Tag: Jazz Funk
The excellent French label Comet, run by founder Eric Trosset, has recently reissued the extremely hard-to-find 1975 jazz-funk masterpiece from drummer Noel McGhie, under the album title Noel McGhie & Space Spies.
Since 2014, Tokyo-based jazz-funk trio Nautilus (named after Bob James’ 1974 fusion classic) has been at the forefront of the incredible music currently coming out of Japan. Led by drummer Toshiyuki Sasaki, and featuring founding bassist Shigeki Umezawa and more recent keyboardist Mariko Nakabayashi, the group is consistently active, releasing highly sought-after full-length and 7inch singles featuring a strong mix of originals and covers of timeless classics. For their sixth release(!!!) of 2022, the band has put out a brilliant new double-sided single on Japan’s Urban Discos label, titled Looking Back / Paint it Black.
The London-based collective Natural Lateral, led by Aziz Mustafa (aka Tom Funk), follows up their breakthrough 2019 debut Cogito Ergo Jam with a brilliant and highly-anticipated new recording on the Social Joy label, titled Tapestry Of Life.
Formerly Chicago, and now Hawaii-based percussionist, composer, and producer Makaya McCraven has just released an incredible expansive new full-length album, titled In These Times, that has been over seven years in the making.
In just a short period of time, Italian-born Los Angeles-based drummer, producer and DJ Tommaso Cappellato‘s Domanda Music label has quickly established itself with some strong releases, including Rosa Brunello’s recent Sound Like Freedom recording, which is definitely one of the best albums of 2022. The label continues their string of impressive releases with a superb debut full-length, titled Transforma, from another of Cappellato’s collaborative projects, Collettivo Immaginario.
Over the last several years, there haven’t been many artists that have been able to release the sheer number of quality releases as composer and pianist Greg Foat. The London-based artist returns with his longstanding Greg Foat Group for the ensemble’s first full-length album in 6 years, titled Blue Lotus.
Australian-based keyboardist, composer and producer David Versace, who also plays in the Meanjin nu-jazz group First Beige, has released an incredible debut album on the Melbourne label La Sape Records, titled Okra.
In what has certainly been one of the most anticipated releases of the year, Chicago’s International Anthem has unearthed and released the eponymous debut album, titled Step On Step, by the late great producer, arranger, and composer Charles Stepney (1931-1976), featuring never-heard-before 4-track tape demo recordings. During the 60s and 70s, Stepney was a essential contributor to some of the greatest recordings of that time by Earth, Wind & Fire, Terry Callier, Ramsey Lewis, The Dells, The Rotary Connection, Deniece Williams, Minnie Riperton, Marlena Shaw, Muddy Waters, and so many others.
Continuing the streak of putting out must-own releases, Paul Murphy and his label Jazz Room Records are reissuing Carlos Franzetti’s hard-to-find jazz dance classic album Graffiti, which was originally released on Guinness Records (not related to the drink) in 1977.
Within about a month’s span, both UK labels We Are Busy Bodies and Be With Records are reissuing (or have reissued) two hard-to-find mid-seventies albums from Nucleus, which was an incredible British progressive jazz-fusion group led by legendary trumpeter Ian Carr that existed in different forms from 1969 all the way through to 1989. Both labels will be putting out the bands 1974 Under The Sun recording, as well as the group’s brilliant 1975 release, Alleycat.
