Josef Akin - Chimera

The second Josef Akin EP this year, Chimera explores a full-band sound closer to the sound of his debut album, Flightcase. As compared to recent EP Enymore, Chimera explores sound and imagery pertaining to the natural world rather than the digital. The EP tells a story of someone slowly discovering their role in the universe and understanding themselves.

Tracklist:
1. Moondance
2. Visions of the Night
3. Revisions
4. It's Taken Me This Long

Web Web - WEB MAX II

German Jazz supergroup WEB WEB continue their collaboration with songwriter and producer Max Herre on their fifth album WEB MAX II, issued on Compost Records.

First joining forces with Herre for 2021 offering WEB MAX, on this new long player the band has achieved much more than just the pure continuation of a series. Roaming far from its Spiritual Jazz roots, WEB MAX II is, musically and emotionally, probably the most diverse distillation of what WEB WEB has created in its seven years of existence.

Tracklist:
1. Perennial Journey
2. Testimony
3. The Source Of All Things (feat. Marja Burchard)
4. La Planete Fantastique (feat. Carlos Nino)
5. Fellow Travellers
6. The 6th Dimension
7. Olobo (feat. Carlos Nino)
8. Artist Unknown
9. Zutuma
10. Look Beyond The Sun

Carlos Niño - (I'm just) Chillin', on Fire

Over the past few years, concert patrons have stopped the musician Carlos Niño after gigs to ask two simple questions: “Are you a shaman?” “I hear the medicine in your music, can I come to your next ceremony?” The queries are fair enough: Looking at Niño, a tall man with a wild beard and kind eyes, one would think he’s from some faraway time and could maybe cast spells. Once you get to know him, you find that he’s just an incredibly sweet guy with a laid-back demeanor, and that he isn’t some guru claiming to have an all-access pass to the otherworld.

So what does he say to those wondering if he’s a spiritual teacher?

“I’m just chillin’, on fire,” he declares. “I'm not rolling with or out any kind of religious or traditional focus, rules or doctrine. I'm just presenting something that has a lot of energy, and is intended to be an opening for those of us who are journeying, creating musically, and for those who gather with us.”

Indeed, there’s a communal essence to Niño’s self-described Energetic Space Music. As leader of Carlos Niño & Friends, he encourages his collaborators to improvise without preconceived ideas of what the sound is supposed to entail. His new album, (I’m just) Chillin’, on Fire, features more than a dozen musicians and includes a who’s who of sonic experimentation — everyone from guitarist Nate Mercereau and saxophonist Kamasi Washington, to New Age cornerstone Laraaji and hip-hop legend André 3000 playing his now trademark flute. On purpose, Niño lets the music drift and the unity ensue, making (I’m just) Chillin’, on Fire another highlight in a recent run of sublime work.

But where albums like 2020’s Chicago Waves (with multi-instrumentalist Miguel Atwood-Ferguson) and last year’s Extra Presence hovered in the speakers, (I’m just) Chillin’ forges ahead in certain spots through energetic drums equally indebted to jazz and electronic funk. It eschews genre, but the tenets of ‘70s underground jazz are present. Fifty years ago, acts like Brother Ah, the Ensemble Al-Salaam and Mtume Umoja Ensemble crafted music that scanned as Spiritual Jazz yet flared in many different directions. They leaned into the transcendence of the music overall, not artificial terms used to market it. (I’m just) Chillin’ emits the same emotion: On “Mighty Stillness,” when the experimental violinist V.C.R proclaims her “ancestral right” to rest, she evokes Black women like Jeanne Lee, Jayne Cortez and Beatrice Parker, innovative vocalists from indie scenes who embodied the same freedom. Then on “Love Dedication (for Annelise),” Niño uses subtle bass (from Michael Alvidrez) and a serene piano loop (from Surya Botofasina) to speak of endearment in broad terms. “Love is unconditional — everywhere, everything, flowing always,” he observes. “Totally alive, no upper limit.” Though he hesitates to embrace comparisons to the spacious arrangements heard on indie labels of the ‘70s like Strata, Strata-East and Tribe (only because of how much he respects their legacies, not wanting to claim any space in their fields), there’s no denying his stature as an anchor in the jazz, hip-hop and beat scenes in Los Angeles over the last nearly 30 years, and how his influences are alive in what he makes.

“All of those labels to me are hugely influential,” Niño says. “When I think about Strata-East, I immediately think of Pharaoh Sanders, and I think of one of my favorite albums of all-time, Live at the East (on Impulse!), and how The East and that movement is a huge influence. I'm not from that community. I don't claim any direct connection to it, but my awareness of it and my appreciation of it is gigantic.”

The vocals for (I’m just) Chillin’ were compiled unconventionally. “I was like, ‘I'm going to turn on the mic, and you're going to listen all the way through the album and record anything you're feeling at any moment,’” Niño says of the creative process. “It was completely open to their interpretation.” He found that the vocalists Cavana Lee, Maia, Mia Doi Todd, and V.C.R interpreted the music in similar ways: “People who are not even in the same room, who did not hear what the other person did, they all created these really cool weavings — and it was so fun.”

While the album compiles live and studio arrangements recorded in places like Venice, Leimert Park and Woodstock over the past three years, it feels harmonious, as if captured in one space with all musicians present. This highlights Niño’s ability as a conductor and producer. That he could winnow such vast experimentation into a seamless set is a worthy feat on its own. Much like Niño’s other LPs, (I’m just) Chillin’ is an immersive listen that requires attentive ears to fully absorb. In a world dominated by social media and the 24-hour news cycle, it seems we’re all in a hurry for no reason in particular. By creating music with tender messages and leisurely pacing, Niño nudges listeners to slow down and appreciate life’s natural wonders, to savor the journey and not rush so quickly to the destination. In turn, his art conjures pastoral images — endless fields, boundless oceans, ripples crashing along the shoreline. It urges you to simply look up: notice the wind rustling through the trees, listen to the birds sing a glorious song. This is real life, the stuff you can’t quite capture with a smartphone camera. As a conduit, Niño embodies the water he cherishes so deeply. He’s not just the bandleader, but a vessel for everyone’s ideas to shine through.

“Creativity, to me, is an expression of a being's state, and their states of being,” he says. “It's really reflecting or reporting how they feel. The deeper ‘why’ is what I'm getting to with all this, what is inside that feeling, and it's not uncharted territory. I'm one of these people who's very into organizing, curating and offering; it's a deeply sharing kind of thing. It's a living thing; it grows. Sometimes it gets sculpted. Sometimes it gets rocked by forces outside of its maneuvering. Sometimes it looks one way. Sometimes it looks another way, but it's alive.” 

Tracklist:
1. Venice 100720, Hands In Soil
2. Mighty Stillness
3. Love Dedication (for Annelise)
4. Flutestargate
5. Maha Rose North 102021, Breathwork
6. Transcendental Bounce, Run to it
7. Taaaud
8. Spacial
9. Am I Dreaming?
10. Etheric Windsurfing, flips and twirls
11. Boom Bap Spiritual
12. Woo, Acknowledgement
13. Sandra's Willows
14. One For Derf
15. Conversations
16. Essence, The Mermaids Call
17. Eightspace 082222
18. Credits and Thank Yous for DSP Listening

Matthew Halsall - An Ever Changing View

Trumpeter, bandleader and composer Matthew Halsall announces landmark new album An Ever Changing View, an expansive, immaculately conceived project which presents Halsall’s signature blend of jazz, electronica, global and spiritual jazz influences.

An Ever Changing View will be released on September 8th on Gondwana Records (the label Halsall founded 15 years ago) ahead of a landmark show at The Royal Albert Hall in London on September 21st and UK and EU tour dates.

Halsall who has been hailed as one of the leading figures of the UK jazz renaissance has never seen himself as part of any one sound or scene: he builds his own sonic universe instead. An Ever Changing View finds him at his most experimental yet, once again expanding his sound and production techniques to create his unique brand of deeply meditative music.

During the album's creation, he was staying in both a beautiful architect’s house with breath-taking sea views and a striking modernist house, where he composed what he saw “like a landscape painting”. In these new environments, Halsall wanted to capture “the feeling of openness and escapism” and to approach making music again from scratch. “I hit the reset button and wanted to have complete musical freedom,” he says. “It was a real exploration of sound.”

An Ever Changing View comes in a package as striking as the music, with handmade fonts designed by Ian Anderson of The Designers Republic and the specially commissioned tapestry by artist Sara Kelly is a stunning and harmonious complement to the record's sound. 

Tracklist:
1. Tracing Nature
2. Water Street
3. An Ever Changing View
4. Calder Shapes
5. Mountains, Trees and Seas
6. Field of Vision
7. Jewels
8. Sunlight Reflection
9. Natural Movement
10. Triangles in the Sky

Menagerie - The Shores of Infinity

Australian 9-piece Spiritual Jazz group Menagerie announce their highly anticipated fourth album 'The Shores Of Infinity' - representing the 3rd LP to be released by Freestyle Records from the Melbourne-based Jazz ensemble, founded by producer, songwriter, guitarist, DJ and recording artist Lance Ferguson (The Bamboos, Lanu, Rare Groove Spectrum, Machines Always Win).

Menagerie released their debut album They Shall Inherit in 2012 via Tru Thoughts, before releasing The Arrow Of Time on Freestyle in 2018 followed by the critically acclaimed 'Many Worlds in 2021. Inspired by both the post-Coltrane generation of the 70's and the current "New Wave Of Jazz", Menagerie have made serious waves internationally, being championed on Worldwide FM, Jazz FM and Jazzwise. They were nominated in the Best Jazz Act category of the 2021 Music Victoria Awards, and in 2022 performed as part of the esteemed Melbourne International Jazz Festival. Now, two years on from their last full length album, Menagerie are back with The Shores Of Infinity, further expanding their sound out into the music universe - a forward-looking, rhythm-heavy expression of contemporary Jazz that is steeped in the tradition but somehow also defies genre pigeonholing.

"So well - and lovingly - executed that it's ultimately impossible to ignore.." Jazzwise

"There is an overarching sense of profound amazement throughout it all…" Blues & Soul

"A stunning work, full of integrity and class… Essential." Echoes

"Wonderful record, full of some great Kamasi/Donald Byrd/even Art Blakey moments!" The Guardian

Tracklist:
1. The Shores of Infinity
2. Kingdom
3. Earthrise
4. Arrival
5. Of
6. Danieda's Dance

VA - Swing on Low

‘Swing on Low’ is the latest compilation from La Sape Records. The collection offers a panoramic view of the vibrant underground bubbling below the Australian music landscape.

Part spiritual jazz, avant-garde with neo-classical stylings; the sounds within are untethered to specific genre or scenes. Rather, solo experimenters (for the most part) carving contemporary spaces for themselves to explore where they balance tradition and innovation in composition.

Presented as a 10-track album, titled after La Sape’s bi-monthly radio show. Mirroring the radio show, the album stitches together movements running in parallel that may otherwise never meet. Most importantly it offers us an outlet to highlight the exceptional music submitted to La Sape, which ultimately is often turned away due to DIY resources or scheduling conflicts.

Swing on Low features label stays Erica Tuccceri, David Versace & Youfez. Close collaborators; George Sheridan, Elle Shimada & Hekka. And some of our favourite Australian artists Grievous Bodily Calm, NIGHTMUSIC, The Person and closed by the incomparable Olive Knight.

After six years of La Sape Records, ’Swing on Low’ acts as a manifesto for the label’s next six. A broadening of sounds and celebration of the diverse and innovative humans experimenting in a dense aural ecosystem at the bottom of the earth.

Tracklist:
1. George Sheridan – Otta!
2. Grievous Bodily Calm – Cloutbusting
3. Youfez – DK
4. Elle Shimada – Solitude
5. Erica Tucceri – Iliamna (extended mix)
6. David Versace – Forever With Me
7. The Person – Photo Album
8. NIGHTMUSIC – Hects, Lies & Videotape
9. Hekka – Close To The Chest (And Between The Ribs)
10. Olive Knight – Three Children Standing

Diego Gaeta - Fearlessly Accessing The Divine Spirit Of Freedom From Here On Out

"Fearlessly Accessing the Divine Spirit From Here on Out" is the vinyl debut from up-and-coming pianist, composer, and producer Diego Gaeta. He has previously released projects as Club Diego and with the trio Human Error Club (whose members Mekala Session and Jesse Justice helped produce this record). He has quickly become a fixture in a number of Los Angeles musical environments, working with Lionmilk, The Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, Carlos Niño, Black Nile among others. This album is a synthesis of these many LA environments, and carries chamber, jazz, ambient, and folk influences, ultimately giving it an uncategorizable feel similar to works by Arthur Verocai or David Axelrod.

Gaeta recorded the initial ideas for the album by himself after experiencing a burst of creativity during the lockdown of 2020, in the aftermath of a season of protests in Los Angeles, on a piano at his home in El Sereno. “I was constantly not in tune with myself, always awaiting outrage and tragedy in a very unstable world. However, hitting the streets in support of various ongoing pandemic community actions felt necessary and it marked a point in time that ushered in large societal changes.The weight of that era made me feel allergic to making art at the time. All of these ideas came after that period, expressing my reflections subconsciously. I remember that the ideas came in a short amount of time, and then they developed.”

Gaeta’s dream band for these ideas would be a 9-piece ensemble or “nonet”, which was finally assembled in the summer of 2021. After careful arrangements and rehearsals the album was recorded. Some of Los Angeles’s finest artists are featured in the ensemble and as featured guests, all combining efforts to fulfill the thematic vision of Gaeta’s inspirations and ideas. 

Tracklist:
1. Caracal
2. Fearlessly (feat. Jimetta Rose)
3. Gracefully
4. Soft Spot (feat. Low Leaf)
5. Uprising
6. Eccolo (feat. Zeroh)
7. The World and Within
8. Memorial (feat. Moor Mother)

Nicola Conte - Umoja

Renowned Italian spiritual jazz master, DJ, producer, guitarist, and bandleader Nicola Conte proudly presents his new album Umoja via London based label Far Out Recordings.

A joyous exultation across ten tracks, Umoja taps into the abundant well of knowledge Conte has amassed over his career as connoisseuring compiler and archivist of deep jazz, latin, afrofuturist, bossa-nova and soul music from around the world. Expressing unity, oneness and harmony in Swahili, Umoja coalesces universal feelings through the multifaceted global music Conte has spent his life studying and researching.

Having released music with Blue Note, Impulse! and Schema records, Nicola Conte’s relationship with Far Out began over a shared love of hard-edged bossa-nova and swinging samba-jazz. Between 2009-2013 Nicola Conte compiled five volumes of forgotten 60s Brazilian music for his Viagem series. He then released his critically acclaimed Natural album: a collaboration with vocalist Stefania Dippiero, featuring jazz standards alongside covers of lesser known Brazilian gems.

The music of Umoja draws on the deep-dug 70's independent spiritual and free jazz sounds, private-press soul records, and African and Afro Caribbean rhythms in Conte’s collection. But he equally recognises his debt to many of the decade’s more celebrated musical icons, such as North American cosmic jazz masters Lonnie Liston Smith and Gary Bartz, and Afrobeat originators Fela Kuti and Tony Allen.

Since founding the Bari-based bohemian cultural movement and club night Fez at the dawn of the nineties, Conte has proven to be a pillar of the contemporary, international soul-jazz scene. Composed alongside his long time friend, guitarist Alberto Parmegiani, Conte brings together a dazzling host of guests from around the world, including award winning British vocalist Zara Mcfarlane, acclaimed Finnish saxophonist Timo Lassy, french vibes player Simon Mullier, US vocalist Myles Sanko, rising South African drummer Fernando Damon, former Roy Hargrove bassist Ameen Saleem and Serbian flute sensation Milena Jancuric.

Proudly revivalist, Umoja was recorded direct to analog tape, with just two takes for each track. “Searching for an unadulterated, spontaneous, almost improvised feeling”, Nicola made sure that the few overdubs were also transferred to tape in order to retain the colour and warmth of the analog sound. “Very little post production or editing has been added, so what you hear is largely what happened in those magical live sessions”.

Umoja will be released on the 30th June via Far Out Recordings on double vinyl LP, CD and digital. The vinyl release has been cut at 45rpm for, super-loud, high definition sound. 

Tracklist:
1. Arise (feat. Zara Mcfarlane)
2. Dance Of Love And Peace (Part 1)
3. Life Forces
4. Flying Circles
5. Freedom & Progress (feat. Zara Mcfarlane)
6. Soul Of The People
7. Heritage
8. Into The Light Of Love (feat. Myles Sanko)
9. Umoja Unity
10. Dance Of Love & Peace (Part 2)
11. Arise (Instrumental)
12. Into The Light Of Love (Instrumental)

Phi-Psonics - Octava

Phi-Psonics is a meditative, deeply soulful, immersive instrumental group from Los Angeles, led by bassist Seth Ford-Young and featuring Sylvain Carton on woodwinds, Mitchell Yoshida on electric piano, and Josh Collazo on drums. Their beautiful music draws on jazz and classical influences together with Ford-Young’s own musical experiences, relationships, and his introduction to spirituality, yoga and philosophy at a young age. Along the way they create something uniquely their own, sharing beautiful landscapes for your spirit to roam freely within.

Octava is their second album and like their debut The Cradle, it’s emotional, introspective, and unusual approach to meditative jazz offers us a beautiful space for uplifting contemplation and wields a quiet power to create a spiritually inspiring world of timeless, warm melodies and instrumental exploration for the deep listener and thoughtful voyager. Seth explains:

“This album is about change and evolution to a higher version of ourselves. Understanding this journey through the idea of ascending a musical scale and arriving at a new, higher octave is natural especially for a musician. We move, struggle, and work through the various steps or tones and arrive at the octave a new version of ourselves, still the same person, but vibrating at a higher frequency.”

Tracklist:
1. Invocation
2. An Offering
3. We Walk in the Gardens of Our Ancestors
4. Green Dreams
5. Where We've Been
6. Lunar Reflections
7. Becoming
8. New You

Ambiance II Fusion - Come Touch Tomorrow

Freestyle Records are proud to reissue Ambiance II Fusion's mid-80s fusion rarity "Come Touch Tomorrow" - originally recorded in Hollywood CA October/November 1984 and released in 1985.

Following a yearly run of 4 albums self-released between 1979 and 1982, Nigerian-born saxophonist, flutist, and clarinettist Daoud Abubakar Balewa then took a few years off before returning with 1985's "Come Touch Tomorrow", the first of two albums issued under the updated name of Ambiance II Fusion. Combining the afro-spiritual jazz & be-bop inflected fusion of his earlier work as Ambiance, this record took the project into more modern & distinctly cosmic planes with the introduction of spacey pads and drum machines working alongside somewhat tighter arrangements and solid rhythm sections. Of particular note here is the B1 track "Boy What a Joy" on which a sublimely funky synth & drum machine throwdown is presented in prophetically lo-fi fashion - recalling recent stylistic approaches from the likes of Dâm-Funk among others.

Tracklist:
1. I Dream Too Much
2. Come Touch Tomorrow
3. Don't You Ever Take Your Love
4. Samba Para Mi
5. Boy What a Joy
6. The Camouflage
7. Naima

The Southern University Jazz Ensemble - Goes To Africa With Love

That one of the great Spiritual Jazz albums of the era could be found in duplicate New Orleans thrift store in the 1980s goes a long way in illustrating the lack of acclaim this special and overlooked album maintained, even in a city where the Batiste name is musical royalty. The Southern University albums Alvin Batiste offered the world were novelies, not worthy of serious consideration, a moment captured, but not necessarily worthy of being collected or preserved by anyone not immediately involved in its creation.

That changes now. With the release of the two Southern University albums, Now-Again continues a conversation begun with the late Kashmere Stage Band director Conrad O. Johnson and the issue of his high school students’ music as 'Texas Thunder Soul', and the continued belief that beautiful music created by youth – even under the most adverse circumstances – can always inspire us.

Tracklist:
1. Samba Dee
2. Ah Ja Ge Da Ba
3. Clean Air
4. Music Came
5. Nanigo
6. Holdin' Meetin'