Directions In Music 1969-1973: Miles Davis His Musicians and the Birth of a New Age of JazzVarious Artists

This is the second issue of the 'We Jazz' magazine. Includes inspiring stories on music including John Coltrane by Ashley Kahn, Irreversible Entanglements by Daniel Spicer, Ben Lamar Gay by Stewart Smith, Linda Fredriksson by Arttu Tolonen, Marshall Allen by David Mittleman, French Caribbean Music by Markus Karlqvist, Pablo Held by HT Nuotio, record reviews, book reviews, plus more. This is a magazine put together by a quality cast of writers and illustrators/photographers with references such as The Wire, The Quietus, Pitchfork, Jazzwise, etc.

The 21 track selection curated by Trujillo, a Venezuelan producer, DJ and record collector based in Berlin, explores the forgotten corners of the 1980s and early 90s Spanish music scene. Veering through early bleep and hip house, electro, boogie, Iberian pop and much more, it has broad appeal to both Balearic heads and diggers alike. Serendipitously, the cover art for the compilation is an original work by Yves Uro, a figurehead of Ibiza's party scene from the 70s and 80s and whose visionary poster artwork became representative of the White Isle.

Cuba: Music and Revolution: Culture Clash in Havana: Experiments in Latin Music 1975-85 Vol. 2 is the new album compiled by Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker (Soul Jazz Records) that takes off in exactly the same vein as the much-acclaimed Vol. 1 - exploring the many styles that came out of Cuba in the 1970s as Latin and Salsa mixed with heavy doses of Jazz, Funk, and Disco to create some of the most dancefloor-friendly music every made!

The album comes as a heavyweight 3xLP and deluxe 2xCD set, complete with extensive sleeve notes, and is jam-packed with heavy bass lines, synth and Wah-Wah guitar funk combined with the heavyweight percussion, powerful brass lines and the all-encompassing Latin rhythms of Cuban music known throughout the world.

Much of the music on this album is featured in the deluxe large format book ‘Cuba: Music and Revolution: Original Cover Art of Cuban Music: Record Sleeve Designs of Revolutionary Cuba 1959-90’, released by Soul Jazz Books and also compiled by Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker (Soul Jazz Records), featuring the music and record designs of Cuba, made in the 30-year period following the Cuban Revolution.

The music on this new album features a host of rarities from legendary Cuban artists such as Los Van Van, alongside Grupo De Experimentación, Farah Maria, Ricardo Eddy Martinez, Juan Pablo Torres, Grupo Sintesis and Orquesta Riverside, most of whose names remain largely unknown outside of Cuba but have long been favourite club tracks and secret-weapons in Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker's record boxes!

The music on this album reflects the most cutting-edge of Cuban groups that were recording in Cuba in the 1970s and 1980s – all searching for a new Cuban identity and new musical forms reflecting both the Afro-Cuban cultural heritage of a nation that gave birth to Latin music - and its new position as a socialist state. Most of the music featured on this album have never been heard outside of Cuba.

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Both Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker have been involved in Cuban music for more than two decades – Gilles Peterson with his many Havana Cultura projects for his Brownswood label and Stuart Baker with a number of Soul Jazz Records albums recorded in Cuba. This Soul Jazz Records album is released in conjunction with Egrem, the Cuban state record company, and has been put together after the many crate-digging trips that both compilers have made on the streets of Havana and beyond in Cuba stretching over a 20-year period, searching out rare and elusive original Cuban vinyl records.

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REVIEWS of CUBA: Music and Revolution vol. 1:

"We already have a strong contender for 'compilation of the year'. Put together by devout crate-diggers and Cuban music enthusiasts Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker (founder of Soul Jazz Records)" JUNO

"It's abundantly clear that these compilers are at the very top of their game. Everything here was previously unheard outside of Cuba, making this a feast for the curious" Vinyl District

"Priceless comp that goes far beyond Buena Vista!" UNCUT

Classic tracks from the archives of one of the greatest NYC house music labels! Featuring some essential original versions and production from the likes of Mood II Swing, Armand Van Helden, Kim English, Byron Stingily plus new version from Gerd Janson, Adelphi Music Factory, Monki, Darius Syrossian and more!

'Paura' explores the horror repertoire from the precious CAM Sugar archives taking us on a hypnotic journey into the labyrinths of fear, through the different variations that Italian horror took on from the esoteric and supernatural to the slasher films of the early 1970s; to reinterpretations of Romantic literature and gothic fiction to the splatter films of the ‘80s; and from witchcraft to metropolitan horror.

This is not a real “best of” but an eclectic menu full of mysterious voices, childlike lullabies, sweet melodies, obsessive music boxes, obstinate harpsichords, crazy distortions and threatening synthesizers, conceived as a succession of sequences, as if a film edit
The new collection includes some of the most creative music ever written and strives to do justice not only to some of the best known composers in this genre, but also to many great unsung composers: From celebrated composers like Ennio Morricone, Riz Ortolani & Stelvio Cipriani to long-forgotten personalities who fed the industrial backbone of Italian cinema such as Daniele Patucchi, Marcelo Giombini & Berto Pisano.

Includes 6 previously unreleased tracks plus 3 tracks released on vinyl for the first time and 5 tracks available commercially for the first time (originally released only as a limited promo item)

The third 7" box set from We Jazz Records, including five 7" releases from 2020-2021. Features Features wild, funky jazz cuts from the likes of The Stance Brothers, Antti Lötjönen, Koma Saxo, Eric Malmberg, Otis Sandsjö and Tampo.

On 'Eins Und Zwei Und Drei Und Vier', Bureau B focus on the wealth of music that sprang from the squats and bedsits and artschools of Cologne, Dusseldorf, Hamburg and West Berlin in the aftermath of punk from the likes of Der Plan, Holger Hiller, Palais Schaumberg, Conrad Schnitzler and a host more.

Agogo Records continue their 'Two Tribes' with a second, crucial volume. This compilation gives an insight into how musicians living in Europe today incorporate and transfer musical traditions (particularly from the African continent) into their own. Features music from the likes of Onipa, Guts, The Kutimangoes, Karthala 72 and more!

Three exclusive reworks from the edit king Dave Lee as part of his 'Remixed With Love' series. Pure sunshine vibrations, tweaked in all the right places with that masterful touch moving from a disco stomper, to a killer dub version of the Grace Jones classic and rounded off with a fiery slice of funk.

Honest Jon's survey the last, bohemian flowering of the so-called Golden Era of Ecuadorian musica national, before the oil boom and incoming musical styles - especially cumbia - swept away its achingly beautiful, phantasmagorical, utopian juggling of indigenous and mestizo traditions.

Forms like the tonada, albazo, danzante, yaravi, carnaval, and sanjuanito; the yambo, with roots in pre-Incan ritual, and the pasillo, a take on the Viennese waltz, arriving through the Caribbean via Portugal and Spain.

Wicked selection from J.A. producer Keeling Beckford featuring The Mighty Diamonds original cut of "Shame & Pride", Tony Brevitt's superb "Don't Get Weary" with two extra cuts plus The Heptones, Pat Kelly, Gregory Isaacs, Delroy Wilson & I-Roy.

Trunk Records marks its twenty-fifth year with this compilation ‘Do What You Love’. Includes unreleased music from electronic pioneer Delia Derbyshire, material from the archive of eclectic drummer Basil Kirchin, and apparently the audio from a sex tape purchased at a car boot sale. Complete with sleeve art from David Shrigley. Fun and highly recommended!

Another collection of oblique, murky electronic obscurities from the past and present.... but who really knows? Another limited transmission from the clandestine Light Sounds Dark crew. Crazy limited as usual...

The third essential release in the 'WAMONO A to Z' series. For those with an interest in Japanese popular music culture and, specifically, the 'Wamono' sound - the cream of the Japanese funk, soul, rare groove and disco music developed throughout the 70s in Japan. Yet another exemplary selection by Japanese super diggers and Wamono specialists DJ Yoshizawa Dynamite & Chintam!

Wicked selection of minimal, ritualistic/industrial techno and cold wave electronics from the likes of Wang Inc., MR TC, Eva Geist and more!

Disco Hamam with their seventh, crucial instalment of the 'Disco Hamam' series! Turkish and Middle Eastern disco edits, expertly adjusted by the likes of Rune Lindbaek, Tushen Rai, Paralel Disko and Afacan Sound System!

It's another essential Hamam House scubdown! Twisted new wave, EBM and proto-house adjustments from Afacan Sound System and Jacques Renault!

Mad Professor opening up the vaults of Ariwa Studios with this wicked compilation of Lovers Rock featuring Davina Stone, Patricia Smith, Tony Bejamin, Deborah Glasgow and many more.

Nyege Nyege Tapes foray into the world of Tanzanian Singeli, the breakneck dance strain that's quickly moved from Dar es Salaam throughout the world. Following 'Sounds of Sisso', a compilation that focused mostly on the Tanzanian capital's Sisso Studios, this set highlights recordings from Duke's Pamoja Records. And while its predecessor brought attention to the producers, 'Sounds of Pamoja' showcases the wide variety of MC talent under the Pamoja Records umbrella, with production mostly handled by Duke.

A CLASSIC set of productions and remixes from the US house/garage legend, Todd Edwards, who was a huge and important influence in the genesis of UKG! Features classic remixes for the likes of St Germain, Indo, Robin S., MJ Cole plus his own classic productions such as 'Saved My Life', 'Winter Behavior' and loads more!

N.B. Vinyl tracklisting:

A1. St Germain - Alabama Blues (Todd Edwards Dub Mix) A2. Indo - R U Sleeping (Todd Edwards Mix) B1. Sound Of One - As I Am (Todd Edwards Mix / Version) B2. Kim English – Tomorrow (Todd Edwards Dub)

C1. Daft Punk - Face To Face C2. Todd Edwards – Shut The Door D1. Todd Edwards – Push The Love D2. Todd Edwards – The Dream

Arthur Baker presents his Dance Masters series opening with a collection of 12" and 7" remixes by the legendary Shep Pettibone. Features 80s classics from the likes of George Michael, Duran Duran, Whitney Houston, The B-52's and more!

Second volume in the essential 'For The Love Of You' series on Athens Of The North! An ESSENTIAL lovers rock/disco compilation via Athens Of The North! Sought-after cover versions of classics from the likes of Grover Washington Jr., Midnight Star, Meli'sa Morgan and Simply Red - all killer, no filler!

Out-of print since its initial release over 8 years ago and not reissued and it features a monster 2 and a half hours of music!

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Very Limited Edition Super Deluxe Heavyweight Box Edition (includes 4 LP + Insert + 2 Art prints + individual inners + download) + excellent extensive sleevenotes (by David Stubbs, writer for Wire/Guardian and author of the definitive ‘Krautrock’ book) + lots of exclusive photos. This is a one-off pressing of 500 in UK/1,500 copies worldwide.

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Includes seminal German groups: Can, Faust, Neu, Amon Duul II as well as a host of lesser known groups and artists such as Agitation Free, Broselmachine, Niagara and many more! And as well as the original pioneers, Deutsche Electronische Musik 2 also features many of the second wave of German electronic artists and groups from the late 70s and early 80s (DAF, Asmus Tietchens, Rolf Trostel) who successfully connected new wave, minimal synth and a European post-punk avant-gardism with the earlier more established Krautrock pioneers who began at the start of the 70s.

The first seeds of German rock and experimental electronic music were planted in 1968, as students and workers in Paris, Prague, Mexico and throughout the world demonstrated against mainstream society, the war in Vietnam, imperialism and bourgeois values. The birth of a counter-culture, drug experimentation and social change expanded musical worlds. Germany experienced its own cultural revolution fuelled by these worldwide student and worker revolts and by a generation’s desire to rid itself of the guilt of war.

Many German youth turning their back on mainstream society. From the opening of the first collective/cooperative in 1967, Commune 1, in Berlin, to the formation of the Baader-Meinhof terrorist group and the bombings, kidnappings and killings of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (RAF), young Germans sought out new values and a lifestyle outside of ‘the system’. These cooperative and communal experiences led to a number of new radical German bands including Amon Duul, Faust and Can.

Many artists and musicians believed a complete rejection of everything musically that had gone before was also necessary in order to build a new identity for German culture. At this time German music meant ‘schlager’ music – insipid pop music that hardly confronted the country’s recent historical events.

Holger Czukay and Irmin Scmidt of Can studied music under the radical avant-garde composer Karheinz Stockhausen and Conrad Schnitzler studied art under the conceptual artist Joseph Beuys. German rock groups were as interested in musique concrète and serial compostion as they were in the psychedelia of Pink Floyd or the rock, soul and jazz music played by resident American forces.

From this beginning German rock music began an evolutionary journey of experimentation. Electronic music became a pathway to notions of space and the cosmos. Conversely, the emergence of communal living led to a number of musicians setting up live/work spaces in rural areas and developing a ‘pastoral’ outlook, with musical ideas engaged closely with nature.

German electronic music, kosmische music, cosmic rock, space music. The objectives were to create new music, ‘free’ from the past. A music that gave seed out of the cultural ‘nothingness’ that young Germans felt as a consequence of Germany’s role in the Second World War. A generation who grew up stifled by the recent history of Nazi atrocities, the guilt of their parents’ generation and their disillusionment at the reintegration of old Nazis into mainstream society.

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Deutsche Elektronische Musik:

"A near-definitive guide to some of the world's most extraordinary music." ***** The Guardian

Second part of MOV's Trojan compilation series, which celebrates the best works from the legendary reggae label Trojan Records. It was compiled by Laurence Cane-Honeysett, who also wrote the linernotes. Some of Trojan’s finest are featured on this compilation; as there are The Gladiators, The Melodians, The Gladiators, Ken Boothe a.o. 750 individually numbered copies on orange vinyl. The package also includes an exclusive Trojan / Music On Vinyl coaster.

Gone back from 2021-06-18 to 27/08/2021

On Vinyl’s Trojan compilation series, which celebrates the best works from the legendary reggae label Trojan Records. It was compiled by Laurence Cane-Honeysett, who also wrote the linernotes. Some of the artists featured on this compilation include Stranger Cole, The Pioneers and Alton Ellis. 750 individually numbered copies on orange vinyl. The package also includes exclusive Trojan Records and Music On Vinyl coaster!

When David Bowie and Iggy Pop escaped LA to go Interrailing in the mid-70s, they heard a new European music that was largely devoid of Anglo-American rock influence: the German motorik sound, flashes of jazz, experimentation and electronica. In West Berlin, one of their favourite haunts was Kreuzberg’s Cafe Exil, a smoky hang-out for beats and intellectuals; this is its imaginary soundtrack.

Second Impluse! records release for cult UK jazz psychonauts, Sons Of Kemet! Frenetic, spiritual, cosmic jazz energy from Shabaka Hutchings, Theon Cross and crew featuring guest spots from the likes of Kojey Radical, Moor Mother, Angel Bat Dawid, Joshua Idehen, D Double E! Don't miss!

UNBELIEVABLE new compilation of deep spiritual music by John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Oliver Nelson, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp and other groundbreaking Impulse Artists.

"Orange and black. Fire and ebony. Fury and pride. Wearing its signature colors proudly and raising its exclamation point high, Impulse! Records was the go-to label for music that harnessed the searching and political stand-taking of the Sixties. Launched in 1961, Impulse grew to become an inherent part of the era’s velocity as well as its volume, pulling jazz into the age of Black Power, Afrocentricity, and Spiritual Expansion. In its balance of tradition and transition, it bridged the golden age of jazz, that brief window from the late Fifties to the Seventies when players representing every jazz era were alive and active—from Louis Armstrong to Albert Ayler, from the legends of lore to a new generation of energy players. Impulse treated all its musicians as innovators, revolutionaries even—from swing and bebop, to free and Afrofuturist. The performances on Impulse Records: Music, Message and the Moment draw their staying power from a wide embrace of styles and sounds, as well as a tight focus on a historic moment when the promise of change was in the air and the message of racial harmony was in the music. Today that music has lost none of its relevance: the promise still deferred, the message still on time."

Lovingly compiled, this album features only the finest Lovers from Jamaica’s finest label. From Blues parties in London, Birmingham, Bristol etc Lovers Rock quickly became one of the UK’s finest-ever musical movements. 

Sweet harmonies, soulful reggae, love songs – the key ingredients of Lovers Rock - were all based on the revival of many of the classic Rocksteady harmony groups of the late 60s and early 70s, such as The Heptones, Carlton and The Shoes, Larry & Alvin, The Paragons, that Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd’s Studio One and rival Duke Reid’s Treasure Isle label produced hit after hit with as they fought for dominance in the dancehalls of Kingston.

As well as these classic harmony groups, this album also features fine contributions from many of the reggae greats – Horace Andy, Alton Ellis, Bob Marley and The Wailers, Delroy Wilson – All artists who became stars at the legendary Studio One Records which Chris Blackwell, founder of Island Records, describes as "The University of Reggae".

Exclusive Studio One Official T-shirt!

All of the music featured here on this new Soul Jazz Records collection was created by Brazilian artists living and working in the USA in the 1970s.

The album brings together some of these finest works and comes complete with extensive notes that explains the path these musicians took from Brazil to the USA and shows the political and musical links between Brazil and the USA that created the conditions for this unique fusion of these two distinct cultures, North American Jazz and Brazilian music, that occurred in the 1970s.

In the early 1970s North American jazz musicians were eager to work with upcoming Brazilian musicians. Miles Davis invited Airto Moreira to join his new ‘electric’ band, Dom Um Romao (part of Sérgio Mendes’ legendary Brazil ‘66 in the 1960s) joined the fusion group Weather Report, Flora Purim and Airto both became a part of Chick Corea’s new project Light As A Feather, Wayne Shorter collaborated with Milton Nascimento, George Duke recorded Brazilian Love Affair, and so on.

With all the attention placed on them from these important jazz artists, North America became the new musical playground for a large number of these Brazilian artists – Airto Moreira, Flora Purim, Sérgio Mendes, Luiz Bonfá, Eumir Deodato, João Donato and many others.

Most of these musicians had already experienced success through the earlier popularity of bossa nova in the 1960s, either at home in Brazil or in the USA. But by the end of the 1960s many Brazilian artists had left their own country, as the military dictatorship became progressively more authoritarian and repressive. In the USA, through their critically acclaimed work for Miles Davis, Weather Report, Light As A Feather etc., all of these artists were now given reign to explore new musical terrains away from the restrictions of both a musical genre and a state censor back in Brazil.

The album comes as a deluxe gatefold double vinyl LP, complete with download code, full sleeve notes, exclusive photography, double inner sleeves. The CD contains CD plus a large 40-page outsize booklet all housed in Soul Jazz slipcase.

Back in stock!

Soul Jazz Records new Studio One release Rocksteady Got Soul is a collection of uplifting and superb rocksteady and soulful reggae from the late 1960s and early 1970s. Studio One is the number one label in the history of reggae and he album features - as ever with Studio One - an impeccable and unbeatable line-up of reggae superstars all soaring at the height of their creative powers. Alton Ellis, John Holt, The Heptones, Jackie Mittoo, The Ethiopians, Lee Perry and more.

The album is a mix of classic tunes and rhythms alongside super-rarities that were released in a dazzlingly complex web of Studio One labels and issues, deftly navigated with new sleevenotes from author and Studio One authority Rob Chapman. But enough with the chatter, just spin the platter - these tunes rule the town, hands down!

This Soul Jazz/Studio One album is released as deluxe gatefold double-vinyl + house inners + download code. Also as jewel case CD housed in card slipcase. Both formats come with full sleeve notes/discography and exclusive photography. (The album is also available digitally on day of release onwards)

IN STOCK - Get it while u can!

Soul Jazz Records' Brazil Funk Power – Brazilian Funk & Samba Soul features ten superb, rare and classic Brazilian funk and soul cuts across five individual bespoke 7" singles housed in a box set.

This release is the 2nd of Soul Jazz Records 3 Record Store Day 2020 titles and is an exclusive one-off pressing, limited-edition collectors seven-inch box set, which will be deleted on the day of release.

This release features some of the funkiest Brazilian music ever made - music by Jorge Ben, Banda Black Rio, Tim Maia, Toni Tornado, Cassiano performing some of the best tunes ever to come out of Brazil!

Classics from the superb 70s Afro-Brazilian Funk & Soul era of Brazil’s own Black Power Movement (‘Movimento Negro’) sit alongside a dancefloor-heavy selection of Samba Soul and Boogie, Afro-percussive Brazilian funk and more!

All tracks have been digitally re-mastered and the singles come housed in a thick, heavyweight deluxe card box.

This box set is a one-off pressing exclusively for Record Store Day.

AVAILABLE AGAIN! Soul Jazz Records new 2018 edition of their long out of print classic first “Deutsche Elektronische Musik – Experimental German Rock and Electronic Music 1972-83” is ‘a near-definitive guide to some of the world’s most extraordinary music’ (The Guardian).


Featuring a stunning line-up of groups including Cluster, Can, Faust, Popol Vuh, Neu!, Amon Düül, Harmonia, La Düsseldorf and Tangerine Dream as well as a host of lesser known groups such as Kollectiv, Ibliss, Between and many more. This new edition is fully re-mastered and features all the original artwork and tracks.


The first seeds of German rock and experimental electronic music were planted in 1968, as students and workers in Paris, Prague, Mexico and throughout the world demonstrated against mainstream society, the war in Vietnam, imperialism and bourgeois values. The birth of a counter-culture, drug experimentation and social change expanded musical worlds. Germany experienced its own cultural revolution fuelled by these worldwide student and worker revolts and by a generation’s desire to rid itself of the guilt of war.


German rock and experimental electronic music grew out of this worldwide counter-cultural revolution of 1968. The objectives were to create new music, ‘free’ from the past, many German youth turning their back on mainstream society. From the opening of the first collective/cooperative, Kommune 1, in Berlin, to the formation of the Baader-Meinhof terrorist group and the bombings, kidnappings and killings of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (RAF), young Germans sought out new values and a lifestyle outside of ‘the system’.


These cooperative and communal experiences led to a number of new collective German bands forming such as Amon Düül, Faust, Can (all featured here) and others and these ideals drove this new movement. A music that gave seed out of the cultural ‘nothingness’ that young Germans felt as a consequence of Germany’s role in the Second World War. A generation who grew up stifled by the recent history of Nazi atrocities, the guilt of their parents’ generation and their disillusionment at the reintegration of old Nazis into mainstream society.



Influenced equally by the electronic experimentalism of Stockhausen, the progressive rock of Pink Floyd and the black American jazz and soul music played at the occupying armed forces bases, young German artists seamlessly created out of this a new unique music with its own unique identity.


Double CD pack with large 36-page outsize booklet encased in slipcase. The vinyl edition is made up of TWO separate volume heavyweight loud gatefold double albums (now + free download codes) featuring all sleevenotes and text.

Double Vinyl Record A is tracks 1-13 (+ Download Code)

Double Vinyl Record B is tracks 14 - 24 (+ Download Code)

Digital download does not include track 3 and 23 which are physical only

REVIEWS:

***** GUARDIAN REVIEW (John Savage)

***** GUARDIAN REVIEW (Dave Simpson)

2x LP Record A/CD1:

1. Can – A Spectacle
2. Between – Devotion
3. Harmonia – Dino
4. Gila – This Morning
5. Kollektiv – Rambo Zambo
6. Michael Bundt – La Chasse Aux Microbes
7. E.M.A.K. – Filmmuzik
8. Popol Vuh – Morgengruss
9. Conrad Schnitzler – Auf Dem Schwarzen Kanal
10. La Düsseldorf – Rheinita
11. Harmonia – Veterano
12. Faust – It's A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl
13. Neu! – Hallo Gallo

2x LP Record B/CD2:

1. Cluster – Heisse Lippen
2. Ibliss – High Life
3. Moebius – Hasenheide
4. Amon Düül II – Fly United
5. Popol Vuh – Aguirre 1
6. Ash Ra Tempel – Daydream
7. Tangerine Dream – No Man's Land
8. Amon Düül II – Wie Der Wind Am Ende Einer Strasse
9. Roedelius – Geradewohl
10. Can – I Want More
11. Deuter – Soham

This album coincides with the massive new exhibition Soul of A Nation - Art in the Age of Black Power at Tate Modern, London.

Watch Channel 4 news piece here

Read Guardian feature here

The album shows how the ideals of the civil rights movement, black power and black nationalism influenced the evolvement of radical African-American music in the United States of America in the intensely political and revolutionary period at the end of the 1960s following the assassinations of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King and the rise of the Black Panther party.

Featuring groundbreaking artists such as Gil Scott-Heron, Roy Ayers, Don Cherry, Oneness of Juju, Sarah Webster Fabio, Horace Tapscott, Phil Ranelin and many others, Soul of A Nation shows how political themes led to the rise of ‘conscious’ black music as new afro-centric styles combined the musical radicalism and spirituality of John Coltrane and radical avant-garde jazz music alongside the intense funk and soul of James Brown and Aretha Franklin and the urban poetry and proto-rap of the streets.

The Soul of a Nation exhibition draws on the links between Black art forms – art, music, poetry - and how they came together during the civil rights and black power era as part of the wider black arts movement across the United States.

Iconic African-Amercian revolutionary figures such as Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Angela Davis, John Coltrane, Muhammad Ali all appear in the radical artworks of Barkley L. Hendricks, Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis, Lorraine O’Grady and Betye Saar.

Stuart Baker (founder of Soul Jazz Records) will appear with the curators on the panel of Jazz for Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power discussion at the gallery as part of the show. You can book a ticket for this event here

The Soul of a Nation album comes with extensive sleeve-notes and exclusive photography in a large 36-page outsize booklet and slipcase. Double gatefold vinyl album edition comes with full colour inners + bonus download code and includes full sleeve-notes/photography.

Read More Reviews of the Soul of A Nation Exhibition:

Independent

Time Out

The Telegraph

Frieze

BBC News

Soul Jazz Records’ new release ‘Soul of A Nation: Jazz is the Teacher, Funk is the Preacher’ is a powerful new collection of radical jazz, street funk and proto-rap made in the era of Black Power (1969-75).

This is the second ‘Soul of A Nation’ album released by Soul Jazz Records to coincide with the exhibition ‘Soul of a Nation – Art in the Age of Black Power’, critically acclaimed and enormously successful when it opened at the Tate Modern in London last year (as was Soul Jazz Records’ accompanying first album ‘Soul of A Nation – Afro-Centric Visions in the Age of Black Power 1968-79’). The blockbuster international exhibition is now at the Brooklyn Museum, New York and then travels to Los Angeles in 2019.

This new album features a number of important and ground-breaking African-American artists – The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Don Cherry, Funkadelic, Gil Scott-Heron and more – alongside a host of lesser-known artists all of whom in the early 1970s were exploring new Afrocentric poly-rhythmical styles of music – radical jazz, street funk and proto-rap – while at the same time exploring the Black Power and civil-rights inspired notions of self-definition, self-respect and self-empowerment in their own lives.

During this era African-American jazz musicians ripped up traditional definitions – rejecting the term ‘entertainer’ to redefine themselves instead as ‘artists’. They worked outside of the mainstream music industry perceiving this artistic relationship to be fundamentally exploitative and politically flawed. Artists instead formed their own pan-arts community-centric collectives, set up their own record labels, ran concerts in alternative performance spaces – art galleries, parks, lofts, community centres – all as a way of taking control of their own creative destinies.

At the start of 1960s jazz musicians had embarked on an intense period of musical experimentation as artists John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry sought to dismantle the traditional definitions of jazz by creating new music that broke free from its establishment shackles. By the end of the 1960s, forward-thinking African-American jazz musicians had absorbed the ideas of this radical and avant-garde path but also began to introduce many new elements – not just civil rights concepts of freedom but also black power ideas of self-respect, righteousness and anger.

Their music developed into a radical and intense Afrocentric mix of jazz, funk, soul and street poetry, all in search of a new musical language that could better represent artistic African-American cultural expression.

All of the featured artists here were involved in this search in different ways; A shared sense of Afrocentric collectivism joined the dots between the deep avant-garde experimentalism of The Art Ensemble of Chicago (here featuring soul singer Fontella Bass singing the powerful ‘Theme de Yoyo’) to the hyper funk psychedelia of George Clinton’s Funkadelic.

The poetry of Gil Scott-Heron and Sarah Webster Fabio performed with a backdrop of street funk and heavyweight percussion laid down the template for the birth of rap. The Har-You Percussion Group, a group of young Harlem teenagers, showed how government-sponsored social initiatives helped create great art and music. Gary Bartz and The Oneness of Juju offer spirituality and cosmology. Collectives like The Pharaohs and Detroit’s Tribe add deep jazz and street funk in equal measures. And so on.

Influenced and radicalised by Black Power and civil rights, all these artists were involved in creating – in the words of the Art Ensemble of Chicago – ‘Great Black Music: Ancient to Future.’

This album is available as heavyweight triple vinyl (+free download), full and extensive text, exclusive photography, with house inners, and as deluxe CD with slipcase, 40-page outsize booklet and jewel case.

Cold Wave #2

Ltd. Edn. Dayglo sleeve + PURPLE VINYL 2xLP, + mini-fanzine/ Ltd. Edn. Dayglo sleeve + BLACK VINYL 2xLP, + mini-fanzine/ Dayglo CD + Slipcase + Booklet

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Soul Jazz Records new ‘Cold Wave’ is a new collection of current electronic artists who have all been shaped by the early European cold wave artists of the late 70s and early 80s.

This is the second release of Soul Jazz Records’ new Cold Wave overview.

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This second edition Cold Wave #2 comes in two vinyl editions – a one-off pressing purple coloured vinyl edition and a black vinyl edition. Both come as heavyweight double vinyl housed in bespoke individual inner sleeves and the limited edition first pressing of this album comes with its own free pull-out fanzine on the groups featured. The CD edition comes with artist booklet/fanzine and slipcase. All editions are printed in special dayglo colour finish.

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These first artists created new electronic musical landscapes as well as pursuing a stubborn D-I-Y aesthetic, often releasing material on cassette and pioneering use of lo-fi technology, primitive drum machines and home-recording techniques. As part of this continued evolution today many of the artists featured here also self-release their own material, run labels, publish fanzines, or are part of wider musical collectives.

Aside from the first electronic, no wave, and post-punk artists cited as influences –Suicide, Patrick Cowley, The Normal, Martin Hannett, Laurie Anderson, Public Image – this new generation of artists also show an exquisitely open source of electronic and disparate influences, everything from Underground Resistance to Purcell, from Scientist to New Beat and more besides.

Most of the featured artists are based in Europe and include Krikor from France, Beta Evers and L.F.T. from Germany, Lena Willikens, Job Siffre and De Ambassade from the Netherlands, Toulouse Low Trax from Germany, Dave I.D. and Broken English Club from the UK, and V.C.V.S from Georgia

All of the bands featured here make distinctive contemporary music out of the 80s roots of the first cold wave movement.