, including Henri Texler, Marion Brown, Don Cherry, and Randy Weston.
Following two incredible releases over the past few years in Art in the Age of Automation and the complimentary album Untitled (AITAOA #2) off of Gondwana Records, the London-based group Portico Quartet return with their fifth studio album Memory Streams that continues to explore the melding of jazz and electronic music.
Now residing in London, Cuban-born trumpeter Yelfris Valdés has began making a strong name for himself over the past few years, performing alongside Quantic, Nubya Garcia, Michael Kiwanuka, Rokia Traoré, Dayme Arocena, and Chucho Valdés, as well as being featured on Yussef Kamaal’s groundbreaking 2016 album Black Focus. Now he has just released a brilliant new full-length album, titled For the Ones…, which combines his Cuban roots and Yoruba traditions mixed with the jazz and electronic music influences he’s been exposed to while living in the UK.
Manchester-based composer, trumpeter, and Gondwana label boss Matthew Halsall puts out a 3xLP collection of previously unreleased meditative spiritual jazz recordings.
How do you follow-up an instant classic you ask? Create another one. That’s what producer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist Mark de Clive Lowe and his Japanese-based electro-acoustic jazz collective Rōnin Arkestra have achieved with the release of the group’s first full-length album Sonkei.
New York saxophonist, drummer, synthesizer player and composer Devin Brahja Waldman, who leads the group BRAHJA, has just released an absolutely brilliant full-length self-titled recording on the Estonia-based jazz and experimental label RR Gems.
