Bossa NovaAnd the Rise of Brazilian Music In The 1960s

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

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

Soul Jazz Records’ new Studio One collection ‘Fire Over Babylon: Dread, Peace and Conscious Sounds at Studio One’ features a stellar selection of 70s roots music – classic and rare tracks recorded at Clement Dodd’s musical empire at 13 Brentford Road in the 1970s.

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Rastafarian-inspired Roots music was an ever-important aspect of Studio One’s output from the start of the 1970s onwards and this album features many of the ground-breaking groups and artists that established the sound of Jamaica during this decade and beyond.

Featured here are seminal artists such as Freddie McGregor, The Wailing Souls, The Gladiators, Horace Andy, Devon Russell, Cedric Brooks, Count Ossie, Judah Eskender Tafari alongside a host of lesser-known rare cuts made at Studio One from artists such as The Prospectors, Viceroys and Pablove Black.

Studio One and founder Clement Dodd’s connection with Rastafarianism dates back to the early 1960s, with Dodd accompanying members of the Skatalites up to the hills of Kingston to listen to the music of the Rastafarianism Count Ossie and his drummers. The album sleevenotes discuss how Clement Dodd’s musical links, as well as his role in heading the most important record label in Reggae, are in many ways linked to the beliefs of Rastafarianism.

This album is released as a heavyweight black vinyl double-album with gatefold sleeve, full notes and download code, deluxe CD with full booklet and slipcase and digital album.

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.

Ltd. Edn. Dayglo sleeve + ORANGE 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 first release of Soul Jazz Records’ new Cold Wave overview and a second volume will be released just four weeks later.

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This first edition of Cold Wave comes in two vinyl editions – a one-off pressing orange 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, Dissemblance and VQOA from France, De Ambassade from the Netherlands, Moisture from Sweden, Kriedler from Germany, Céline Gillain and Carcass Identity from Belgium. One exception is FIT Siegel out of Detroit, connecting the electronic pathways of Europe to the Motor City.

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

LAST COPIES!

This is the new 20th anniversary edition of one of Soul Jazz Records’ classic Studio One releases now available as a one-off pressing special blue vinyl very limited-edition pressing ( 2000 copies worldwide).

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Studio One Roots set the standard for Soul Jazz Records’ long-standing series of Studio One collections and features many of the classic artists from Clement 'Sir Coxsone’ Dodd’s mighty roster of reggae.

This album includes Freddie McGregor, Willie Williams, Cornell Campbell, Alton Ellis, Devon Russell alongside some of the defining crack-session men groups of Jamaican reggae history - The Sound Dimension, Brentford All-Stars, The Skatalites, New Establishment and more. As ever the album is filled with a mixture of seminal cuts and super-rarities from the vast vaults of 13 Brentford Road.

Stand-out tracks include Alton Ellis’s Blackish White, a surreal and powerful Afro-centric dream, Count Ossie Nyabinghi and Rastafarian drummers genre-defying interpretation of Booker T and The MGs ‘Meditation’, Willie Williams awe-inspiring versioning of the Skatalites' seminal Rastafari anthem Addis Ababa and many, many more.

This album has been fully digitally remastered, analog cut and packaged complete with the following: Original sleevenotes by Lloyd Bradley (author of When Reggae Was King), compiled by Mark Ainley (Honest Jons), high-quality Soul Jazz mastering, wicked images of Count Ossie and the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari on the cover, and a rare image of Clement Dodd and musicians inside the studio at Studio One on the full colour inner sleeves.

REVIEWS:

"Having established himself as one of Jamaica's top producers the day Studio One opened its doors in the early '60s, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd was unable to maintain his status during the roots era of the subsequent decade. This can be attributed to a couple of factors. One was Dodd's apparent reluctance to record the new, overtly Rasta-inspired music. The other was an infusion of new blood into the Jamaican music business. Eager to make a name for themselves, producers like Joe Gibbs, Bunny Lee, Lee "Scratch" Perry, and Winston "Niney" Holness managed to supplant the island's "big three" (Dodd, Duke Reid, and Prince Buster) in the process, driving the music's evolution in the '70s.

There isn't a weak number across these 16 tracks, from the Gaylads' ode to "Africa" and Devon Russell's version of the heavyweight "Drum Song" rhythm, to a trio of stunning instrumentals: Jackie Mittoo and the Cyclones with nyahbinghi drummer Count Ossie on "Meditation," Lenny Hibbert's sparkling vibe work over Mittoo's "Ghetto Organ" ("More Creation"), and Sound Dimension's "Congo Rock."

The music of this compilation is of a rare, rare beauty and is essential to anyone's reggae collection." All Music

OUT NOW!

Soul Jazz Records new ‘Two Synths, A Guitar (and) A Drum Machine’ is a new collection of current D-I-Y post-punk bands shaped by the mutant sounds of no wave, punk funk and New York Noise bands from the late 70s and early 80s that collided with the world of underground dance music found at the Paradise Garage, Mudd Club in New York City (ESG, Arthur Russell, Bush Tetras, Talking Heads, Suicide, Liquid Liquid).

Other influences cited here include Manchester and Sheffield’s industrial post-punk sounds of the 1980s (Joy Division, Cabaret Voltaire, Gang of Four) as well as the 1970s German electronic experimentalism of Cluster, Neu!, Harmonia and Can.

Featured artists from around the globe include Los Angeles D-I-Y band Automatic, New Fries from Toronto, artist/music collaborators Toresch from Germany, Susumu Makai from Japan/UK, Vex Ruffin from the Phillipines/California and Madmadmad, Gramme, Tom of England and other UK groups

That all the bands featured here manage to make distinctive contemporary music out of these 80s roots is testament to the wide range of other musics that are seamlessly absorbed into a modern melting pot of sound – hip-hop, the electronic European avant-garde, rave culture, and more.

The double vinyl comes in two editions:

1) Limited edition indies EXCLUSIVE heavyweight green double vinyl housed in bespoke individual inner sleeves with its own free pull-out fanzine on the groups featured.

2) Limited edition heavyweight black double vinyl housed in bespoke individual inner sleeves with its own free pull-out fanzine on the groups featured.

The album is also available as a CD and digital release

Cuba: Music and Revolution: Culture Clash in Havana: Experiments in Latin Music 1975-85 Vol. 1 is the new album compiled by Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker (Soul Jazz Records) that explores the many new styles that emerged in Cuba in the 1970s as Jazz, Funk, Brazilian Tropicalia and even Disco mixed together with Latin and Salsa on the island as Cuban artists experimented with new musical forms created in the unique socialist state of Cuba.

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.

The album is released to coincide with the massive new deluxe large format book Cuba: Music and Revolution: Original Cover Art of Cuban Music: Record Sleeve Designs of Revolutionary Cuba 1959-90, published in November, which is also compiled by Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker (Soul Jazz Records), and which features the music and record designs of Cuba, made in the 30-year period following the Cuban Revolution.

The music on this album features legendary Cuban groups such as Irakere, Los Van Van and Pablo Milanés as well as a host of lesser known artists such as the radical Grupo De Experimentación, Juan Pablo Torres and Algo Nuevo, Grupo Monumental and Orquesta Ritmo Oriental, groups whose names remain largely unknown outside of Cuba owing to the now 60-year old US trade embargo which remains in place today and which prevents trade with Cuba – and thus most Cuban records were only ever available in Cuba or in ex-Soviet Union states.

The music on this album reflects the most cutting-edge of Cuban groups that were recording in Cuba in the 1970s and 1980s – who were all searching for a new Cuban identity and new musical forms that reflected 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.

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:

"It may only be January, but 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 goes beyond Buena Vista" UNCUT

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*Please note the vinyl sticker of this album says "+download code" but it's a mistake! There is no download with this particular album due to legal reasons. Sorry for this error!

Owned and founded by Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, Studio One's output serves as a comprehensive guide to the history of Reggae music. The music on Studio One Rockers covers all areas of Reggae such as Ska, Rocksteady, Roots and Dancehall, all areas in which Studio One led the field.

Studio One Rockers features many legendary Studio One tracks brought together for the first time by Soul Jazz Records. From the beginning of Reggae, when the Skatalites developed a new sound of Ska in 1962 up until today, Studio One has been the number one innovator in Jamaican music.

Included in this compilation are classic Ska tracks ("Phoenix City"), Rocksteady ("Feel Like Jumping"), Roots music ("Truth and Rights"), Dancehall (Freddy McGregor, Michigan and Smiley) and many more.

Featured here are many of the classic tracks from Studio One. From Dawn Penn's legendary "No, No, No" to classics such as Horace Andy's "Skylarking" and Marcia Griffith's "Feel Like Jumping".

The Coxsone Soundsystem in the early 60s was one of the three main soundsystems operating in Jamaica alongside his competitors, Prince Buster and Duke Reid. The Studio One catalogue is possibly the largest in Jamaican music and this release is the first in a series of Studio One compilations on Soul Jazz Records.

This album comes with an in depth interview with Mr C.S. Dodd, about how he set up and ran his record label in the 1960s and 1970s.

"Compilation of the month. 100% Essential" SEVEN "Compilation of the month. A compilation of unbelievable quality. Awesome" MUZIK "A who's who of Jamaican music" MUSICWEEK "An essential slice of musical history" WAX "The most credible compilation of reggae you can 

This is the new instalment of Soul Jazz Records’ ground-breaking Deutsche Elektronische Musik series, ‘A near-definitive guide to some of the world's most extraordinary music’ (The Guardian).

This latest edition features many of the classic German electronic and Krautrock groups from the 1970s & 80s – including Can, Amon Duul II, Harmonia, Conrad Schnitzler, Agitiation Free, Roedelius – as well as a host of lesser known artists such as Dzyan, Klauss Weiss, Gruppe Between and many more.

Deutsche Elektronische rarities unearthed on the album include Kalacakra (whose fan-base included the great Moondog!) and their superb ‘Nearby Shiras,’ taken from their super-rare spiritual/psychedelic private press concept album Crawling to Lhasa, from 1972.

Deutsche Elektronische 4 includes a wealth of German electronic experimental artists – the seminal pioneering group Harmonia (Roedelius, Moebius and Michael Rother), avant-garde guru Conrad Schnitzler as well as lesser known synthetic artists such as Klauss Weiss, Deutsche Wertarbeit, E.M.A.K. (Electronische Musik Aus Koln), Gunter Schickert and others.

Finally, the album also features an array of heavy and progressive German cosmic rock groups – Dzyan, Virus and the amazing Turkish/German tripped out sound of Alex’s ‘Patella Black’, recorded at Can’s Inner Space in 1973, produced by Holger Czukay and Jackie Liebezeit.

Deutsche Elektronische 4 comes with extensive newly commissioned sleevenotes by David Stubbs, author of the seminal books ‘Future Days: Krautrock and the building of Modern Germany’, ‘Mars By 1980: The story of Electronic Music’, and ‘Krautrock: Cosmic Rock and its Legacy’.

This album comes as a heavyweight triple vinyl edition with full colour inner sleeves, as well as a deluxe double CD edition with outsize booklet and slipcase. Both formats include full liner notes and extensive rare photography.

Soul Jazz Records’ new album ‘Kaleidoscope – New Spirits Known and Unknown’ brings together many of the ground-breaking artists involved in the new jazz scene that has developed in the UK over the last few years. Featured artists include Matthew Halsall, Yazmin Lacey, Ill Considered, Tenderlonious, Theon Cross, Emma-Jean Thackray and many, many more in this ground-breaking release.

As well as sharing a pioneering spirit in these new artists’ approach to frontier-crossing musical boundaries, a further theme of this album is that many also share a determination to independent practices - and most of these artists’ recordings featured here are either self-published or released on independent labels. While the attention of this new wave of jazz artists has up until now has been London-based, this album shows how this movement is spread across the whole of Britain (and indeed beyond).

‘Kaleidoscope – New Spirits Known and Unknown’ shows that while there is commonality in these artists approach to music, there is a wide variety of styles – from deep spiritual jazz, electronic experimentalisation, punk-edged funk, uplifting modal righteousness, deep soulful vocals and much more.

Soul Jazz Records’ new release comes as a superb one-off pressing special deluxe triple album edition which comes with a bonus limited-edition one-off pressing 7" single, a standard triple album, and a deluxe double CD pack. This album also comes with extensive sleevenotes, artist interviews and exclusive photography.

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Soul Jazz records are also releasing an exclusive one-off pressing double-headed 12” single featuring Theon Cross and Pokus released on the same day as the ‘Kaleidoscope’ album release. These two tracks do not feature on the vinyl edition of the album - this 12" single will will also be deleted on day of release.

‘Space Funk – Afro Futurist Electro Funk in Space 1976-84’, is an intergalactic journey into black space, fuelled by funk, powered by computers.

‘Space Funk’ is a lovingly compiled collection of superb, rare and off-the-wall space funk and electro releases mostly released on small independent labels in the late 1970s and 1980s.

Reactors are reacting, boosters are boosting, pack your funk and shake your booty! Computer funk … makes you jump! This is the space funk program!

The album comes in deluxe artwork and three formats – digipack + slipcase CD, a very limited deluxe 2xLP + bonus 7” single + download vinyl version, and a standard 2xLP + download standard vinyl version.

Features music by Jamie Jupitor, Solaris, Robotron 4, Juju & the Space Rangers and many more intergalactic space warriors!

The shuttle program has been altered – there is no Star Wars only electro funk jam joyriders in Space – hold tight!

Seriously rare, killer and classic Nigerian 70s Afro-Funk, Afro-Disco & Afro-Rock tunes bought together.

Originally released as a now-long-out-of-print collectors’ 7” RSD box, this fully expanded album release now also includes extra tracks from Sonny Okosuns, Wings, Chief Kollington Ayinla and more.

Soul Jazz Records’ Nigeria Soul Power 70 album showcases the influence of funk, rock and disco on Nigerian music during the 1970s

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While for many people the fusion of funk and jazz music with Nigerian rhythms and aesthetics began with Fela Kuti and his afro-beat sound, in fact this can be traced further back to the phenomena of the 1960s Nigerian artists and house bands in nightclubs and hotels who interpreted US soul and pop music with a local flavour and none more so than Geraldo Pino, the ‘African James Brown’ who features heavily in this collection. Other similarly inspired Nigerian funk and soul artists featured here included Tony Grey and his Ozimba Messengers and Don Bruce and The Angels.

Nigeria Soul Power 70 includes a number of tracks from the group Wings originally known as BAF (Biafran Air Force) Wings, an army band formed during the Biafran civil war in Nigeria. The groups’ heavy mixture of funk, rock and African styles was popular among many Nigerian groups at the time.

Beneath the shadow of the few Nigerian artists who signed international recording deals in the 1970s – Fela Kuti, King Sunny Ade, Chief Ebenezer Obey – lies a vast wealth of largely undiscovered musical transmutation and cultural cross-pollination, and included here are heavy afro-funk/rock and disco tracks from artists such as the legendary Sonny Okosuns as well as rare cuts from little-known outside of Nigeria - groups such as Colomach and MFB. Most of these obscure artists signed to major labels in Nigeria in the commercial slipstream that opened up as Philips, Decca and EMI tried to emulate the international success of the big three international Nigerian artists.

Finally featured here is Kollington Ayinla, one of the co-founders of Nigerian Fuji music, who gives us perhaps the heaviest of all tracks on this album. Ayinla is the great moderniser of the Fuji sound and in the late 1970s began adding Bata drums and synthesizers to his authentic music to create a powerful and heavy new fusion of traditional and modernist aesthetics, embracing both new technology and experimentation while rooted firmly in Nigerian historical lineage.

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Nigeria Soul Power 70 is released as a heavyweight gatefold double vinyl LP (+ free download code), deluxe slipcase CD and digital album.

Soul Jazz Records’ new Studio One DJ Party is the latest instalment from the mighty Studio One Records catalogue, a wicked new collection of the finest DJs and toasters ever to inhabit the world of reggae – seminal Jamaican artists including Prince Jazzbo, Dillinger, Dennis Alcapone, Michigan & Smiley, Lone Ranger as well as a host of lesser known artists and rare cuts from Studio One.

From the earliest days when Clement ‘Sir Coxsone’ Dodd ran his Downbeat soundsystem up and down the length of Jamaica, DJs and toasters such as King Stitt and Count Machukie were always a part of the sound of Studio One, introducing new records and exciting audiences with catchphrase lines such as:

“No matter what the people say these sounds lead the way

It's the order of the day from your boss deejay” King Stitt

So when DJ emerged as a distinct reggae style at the start of the 1970s, Studio One was, as always, way ahead of their competitors. Legendary artists of the calibre of Dillinger, Dennis Alcapone and Prince Jazzbo all queued up to record for the equally legendary label.

At the end of the 1970s, as dancehall exploded onto the island, Clement Dodd was once again able to maintain Studio One’s position on the throne as the number one sound in the Jamaica, fighting off upstart competitors such as Channel One and Joe Gibbs who tried to replicate Studio One’s unique sound. During this period Clement Dodd released a series of stunning dancehall releases from young DJ/dancehall artists at the label including Lone Ranger and Michigan & Smiley.

This selection spans the early 70s up until the mid-1980s, from the earliest days of deejay toasting right up until digital dancehall, ground-breaking tracks over the finest selection of the ultimate Studio One rhythms and tracks. Who could ask for more?

Studio One DJ Party includes specially commissioned sleevenotes by Chris Lane, founder of the legendary British reggae label Fashion Records, as well as fantastic original artwork commissioned by the illustrator Ski Williams. The album is released as double heavyweight vinyl (+download code), and distinctive Soul Jazz Records CD with slipcase.

This is the latest new installment of Soul Jazz Records’ on-going collection of Rastafarian music at Studio One, featuring classic material from legendary roots and culture artists The Gladiators, Horace Andy, Freddie McGregor, Sugar Minott and the Wailing Souls, alongside a superb selection of rarities from Sir Coxsone’s musical empire made up of one-off and practically unknown Rastafarian artists who recorded on a myriad of Studio One off-shoot labels in the 1970s – The Manchesters, Mellodies, The Nightingales and others.

In this new collection, we see that once again the prescient Clement Dodd was a man who saw the wider picture. In the 1960s it was Sir Coxsone who identified the creative potential of The Wailers, Toots and the Maytals, Heptones, Burning Spear and many, many others. In the 1970s Studio One released an untouchable selection of the finest as styles moved from reggae to deejay to dub and, in the latter half, the emergence of dancehall.

But what is also clear is that throughout this era Studio One released an incredible amount of roots music, and not just the most commercially obvious. For alongside the career-building catalogues of Burning Spear, The Wailing Souls, The Gladiators and so on, one needs to be an ardent Studio One collector to know some of the truly raw Rastafarian music featured here. Groups such as The Manchesters or The Nightingales feel as if they were recorded straight out of the churchical chants of the mansions.

Black Man’s Pride explains the links between the ideology of Clement Dodd at Studio One and the Rastafarian faith, which was the creation of Afro-Jamaicans and concerned above all else with a black consciousness and empowerment, a rediscovering of the personal and racial identity of black people. The movement began in the 1930s and, in tandem with this black consciousness, called for a rejection of the British imperial culture that dominated Jamaica, while creating an identity based on a re-appropriation of an African heritage.

The Rastafari movement was like a pivot, bringing together and balancing many vectors of ideologies. Marcus Garvey’s Back to Africa movement, trades union discourse, anti-colonialism and nation independence, maroon self-definition and independence, the spirit of African rebellion in the Caribbean. For Clement Dodd, a black man and producer growing up in Kingston in this era, Rastafari was simply a part of his everyday world – from witnessing Count Ossie’s grounations to the faith of many Jamaican artists at Studio One – from the Skatalites onwards.

Featured here alongside these classic and rare tracks from Studio One are new and extensive sleeve notes with track-by-track notes by Rob Chapman, author of the acclaimed Downbeat Special and Never Grow Old Studio One books.

The album is released as double heavyweight gatefold vinyl (+ free download code), CD with slipcase and booklet, and digital album.

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.

Soul Jazz Records new Studio One album is a fantastic selection featuring all-star legendary Studio One vocalists – Alton Ellis, Marcia Griffiths, The Heptones, Horace Andy, Freddie McGregor, Sugar Minott – alongside a host of classic and super-rare Lovers Rock cuts all of which Clement Dodd recorded at the Brentford Road studio.

Lovers rock brought together many elements and here you will find sweet harmonies, late 1960s rocksteady, 1970s soul covers, discomixes, recuts and new rhythms – which all fit together in a timeless twilight of love & harmony – as if lovers silhouetted by a Kingston sunset.

Here you will find stone-cold classic Studio One tunes – Marcia Griffiths ‘Truly’, Horace Andy’s I’ll Be Gone super-rare cuts like Carlton and The Shoes killer 70s versions of Never Give Your Heart Away and Let Me Love You (vocal cut to Jackie Mittoo’s mighty Wall Street), The Invaders sweet lovers rocksteady bomb ‘Sweet Soul Rocking’ (currently for sale at £2,500 on discogs!) and many more!

This new album comes with sleevenotes by Lloyd Bradley, the acclaimed author of Bass Culture, Sounds Like London and Reggae: The Story of Jamaican Music. The album is pressed on heavyweight double gatefold vinyl (+ free download), deluxe slipcase CD and digital.

Studio One Freedom Sounds is the new collection from Soul Jazz/Studio One focussing on the intense period in the second half of the 1960s when Studio One’s vast and unbeatable output of ska, soul, rock steady and reggae made it literally one of the hottest musical empires in the world.

During this highly successful period, Clement ‘Sir Coxsone’ Dodd released hundreds and hundreds of superlative singles seemingly on an almost daily basis, in the process making huge stars out of Jamaican singers such as Alton Ellis, Delroy Wilson, The Wailers, Slim Smith, Jackie Opel and many more.

Powered by the finest in-house musicians working in Jamaica, whether it was The Skatalites, Jackie Mittoo’s Soul Brothers, The Sounds Dimension or The Soul Vendors, Studio One functioned as hit factory on the scale of Motown in the USA, shaping and defining reggae music for decades to come.

Singlehandedly Studio One’s founder Clement Dodd was able to create the most successful vertically-integrated record company that Jamaica had ever known with pressing plant, printers, studio, shops, and sound systems all running at once, with over 50 employees and hundreds of artists working with Studio One during this time.

Studio One Freedom Sounds tells the story of Studio One in the 1960s with a stunning set of ska, soul, rock steady and reggae killer tunes as well as informative sleevenotes and track-by-track info by Noel Hawks. The album is released as heavyweight double vinyl (+ free download code), deluxe CD and digital album.

This is the second installment of deep roots Rastafarian reggae at Studio One and features classic music from some of the most important figures in reggae music – Alton Ellis, The Heptones, Jackie Mittoo, The Gladiators – alongside a host of rarities and little-known recordings, such as a truly rare Mystic Revelation of Rastafari seven-inch single, Willie William’s first ever recording ‘Calling’ and Horace Andy’s righteous (and equally rare) masterpiece ‘Illiteracy.’

Black Man’s Pride 2 extends the legacy of Studio One’s ground-breaking path in roots reggae which began at the end of the 1960s and continued throughout the 1970s. The album tells the story of how the rise of Studio One Records and the Rastafari movement were interconnected, through the adoption of the Rastafari faith by key reggae artists – everyone from the Skatalites and Wailers in the 1960s, major singers such as Alton Ellis and Horace Andy at the end of the decade, through to major roots artists such as The Gladiators in the 1970s – and how Clement Dodd consistently recorded this heavyweight roots music throughout Studio One’s history.

The extensive sleeve-notes to this album also discuss the links between Rastafari and Studio One in time and place, noting how both the religion and Clement Dodd’s musical empire had their roots in the intense period of pre-independence Jamaica in Kingston, expanded in the 1960s following the visit of Haile Selassie in 1966, and how roots music then came to dominate reggae music in the early 1970s. Also discussed is how the outsider stance of both reggae music and the Rastafari movement relate back many hundreds of years to the original rebel stance of the Maroons, escaped slaves who set up self-sufficient enclaves in the hills of the Jamaican countryside.

There is also a track-by-track history by the noted Studio One writer Rob Chapman (Never Grow Old). This new album comes as heavyweight gatefold double vinyl (+ download code), deluxe CD and digital album.

REVIEWS of Black Man's Pride:

"Soul Jazz’s albums are different: not only have they encouraged a new, younger audience, parallel to the one that enjoys rare funk and spiritual jazz, to appreciate this music, their records are coherent. They’re not just a heap of tunes that happen to be sharing a black vinyl apartment. They’re themed and meld musically. They have a reason to exist.
In this instance, that reason is an exploration of 70s vocal roots reggae with a theme of black pride and dignity." Record Collector

Soul Jazz Records’ new Boombox 3 continues the story of the first rap records to be put onto vinyl. It is a jam-packed collection of original independent ‘old-school’ hip-hop, created with just one thing in mind – to get this party jumping!

After the explosion of hip hop in the parks and clubs of The Bronx in the mid-1970s, it was in Harlem where the first rap records emerged at the end of 1979 - an avalanche of superb rap tracks released on small independent labels all trying to capitalise on the success of ‘Rappers Delight.’

Like hip hop culture itself, these first rap singles are the product of their own unique set of aesthetics – exciting and innovative rap performed with Bronx block party B-Boy funk breaks, disco jams and Jamaican sound system culture.

The extensive sleevenotes discuss hip-hop’s trajectory from the first wave of Bronx creativity – the legendary DJs Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa – through to its arrival in Harlem via the entrepreneurism of old-school African-American rhythm and blues producers and émigré Jamaican producers all living in New York. Along the way the notes discuss everything from the New York power blackout of 1977, the Italian mafia involvement in the music industry, the links between rap and Jamaican dancehall and more besides!

Boombox 3 features a line-up of stunning, near unknown New York rap artists, classic disco breaks (including Chic’s omnipotent Good Times, MFSB’s Love Is the Message, Queen’s Another One Bites The Dust etc.), proto-electro and more. And by the early 1980s the first rap records outside New York began to emerge – Los Angeles, Houston, Milwaukee, Phoenix – and the first of these are also featured here in this new collection.

This Soul Jazz Records album is released on heavyweight triple vinyl (+ download code) with full notes, double CD pack with 44-page outsize booklet and slipcase, and digital album.

Reviews of Boombox series:

‘The vital launch pad between hip-hop’s birth and its worldwide impact’ THE WIRE

‘This compilation of early rap is a legit party in a box, one of the best Soul Jazz Records releases in years.’ FACT

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 latest instalment in Soul Jazz Records’ successful Deutsche Elektronische Musik series delves deeper into the German nation’s vaults to bring a fascinating new collection that again brings together a selection of classic German electronic and rock groups, including Neu!, Cluster, Popol Vuh, La Düsseldorf, Agitation Free, alongside a host of rare tracks by lesser known artists which includes Michael Bundt, Bröselmaschine, Dronsz, Achim Reichel and others.

The music of Deutsche Elektronische Musik 3 ranges from the introverted pastoralism of Hans Joachim Roedelius and Bröselmaschine, to the angular and futuristic electronic experimentations of Klauss Weiss, Pyrolator, Deuter, Michael Bundt and others, to the proto-punk of La Düsseldorf and the heavy space, progressive and cosmic rock of Missus Beastly, Niagara and Dyzan.

The music on Deutsche Elektronische Musik 3 was all recorded in the 1970s up to the early 1980s, at a time when forward-thinking German electronic and rock groups were searching for a new musical identity in order to separate themselves from both the cultural legacy of post-world war two Germany as well the ‘cultural imperialism’ of USA and UK rock. In this process German groups created some of the most unique and inspired music, the defining motorik beat alongside a host of ethno-musical influences from far afield – including Turkey, India, Brazil – as well as the musical and futurist possibilities of developments in electronics and technology itself.

Deutsche Elektronische Musik 3 is released as a heavyweight 3xLP, deluxe double CD pack and digital release. The new extensive sleevenotes are by David Stubbs, who is the author of the acclaimed book, ‘Future Days: Krautrock and the Building of Modern Germany’ (Faber & Faber).

“A near-definitive guide to some of the world’s most extraordinary music’’ ***** The Guardian

"There are many potential futures contained within this exemplary Soul Jazz compilation" The Quietus

Soul Jazz Records are releasing this new 10th anniversary 2017 edition of their classic album  ‘Dancehall – The Rise of Jamaican Dancehall Culture’. This long-out-of-print collection is now available as a triple-vinyl edition and double CD pack.

The album is a lightning-flash collection of all-time classic and definitive dancehall classics as well as a stellar selection of more obscure tracks. Featuring Yellowman, Tenor Saw, Sister Nancy, Ini Kamoze, Chaka Demus & Pliers, Michigan & Smiley, Super Cat, Cutty Ranks, Eek-A-Mouse, Gregory Isaacs and more, this album features non-stop floor-filling party tune rockers throughout!

Dancehall is released to coincide with the new 2017 edition of the stunning 400+ photos deluxe coffee table book ‘Dancehall – The Rise of Jamaican Dancehall Culture’, featuring Beth Lesser’s amazing Dancehall photography (also newly published by Soul Jazz Records). This book has become the definitive cultural reference book for Jamaican dancehall and features hundreds of killer photographs, extensive text and interviews with many of the artists.

‘A vibrant anthology of all that mattered: the sound systems, studios, producers, singers and deejays.’  The Guardian

While the righteousness of blackness is at the heart of the Rastafarian faith, this collection illustrates how black pride remained a central theme, if not the defining essence, at the very core of all the music created at Studio One Records.

Black Man’s Pride is the striking new Studio One collection of deep heavyweight reggae featuring Horace Andy, Alton Ellis, The Gladiators, Sugar Minott, The Heptones, Freddie McGregor, Cedric Brooks & more.

In order to understand the centrality of black identity in the music created at Studio One, we need look no further than Clement ‘Sir Coxsone’ Dodd who, who created the first black-owned record company in Jamaica.

In similar fashion Alton Ellis’s defining ‘Black Man’s Pride’ brings up emotions that are at the heart of many of these uplifting songs. Alton Ellis’ birthplace was the Trench Town ghetto of Kingston, also the birthplace of The Wailers, Ken Boothe and many other Studio One luminaries.

Clement Dodd established a musical empire firmly rooted by the core musicians working at Studio One many of whom came out of the Alpha School for Wayward Boys, run by Roman Catholic nuns, whose luminaries include Don Drummond, Johnny Moore, Leroy ‘Horsemouth’ Wallace, Cedric Brooks, Vin Gordon, Tommy McCook & more.

Many of the songs featured here come from the transitory phase in reggae at the start of the 1970s. After the exhilaration of Ska and following the cooling down of Rocksteady. While reggae awaited the arrival of roots, Studio One’s vocalists were already producing some of the moodiest music imaginable! Here are 18 heavyweight tunes, both classic cuts and super-rare tunes!

This new album is released as a heavyweight gatefold double-LP edition (+ download code), CD and digital with full text.

REVIEW

"The bottomless pit that is Coxsone Dodd’s Studio One label(s) yields more gems. Soul Jazz and before it, Heartbeat in the US, United Artists, Bamboo and various other labels in the UK have released numerous collections, yet the catalogue remains largely under-exploited, despite the late Mr Dodd’s tireless efforts to wring every last cent from it in unlikely ways. Little wonder that some reggae fans, spoilt by knowledge and racks of original vinyl, can be inclined to shrug when another comp emerges: there have been so many. However, Soul Jazz’s albums are different: not only have they encouraged a new, younger audience, parallel to the one that enjoys rare funk and spiritual jazz, to appreciate this music, their records are coherent. They’re not just a heap of tunes that happen to be sharing a black vinyl apartment. They’re themed and meld musically. They have a reason to exist.

In this instance, that reason is an exploration of (mostly) 70s vocal roots reggae with a theme of black pride and dignity. This music was recorded as a cultural statement, if not a cry, from the roots; strong stuff, deep, dark and heavy. But don’t mistake that for leaden. It may have bass frequencies that drive your neighbour’s dog under the sofa, thinking it’s 5 November all over again, but this is no gloomy exercise in musical storm clouds. Right from Alton Ellis’s title-donating opening tune, there are aspects of Black Man’s Pride that will have you skipping around the room, literally or mentally, and thanking Jah that you didn’t spend the money it cost you on a pizza, dough balls and Diet Coke meal deal. This is not musical junk food, it’s a keeper fit to lift the heart whenever needed.

One reason for this is the sequencing. Glen Miller (not that one) may have a light, soulful voice but the rhythm track he’s riding on Love And Understanding is a minor chord churner, as sad as a wet Sunday. But it’s held up on either side by Sugar Minott (and an uncredited Gladiators) floating through Woman Shadow (as sung by The Meditations as Woman Is Like A Shadow), and The Nightingales’ gorgeously swinging Rasta Is Calling, a glorious take on Delroy Wilson’s Cool Operator rhythm that’s a sod to find on 45. The Heptones make a rational case for Equal Rights in a manner that ought to have been perky enough to win them at least an audition for a CBBC presenter’s role. Their lead singer Leroy Sibbles pops up uncredited on John Holt’s heart-lifting yet cool Let’s Build Our Dreams. Heavy 70s roots is gloomy? Nope. Jamaica’s ghettos were suffering; they didn’t need more misery.

There’s also judicious joining up of vocals and their dubwise 45 flipsides: The Gladiators’ Roots Natty is one such. I heard the vocal, and immediately wished it was the devastatingly moving dub cut. Compiler Stuart Baker evidently thought likewise, so it extends to the version. For variety, there’s a lone sax instrumental to wreck things up too: Cedric Brooks’ melodic Why Can’t I.

There’s room for the unique, deep and breathy voice of Larry Marshall. More “international” stars Horace Andy and Dennis Brown are here too, recorded as youths, as is a teenage Freddie McGregor on a rootsy rewrite of Cat Stevens’ Wild World – with what sounds like JS Bach on synth! The set shuts with Johnny Osbourne’s sophisticated and spiritually openhearted Forgive Them.

With an informative, eminently enjoyable sleeve note about the growth of roots reggae and its place in Rastafarianism and black awareness, fittingly Black Man’s Pride lacks nothing." Ian McCann, RECORD COLLECTOR

By the 1970s Studio One and Clement ‘Sir Coxsone’ Dodd had already proved himself to be the defining force in Reggae for almost two decades. From running the Downbeat sound system on the lawns and yards of Kingston in the late 1950s to opening Studio One at 13 Brentford Road at the start of the 1960s, ushering in Ska and Rocksteady and establishing the careers of most of Jamaica’s artists – everyone from Bob Marley and The Wailers, Ken Boothe, Toots and The Maytals, The Skatalites, Jackie Mittoo and more – Clement Dodd had until this point dominated the Jamaican musical world.

And yet, incredibly, Clement Dodd was barely half way through his musical path, maintaining Studio One’s number one position in the Jamaican music scene throughout the 1970s with a combination of musical and creative innovation and an endless capacity to adapt and create new musical fashions. By the end of the 1970s Dancehall had become the defining sound on the island. Dancehall was essentially a tribute by other Jamaican producers and artists to the classic music of Studio One created in the 1960s as young artists across the island created new songs, while musicians recreated these original classic foundation Studio One rhythms. As on other occasions, Clement Dodd rose to this new musical challenge by producing a whole new era of classics for Studio One.

The roots of Dancehall begin with the DJs of the early 1970s, who were the first to sing new material over earlier classic rhythms. Early DJ pioneers such as Dillinger and Prince Jazzbo both feature here toasting over classic songs - The Mad Lad’s Ten to One and The Eternals’ Queen of the Minstrel. But it is the new wave of artists who arrived at Studio One at the onset of Dancehall which enabled Studio One to maintain its number one status as the whole of Kingston’s rival music producers – Channel One, Joe Gibbs and many others – attempted to challenge this position.

Sugar Minott, Michigan and Smiley, Willie Williams, Lone Ranger had all grown up listening to the classic Studio One music of the 1960s and were able to pay the greatest compliment to the label by creating the defining new music of this new era with songs that combined all the musical and technological developments of the 1970s – dub, deejaying, discomixes, syndrums, synthesizers and more – into the sound of the future: Dancehall.

Throughout this era Clement Dodd also continued to work with a number of original and returning artists – such as Alton Ellis, Horace Andy, Freddie McGregor, Johnny Osbourne – updating old rhythms and creating new ones while employing the in-house band variously known as The Brentford All-Stars/Rockers/Disco Set to update these sounds in order to maintain Studio One’s number one position as the defining force in Reggae.

This is Soul Jazz Records’ latest new collection of classic and rare Studio One recordings and is released on triple LP (+ download code), deluxe CD and digital album.

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

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

VINYL FACTORY COMPILATION OF THE YEAR 2020!!!

See chart here

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LIMITED EDITION COMES WITH FREE GRAPHIC STORY!

Soul Jazz Records’ new Black Riot: Early Jungle, Rave and Hardcore is a brand new collection of heavyweight ragga-influenced hardcore jungle tracks from the early 1990s. Dark and heavy!

Featuring classic and seminal tracks from the likes of Levictus and Krome &Time, alongside a host of rare and little-known ragga & junglist hardcore tunes from the likes of Babylon Timewarp’s hypnotic Durban Poison, Rhythm for Reasons’ mad ‘The Smokers Rhythm’, The Freaky rave-y breakbeat sound of ‘Time and Age,’ Trip One’s super dark ‘Snowball’ and loads more!

Expect super heavy basslines, equally heavy twisted Amen drum loops, even heavier ragga vocals! Original jungle style - roots and culture - from the earliest days of drum and bass.

Included with the album is a free limited-edition graphic mini-novel “Black Riot: The Mysterons save Planet Earth from the Xatheroid Angels.” This is the third collaboration between Soul Jazz Records and writer/illustrator Paulo Parisi, the highly respected author of graphic books on Jean Michel Basquiat and John Coltrane.

This new graphic story continues the story of black electronic dance music – this time set around the birth of Jungle and continues onwards from Soul Jazz’s earlier ‘Invasion of the Killer Mysterons’ (Jamaican electronic Dub, co-compiled by Kevin Martin (The Bug)) and Mysterons Invade the Jackin’ Zone (about Chicago Acid & Experimental House).

Soul Jazz Records’ new ox-blood red coloured vinyl limited-edition 1000-copies worldwide LP (+ download code) issue of this very rare deep spiritual jazz album first released as a private-press album in 1970 on flautist Lloyd McNeill’s own Asha Record label in Washington, DC.

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CLASSIC! DEEP Jazz includes the wicked 'Home Rule'

Lloyd McNeill is an African-American flautist, painter, poet, and photographer born in Washington, D.C., in 1935. His multi-disciplinary creative life led to encounters and friendships with Nina Simone, Picasso, Eric Dolphy, Nana Vasconceles and other legendary cultural figures. Lloyd McNeill’s hypnotic ‘Washington Suite’ was originally commissioned as a piece of music for the Capital Ballet Company, in Washington, DC.

McNeill grew up through the era of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and his life and work is a reflection of those ideals. In the mid-1960s he moved to France where he became friends with Picasso, working with a number of émigré-jazz musicians whilst living in Paris. In the late 1960s he taught jazz and painting workshops at the New Thing Art and Architecture Center in Washington. In the 1970s he travelled throughout Brazil and West Africa studying music and taught music anthropology in the US.

It's back in stock!!! EXCLUSIVE - ONLY AVAILABLE HERE!

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WORLD EXCLUSIVE limited edition seven-inch 45 ONLY AVAILABLE to customers at Soul Jazz Records and Sounds of the Universe!

The world's greatest ever break? Here it is - The first official re-release of The Winston's Amen Brother with the LEGENDARY Amen Break as featured on 1000s of hip-hop and jungle releases. This record has been a collectors' 45 for ages and OUT OF PRINT for 50 years - sounding fresh!

Not only that but the flip-side Color Him Father is a superb Curtis Mayfield-esque ANTHEMIC soul tune - as essential as the A-side.

WORLD EXCLUSIVE limited edition seven-inch 45 ONLY AVAILABLE to customers at Soul Jazz Records and Sounds of the Universe!

THIS RECORD IS 100% ESSENTIAL and ONLY available HERE - DO NOT MISS OUT!

Soul Jazz Records’ new Studio One collection ‘Fire Over Babylon: Dread, Peace and Conscious Sounds at Studio One’ features a stellar selection of 70s roots music – classic and rare tracks recorded at Clement Dodd’s musical empire at 13 Brentford Road in the 1970s.

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Rastafarian-inspired Roots music was an ever-important aspect of Studio One’s output from the start of the 1970s onwards and this album features many of the ground-breaking groups and artists that established the sound of Jamaica during this decade and beyond.

Featured here are seminal artists such as Freddie McGregor, The Wailing Souls, The Gladiators, Horace Andy, Devon Russell, Cedric Brooks, Count Ossie, Judah Eskender Tafari alongside a host of lesser-known rare cuts made at Studio One from artists such as The Prospectors, Viceroys and Pablove Black.

Studio One and founder Clement Dodd’s connection with Rastafarianism dates back to the early 1960s, with Dodd accompanying members of the Skatalites up to the hills of Kingston to listen to the music of the Rastafarianism Count Ossie and his drummers. The album sleevenotes discuss how Clement Dodd’s musical links, as well as his role in heading the most important record label in Reggae, are in many ways linked to the beliefs of Rastafarianism.

This album is released as a heavyweight black vinyl double-album with gatefold sleeve, full notes and download code, deluxe CD with full booklet and slipcase and digital album.

These are very limited Studio One 12" pressings (worldwide 1000) that sell out on the day they are released. So don't miss out here!

BRAND NEW LTD. EDN. 12" All-time Studio One party ANTHEM. 100% ESSENTIAL MONSTER TUNE - ROCKS ANY DANCEFLOOR!

'Greedy G’ is the ultimate reggae/funk/hip-hop party tune.

The all-time epic sample for Boogie Down Productions’ seminal ‘Jack of Spades’ based on James Brown’s funk bomb ‘Get on the Good Foot’.

The flipside is another Brentford Road All Stars essential cut, ‘Granny Scratch Scratch’, the heaviest, funkiest dub monster ever with bass to shake more speakers than a juggernaut lorry!

Boom!

Soul Jazz Records’ limited-edition black vinyl 1000-copies worldwide LP (+ download code), (as well as CD and digital) issue of this very rare deep spiritual jazz meets Brazilian and Latin album first released as a private-press album in 1978 on flautist Lloyd McNeill’s own Baobob Record label in Washington, DC. The album has been out-of-print for 43 years and is lovingly remastered by Soul Jazz Records.

Tori is a stunning album that blends Brazilian and Latin flavours with deep Spiritual Jazz, recorded in 1978. The album features an unbelievably strong line-up which includes legendary Brazilian figures like Dom Um Romao, Nana Vasconcelos and Dom Salvador alongside jazz heavyweights such as Buster Williams, Howard Johnson, John La Barbera and more. These A-team musicians were all regulars in McNeill’s long-running and highly successfull resident live group in New York all set up to blend deep jazz, Brazilian and Latin music together.

Lloyd McNeill is an African-American flautist, painter, poet, and photographer born in Washington, D.C., in 1935. His multi-disciplinary creative life led to encounters and friendships with Nina Simone, Picasso, Eric Dolphy, Nana Vasconceles and other legendary cultural figures. Lloyd McNeill’s hypnotic ‘Washington Suite’ was originally commissioned as a piece of music for the Capital Ballet Company, in Washington, DC.

McNeill grew up through the era of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s and his life and work is a reflection of those ideals. In the mid-1960s he moved to France where he became friends with Picasso, working with a number of émigré-jazz musicians whilst living in Paris. In the late 1960s he taught jazz and painting workshops at the New Thing Art and Architecture Center in Washington. In the 1970s he travelled throughout Brazil and West Africa studying music and taught music anthropology in the US.

This is incredibly Trees Speak’s third album on Soul Jazz Records to be released in the space of one year – and it’s amazing!

Trees Speak’s new album ‘Post-Human’ once again blends 1970s German electronic and ‘motorik’ Krautrock instrumentals (think Harmonia, Can, Cluster, Popul Vuh, Neu!), haunting and powerful 1960s & 1970s soundtracks (think Italian prog-rock Goblin and John Carpenter horror movies, Morricone and existential John Barry spy movies), together with a New York No Wave electronic synth and guitar analogue DIY-ness (think Suicide, anything on Soul Jazz’s New York Noise series or Eno's New York No Wave)!

The new album ‘Post-Human’ draws further upon German krautrock high-concept albums from the likes of Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze from the 1970s, as Trees Speak create their own powerful new landscapes of sound that manage to be at once contemporary as well as both timeless and with a sense of science-fiction futurism.

Trees Speak’ seamlessly segue together all these musical elements into ‘Post-Human,’ a conceptually expansive album which follows on from their critically-acclaimed debut LP ‘Ohms,’ and the follow-up ‘Shadow Forms’ released on Soul Jazz Records less than six months ago.

This powerful new album is a high-concept collage of retro-futurist science-fiction music, which is fantastically illustrated by a specially commissioned cover design by the artist Eric Lee, a dramatic vision of life after humanity.

Trees Speak are Daniel Martin Diaz and Damian Diaz from Tucson, Arizona and their music often draws on the cosmic night-time magic of Arizona’s natural desert landscapes. ‘Trees Speak’ relates to the idea of future technologies storing information and data in trees and plants - using them as hard drives – and the idea that Trees communicate collectively.

The album includes an INDIES ONLY exclusive bonus 45 single with two extra tracks ‘Machine Vision’ and ‘Seventh Mirror’ available with the vinyl edition of this amazing and ground-breaking new album.

With ‘Post-Human,’ Trees Speak take the listener deep into their unique musical world of unknown visions of the past and the future.

ABOUT Ohms: Album of the Month - Splintered Eye /50 Best albums 2020 - Pop Matters / Favourite albums 2020 -The Soap Company / Albums of the Year 2020 -Bear Tree Records / Independent Albums of the Year 2020-Love Records / Albums of the Year 2020-Concrete Islands

ABOUT Shadow Forms: Records of the week-Drift / Album of the week-Resident / Album of the week-Norman / Records of the Year 2020 -South / Albums of the Year 2020 - Concrete Island / Albums of the month - Reveal / Albums of the Year 2020 -Piccadilly / Albums of the Year 2020-Buzzsaw / About Shadow forms / Records of the week-Drift / Album of the week-Resident / Album of the week-Norman / Records of the Year-South / Albums of the Year-Concrete Island / Albums of the month-Reveal / Albums of the Year-Piccadilly /Albums of the Year-Buzzsaw

About Ohms:

“This might well be the Dark Side of the Moon of the XXI century” Discogs

Super-limited new 1000 copies special ox-blood red vinyl edition!

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It's a big one ... Absolutely stunning second album from Trees Speak new on Soul Jazz Records.

Trees Speak’s new album ‘Shadow Forms’ is a blend of 1970s German electronic and ‘motorik’ Krautrock instrumentals (think Harmonia, Can, Cluster, Popul Vuh, Neu!), haunting and powerful 1960s & 1970s soundtracks (think Italian prog-rock Goblin and John Carpenter horror movies, Morricone and existential John Barry spy movies), together with a New Nork no wave electronic synth and guitar analogue DIY-ness (think Suicide, anything on Soul Jazz’s New York Noise series or Eno's New York No Wave)!

Trees Speak’ segue together all these elements into ‘Shadow Forms,’ which follows on from their critically-acclaimed debut LP ‘Ohms,’ released on Soul Jazz Records less than six months ago.

Trees Speak are Daniel Martin Diaz and Damian Diaz from Tucson, Arizona and their music often draws on the cosmic night-time magic of Arizona’s natural desert landscapes. ‘Trees Speak’ relates to the idea of future technologies storing information and data in trees and plants - using them as hard drives – and the idea that Trees communicate collectively.

Trees Speak - Shadow Forms:

Records of the week-Drift/Album of the week-Resident/Album of the week-Norman/Records of the Year-South/Albums of the Year-Concrete Island/Albums of the month-Reveal/Albums of the Year-Piccadilly/Albums of the Year-Buzzsaw

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.

IN STOCK NOW!

BRAND NEW LTD. EDN. 12" All-time Studio One party ANTHEM now available for the first time ever on loud 12" with version on the flip. 100% ESSENTIAL MONSTER TUNE - ROCKS ANY DANCEFLOOR!

Ltd. Edn. Dayglo sleeve + ORANGE 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 first release of Soul Jazz Records’ new Cold Wave overview and a second volume will be released just four weeks later.

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This first edition of Cold Wave comes in two vinyl editions – a one-off pressing orange 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, Dissemblance and VQOA from France, De Ambassade from the Netherlands, Moisture from Sweden, Kriedler from Germany, Céline Gillain and Carcass Identity from Belgium. One exception is FIT Siegel out of Detroit, connecting the electronic pathways of Europe to the Motor City.

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

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)

"Steve Reid played with Sun Ra, knew Coltrane, played at Motown. I mean this is a guy who at 19 was playing drums with Fela Kuti in Africa. He is a musical genius. It’s a creative joy and honour to work with him."Kieran Hebden (Fourtet) After a number of groundbreaking live shows between Kieran Hebden (Fourtet) and legendary New York drummer Steve Reid, these two artists have embarked on two amazing new recording projects.

The first release is the Steve Reid Ensemble (featuring Kieran Hebden) "Spirit Walk". This will be followed by a second album by Kieran Hebden and Steve Reid which will be released by Domino Records at the beginning of 2006. Both albums blend electronic experimentation within the frame-work of Steve Reid’s musical heritage. Gilles Peterson will be touring the UK in November alongside The Steve Reid Ensemble. An ardent fan of the music, Peterson has contributed the sleeve-notes to "Spirit Walk" along with another long-time musical admirer Val Wilmer. Steve Reid is a true pioneer of boundary-breaking music.

This latest project/collaboration is a continuation of a musical path that stretches back to the late 1960s. A self-taught master jazz drummer Steve Reid played in Sun Ra’s Arkestra as well as being a session musician at both Motown Records (he plays on for instance Martha and The Vandella’s "Heatwave") and in James Brown’s in-house band at the legendary Harlem Apollo. In the mid-60s Reid went to West Africa, playing and learning the music of Ghana, Nigeria (playing with Fela Kuti), Liberia, Sierra Leone, Senegal. On returning to New York he joined Sun Ra’s The Science Myth Solar Arkestra.

In 1968 as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam war he was sentenced to 4 years in prison where he then taught a Black history course to his fellow inmates. In the 1970’s Reid formed the Legendary Master Brotherhood as well as running his own record company, Mustevic Sound, which released a series of his albums (2 of which have earlier been released by Soul Jazz Records). In a career now spanning over 40 years Steve Reid has worked with artists such as Lester Bowie, Miles Davis, Charles Tyler, Arthur Blythe, Ornette Coleman, Gary Bartz, Chief Bey, Archie Shepp, Sam Rivers, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Leon Thomas and more. This new project is the latest part in Steve Reid’s musical odyssey.

"A truly phenomenal artist. This is the album we've all been waiting a long time for. Steve Reid is steeped in musical history and yet this album has a modernity all of it's own." Gilles Peterson.

Super special 20th anniversary SILVER vinyl!

Incredibly inspired electronic retro-futurists who were so ahead of their time that they eventually imploded. This is a classic album!

In the space of five short years (and as many albums) at the end of the 20th century Add N To X caused havoc with their unique retro-futurist electronic music. Add N To X’s musical intensity proved too much for the group who split up in 2002. Their album On The Wires of Our Nerves, complete with its classic cover image, recorded on Soul Jazz Records’ then new offshoot label Satellite Records, launched them into the spotlight and included two NME Singles of the Week ‘Black Regent’ and ‘King Wasp’. Over twenty years since it was first released and long out of print the album 'On The Wires of Our Nerves’ stands up one of the most forward-looking electronic albums of then and now.

This classic album is released in a very limited one-off pressing transparent vinyl edition as an Record Store Day exclusive title

LAST COPIES!

This is the new 20th anniversary edition of one of Soul Jazz Records’ classic Studio One releases now available as a one-off pressing special blue vinyl very limited-edition pressing ( 2000 copies worldwide).

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Studio One Roots set the standard for Soul Jazz Records’ long-standing series of Studio One collections and features many of the classic artists from Clement 'Sir Coxsone’ Dodd’s mighty roster of reggae.

This album includes Freddie McGregor, Willie Williams, Cornell Campbell, Alton Ellis, Devon Russell alongside some of the defining crack-session men groups of Jamaican reggae history - The Sound Dimension, Brentford All-Stars, The Skatalites, New Establishment and more. As ever the album is filled with a mixture of seminal cuts and super-rarities from the vast vaults of 13 Brentford Road.

Stand-out tracks include Alton Ellis’s Blackish White, a surreal and powerful Afro-centric dream, Count Ossie Nyabinghi and Rastafarian drummers genre-defying interpretation of Booker T and The MGs ‘Meditation’, Willie Williams awe-inspiring versioning of the Skatalites' seminal Rastafari anthem Addis Ababa and many, many more.

This album has been fully digitally remastered, analog cut and packaged complete with the following: Original sleevenotes by Lloyd Bradley (author of When Reggae Was King), compiled by Mark Ainley (Honest Jons), high-quality Soul Jazz mastering, wicked images of Count Ossie and the Mystic Revelation of Rastafari on the cover, and a rare image of Clement Dodd and musicians inside the studio at Studio One on the full colour inner sleeves.

REVIEWS:

"Having established himself as one of Jamaica's top producers the day Studio One opened its doors in the early '60s, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd was unable to maintain his status during the roots era of the subsequent decade. This can be attributed to a couple of factors. One was Dodd's apparent reluctance to record the new, overtly Rasta-inspired music. The other was an infusion of new blood into the Jamaican music business. Eager to make a name for themselves, producers like Joe Gibbs, Bunny Lee, Lee "Scratch" Perry, and Winston "Niney" Holness managed to supplant the island's "big three" (Dodd, Duke Reid, and Prince Buster) in the process, driving the music's evolution in the '70s.

There isn't a weak number across these 16 tracks, from the Gaylads' ode to "Africa" and Devon Russell's version of the heavyweight "Drum Song" rhythm, to a trio of stunning instrumentals: Jackie Mittoo and the Cyclones with nyahbinghi drummer Count Ossie on "Meditation," Lenny Hibbert's sparkling vibe work over Mittoo's "Ghetto Organ" ("More Creation"), and Sound Dimension's "Congo Rock."

The music of this compilation is of a rare, rare beauty and is essential to anyone's reggae collection." All Music

New edition of this seminal album available as a 1000 copies edition only on new premium RED vinyl!

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'A truly phenomenal artist.' GILLES PETERSON

'Steve Reid is one of the greatest drummers. He is a musical genius' KIERAN HEBDEN (Four Tet)

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As a radical jazz artist, Steve Reid played with an extraordinary group of artists – including Miles Davis, Sun Ra, Fela Kuti, James Brown, Ornette Coleman, Lester Bowie, Freddie Hubbard, Jackie McLean, Dionne Warwick, Archie Shepp, Chief Bey, Olatunji, Arthur Blythe, , Dextor Gordon, Gary Bartz, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Sam Rivers, Leon Thomas, Lonnie Smith and Horace Silver!

Reid was born in the South Bronx, and grew up in Queens, New York. He played in the house band at Harlem's Apollo Theatre, accompanying James Brown, as well as playing in Sun Ra's Arkestra. He lived next to John Coltrane, worked in a department store with Ornette Coleman, had a son who played drums with NWA. He began his career as a teenager in the 1960s as a drummer at Motown when he played on Martha and The Vandellas "Heatwave" (aged 14).

At the end of the 1960s Reid was sentenced to four years in jail as a conscientious objector of the Vietnam war. On his release from prison in 1974, he formed the Legendary Master Brotherhood and started the independent record label, Mustevic Sound, to release his debut LP Nova in 1976. This album is released in its entirety and with full original cover art here. Nova was the first in a series of stunning independent records he released in the 1970s.

At the start of the 21st century, his career took a new twist when Steve Reid began a successful collaboration with Kieran Hebden (Four Tet). Hebden referred to Reid as his ‘musical soul mate’, resulting in a number of joint albums.

Steve Reid died in New York in 2010. Subsequently the Steve Reid Foundation was set up in his name, to help aspiring musicians and artists.

New fully remastered re-release of Soul Jazz Records’ ‘The World of Arthur Russell’, the seminal collection of Arthur Russell’s essential music back in print on awesome limited-edition heavy deluxe triple vinyl and deluxe CD edition.

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This album brings together some of Russell’s best-loved and most accessible works including his wide-ranging music both solo and in groups including Dinosaur L (the essential ‘Go Bang’), Loose Joints (the equally classic ‘Is It All Over My Face’) as well as rarities such as the 7” only ‘Pop Your Funk’, Indian Ocean’s ‘Schoolbell/Treehouse’, Lola’s ‘Wax The Van’ and more.

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“Arthur Russell fused the avant-garde with disco and sounds like nothing else on earth.” The GUARDIAN

“Russell is the great enigma of the New York music scene” THE WIRE

“Simply one of the best compilations of this or any year.” RECORD COLLECTOR

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Arthur Russell’s music effortlessly crossed musical boundaries making it timeless. His dance music credentials are faultless and this collection features mixes from Larry Levan, Françcois Kervorkian and Walter Gibbons. Similarly, his song-writing, musicality and performance skills are equally cherished as composer Philip Glass wrote, ‘this was a guy who could sit down with a cello and sing with it in a way that no one on earth has ever done before or will do again.’

When Soul Jazz Records’ The World of Arthur Russell first came out in 2003, Russell’s music had slipped into near obscurity. Nearly 18 years later there are over a dozen releases of his music, reissues of his original albums and more. ‘The World of Arthur Russell’ is the classic first collection of his work available once more.

OUT NOW!

Soul Jazz Records new ‘Two Synths, A Guitar (and) A Drum Machine’ is a new collection of current D-I-Y post-punk bands shaped by the mutant sounds of no wave, punk funk and New York Noise bands from the late 70s and early 80s that collided with the world of underground dance music found at the Paradise Garage, Mudd Club in New York City (ESG, Arthur Russell, Bush Tetras, Talking Heads, Suicide, Liquid Liquid).

Other influences cited here include Manchester and Sheffield’s industrial post-punk sounds of the 1980s (Joy Division, Cabaret Voltaire, Gang of Four) as well as the 1970s German electronic experimentalism of Cluster, Neu!, Harmonia and Can.

Featured artists from around the globe include Los Angeles D-I-Y band Automatic, New Fries from Toronto, artist/music collaborators Toresch from Germany, Susumu Makai from Japan/UK, Vex Ruffin from the Phillipines/California and Madmadmad, Gramme, Tom of England and other UK groups

That all the bands featured here manage to make distinctive contemporary music out of these 80s roots is testament to the wide range of other musics that are seamlessly absorbed into a modern melting pot of sound – hip-hop, the electronic European avant-garde, rave culture, and more.

The double vinyl comes in two editions:

1) Limited edition indies EXCLUSIVE heavyweight green double vinyl housed in bespoke individual inner sleeves with its own free pull-out fanzine on the groups featured.

2) Limited edition heavyweight black double vinyl housed in bespoke individual inner sleeves with its own free pull-out fanzine on the groups featured.

The album is also available as a CD and digital release

Cuba: Music and Revolution: Culture Clash in Havana: Experiments in Latin Music 1975-85 Vol. 1 is the new album compiled by Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker (Soul Jazz Records) that explores the many new styles that emerged in Cuba in the 1970s as Jazz, Funk, Brazilian Tropicalia and even Disco mixed together with Latin and Salsa on the island as Cuban artists experimented with new musical forms created in the unique socialist state of Cuba.

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.

The album is released to coincide with the massive new deluxe large format book Cuba: Music and Revolution: Original Cover Art of Cuban Music: Record Sleeve Designs of Revolutionary Cuba 1959-90, published in November, which is also compiled by Gilles Peterson and Stuart Baker (Soul Jazz Records), and which features the music and record designs of Cuba, made in the 30-year period following the Cuban Revolution.

The music on this album features legendary Cuban groups such as Irakere, Los Van Van and Pablo Milanés as well as a host of lesser known artists such as the radical Grupo De Experimentación, Juan Pablo Torres and Algo Nuevo, Grupo Monumental and Orquesta Ritmo Oriental, groups whose names remain largely unknown outside of Cuba owing to the now 60-year old US trade embargo which remains in place today and which prevents trade with Cuba – and thus most Cuban records were only ever available in Cuba or in ex-Soviet Union states.

The music on this album reflects the most cutting-edge of Cuban groups that were recording in Cuba in the 1970s and 1980s – who were all searching for a new Cuban identity and new musical forms that reflected 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.

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:

"It may only be January, but 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 goes beyond Buena Vista" UNCUT

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*Please note the vinyl sticker of this album says "+download code" but it's a mistake! There is no download with this particular album due to legal reasons. Sorry for this error!

Owned and founded by Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, Studio One's output serves as a comprehensive guide to the history of Reggae music. The music on Studio One Rockers covers all areas of Reggae such as Ska, Rocksteady, Roots and Dancehall, all areas in which Studio One led the field.

Studio One Rockers features many legendary Studio One tracks brought together for the first time by Soul Jazz Records. From the beginning of Reggae, when the Skatalites developed a new sound of Ska in 1962 up until today, Studio One has been the number one innovator in Jamaican music.

Included in this compilation are classic Ska tracks ("Phoenix City"), Rocksteady ("Feel Like Jumping"), Roots music ("Truth and Rights"), Dancehall (Freddy McGregor, Michigan and Smiley) and many more.

Featured here are many of the classic tracks from Studio One. From Dawn Penn's legendary "No, No, No" to classics such as Horace Andy's "Skylarking" and Marcia Griffith's "Feel Like Jumping".

The Coxsone Soundsystem in the early 60s was one of the three main soundsystems operating in Jamaica alongside his competitors, Prince Buster and Duke Reid. The Studio One catalogue is possibly the largest in Jamaican music and this release is the first in a series of Studio One compilations on Soul Jazz Records.

This album comes with an in depth interview with Mr C.S. Dodd, about how he set up and ran his record label in the 1960s and 1970s.

"Compilation of the month. 100% Essential" SEVEN "Compilation of the month. A compilation of unbelievable quality. Awesome" MUZIK "A who's who of Jamaican music" MUSICWEEK "An essential slice of musical history" WAX "The most credible compilation of reggae you can 

This is the new instalment of Soul Jazz Records’ ground-breaking Deutsche Elektronische Musik series, ‘A near-definitive guide to some of the world's most extraordinary music’ (The Guardian).

This latest edition features many of the classic German electronic and Krautrock groups from the 1970s & 80s – including Can, Amon Duul II, Harmonia, Conrad Schnitzler, Agitiation Free, Roedelius – as well as a host of lesser known artists such as Dzyan, Klauss Weiss, Gruppe Between and many more.

Deutsche Elektronische rarities unearthed on the album include Kalacakra (whose fan-base included the great Moondog!) and their superb ‘Nearby Shiras,’ taken from their super-rare spiritual/psychedelic private press concept album Crawling to Lhasa, from 1972.

Deutsche Elektronische 4 includes a wealth of German electronic experimental artists – the seminal pioneering group Harmonia (Roedelius, Moebius and Michael Rother), avant-garde guru Conrad Schnitzler as well as lesser known synthetic artists such as Klauss Weiss, Deutsche Wertarbeit, E.M.A.K. (Electronische Musik Aus Koln), Gunter Schickert and others.

Finally, the album also features an array of heavy and progressive German cosmic rock groups – Dzyan, Virus and the amazing Turkish/German tripped out sound of Alex’s ‘Patella Black’, recorded at Can’s Inner Space in 1973, produced by Holger Czukay and Jackie Liebezeit.

Deutsche Elektronische 4 comes with extensive newly commissioned sleevenotes by David Stubbs, author of the seminal books ‘Future Days: Krautrock and the building of Modern Germany’, ‘Mars By 1980: The story of Electronic Music’, and ‘Krautrock: Cosmic Rock and its Legacy’.

This album comes as a heavyweight triple vinyl edition with full colour inner sleeves, as well as a deluxe double CD edition with outsize booklet and slipcase. Both formats include full liner notes and extensive rare photography.

Powerful new spiritual jazz from Chile on Soul Jazz Records!

This album comes as a very limited one-off unique pressing of 1000-edition vinyl, limited editon CD and digital release.

Enrique Rodríguez and the Negra Chiway Band group have an instantly powerful and unique sound that is reminiscent of the ensembles of Sun Ra and his Arkestra as well as Horace Tapscott and his Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, one that channels the righteous spirits of Alice Coltrane, John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Archie Shepp and McCoy Tyner together with a stunning Latin rhythmical and new consciousness and percussive energy. Added to this are elements of the Samurai film soundtracks of Akira Kurosawa, Popol Vuh’s musical spirituality (especially their work with film director Werner Herzog), Tibetan Buddhism and over-blowing chants, that all combine to give a truly unique new sound.

Enrique Rodríguez is a composer, percussionist, keyboardist, and producer from Santiago, Chile, whose work shows many similarities with the music featured on Soul Jazz Records’ recent collection ‘Kaleidoscope - New Spirts Known and Unknown’, featuring new forward-looking jazz artists including Mathew Halsall, Theon Cross, Emma-Jean Thackray and Makaya McCraven.

Like all these artists, Rodríguez’s work is a progressive and experimental fusion of earlier influences that combine into a new and definitely 21st century ground-breaking sound that, on account of its South American setting, give the group its truly unique feeling. Hypnotic modal piano riffs, powerful brass and flutes, an army of Latin percussion instruments, and addictive vocal chants all combine in this powerful mix of radical 60s Afro-centric jazz, eastern spirituality and cosmology, and Latin American rhythmical movement.

Awesome!

Soul Jazz Records’ new album ‘Kaleidoscope – New Spirits Known and Unknown’ brings together many of the ground-breaking artists involved in the new jazz scene that has developed in the UK over the last few years. Featured artists include Matthew Halsall, Yazmin Lacey, Ill Considered, Tenderlonious, Theon Cross, Emma-Jean Thackray and many, many more in this ground-breaking release.

As well as sharing a pioneering spirit in these new artists’ approach to frontier-crossing musical boundaries, a further theme of this album is that many also share a determination to independent practices - and most of these artists’ recordings featured here are either self-published or released on independent labels. While the attention of this new wave of jazz artists has up until now has been London-based, this album shows how this movement is spread across the whole of Britain (and indeed beyond).

‘Kaleidoscope – New Spirits Known and Unknown’ shows that while there is commonality in these artists approach to music, there is a wide variety of styles – from deep spiritual jazz, electronic experimentalisation, punk-edged funk, uplifting modal righteousness, deep soulful vocals and much more.

Soul Jazz Records’ new release comes as a superb one-off pressing special deluxe triple album edition which comes with a bonus limited-edition one-off pressing 7" single, a standard triple album, and a deluxe double CD pack. This album also comes with extensive sleevenotes, artist interviews and exclusive photography.

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Soul Jazz records are also releasing an exclusive one-off pressing double-headed 12” single featuring Theon Cross and Pokus released on the same day as the ‘Kaleidoscope’ album release. These two tracks do not feature on the vinyl edition of the album - this 12" single will will also be deleted on day of release.

Soul Jazz Records’ new Boombox features some of the many innovative underground first-wave of rap records made in New York in the period 1979-82, all released on small, independent, often family-concern record companies, at a time when hip-hop music still remained under the radar.

This first exuberant wave of innocent, upbeat, party on the block rap records were the first to try and create the sounds heard in community centres, block parties and street jams that first took place in the Bronx in the mid-1970s. But where Flash, Kool Herc and Bambaataa were back-spinning, mixing and scratching together now classic breakbeat records like The Incredible Bongo Band’s Apache or Babe Ruth’s The Mexican, these first rap records were all made using live bands, often replaying then current disco tunes, whilst MCs rapped over the top, creating a unique sound that later became known derisively as old school.

And while hip-hop started in the Bronx, rap on vinyl began in Harlem where long-time established rhythm and blues producer-owned record companies such as Joe Robinson’s Enjoy Records, Paul Winley’s Winley Records, Delmar Donnel’s Delmar International and Jack Fatman Taylor’s Rojac and Tayster were the first off the mark to realise the commercial potential of rap music - releasing early ground-breaking records that all quickly followed in the wake of the first rap record, The Sugarhill Gang’s Rappers Delight, a million-selling worldwide hit.

This collection celebrates these first old-school rap records, bringing together rare, classic and obscure tracks released in the early days of rap.

Deluxe double CD-pack comes with slipcase, 40-page outsize perfect-bound booklet, extensive notes, exclusive photography and original label artwork. Triple-vinyl heavyweight vinyl includes full artwork, text and notes as well as free download code.

REVIEWS:

Soul Jazz has a reputation for top-notch compilations that offer crash courses in a variety of styles and genres both beloved and obscure; they are, in essence, the K-Tel of the millennial generation.

This is one of the best Soul Jazz sets in ages, a legitimate party in a box, overflowing with underground deep cuts that have seldom — if ever — been spotted on other collections - FACT

 ROLLING STONE Best Rap Albums of 2016

This is the new digitally remastered expanded edition of Soul Jazz Records’ biggest ever selling reggae release, 100% Dynamite: Ska, Soul, Rocksteady and Funk in Jamaica.

If you didn't get it the first time now's your chance to find out where it all began - all killer no filler!. If you did and wore it out get it now with bonus tracks and free download code!

Since the album’s original release nearly twenty years ago, 100% Dynamite has become a cornerstone of funky reggae music: Eighteen killer tracks that show the influence that American Jazz, Funk and Soul music had on Jamaican Reggae.

100% Dynamite features come serious Jamaican funk by Jackie Mittoo, The Upsetters and Toots & The Maytals, the cream of Jamaica's jazz musicians such as Tommy McCook, Cedric Brooks and Lennie Hibbert. Also included here are heavyweight Reggae versions to Soul classics by Marlena Shaw’s ‘Woman of the Ghetto’, Aretha Franklin’s ‘Rocksteady’, Syl Johnson’s ‘Is It Because I’m Black’, William DeVaughan’s seminal ‘Be Thankful’ and more.

100% Dynamite also features revolutionary tunes such as Johnny Osbourne’s ‘We Need Love, Sound Dimension’s ‘Drum Song’ and Lloyd Robinson’s ‘Cuss Cuss’, songs that helped define a unique sound for Jamaican music in the sixties and seventies.

These influences went both ways – check Brentford All Stars massive ‘Greedy G’, the basis for Boogie Down Productions’ ‘Jack of Spades’, or Willie Williams’ ‘Armagideon Time’ later covered by The Clash.

This new expanded edition features seminal tracks from the greatest Jamaican producers – Clement Dodd, Lee Perry, Winston Riley (Techniques) and many more.

The album is available as CD, heavyweight double vinyl (+download), plus digital.

ORIGINAL REVIEWS

"Compilation of the month" MUZIK

"Brilliant" TIME OUT

"Album of the week" MIXMAG

"Compilation of the f***ing year" MELODY MAKER

"Buy this excellent compilation immediately" MOJO

"I think there’s a good argument to be made for 100% and 300% Dynamite records - along with Dave Godin’s Deep Soul Treasures (Taken From The Vaults) – Vol 1 & 2, Motown Chartbusters Vol. 3 and Blue Note: Blue Juice Vol. One - being among the finest compilations ever assembled. Anyone who has never heard Sister Nancy’s ‘Bam Bam’ or the Brentford Allstars' 'Greedy G' needs to remedy that situation straight away and anyone who is tired of hearing Althea & Donna’s ‘Uptown Top Ranking’, Willie Williams' 'Armageddon Time' and Wayne Smith’s ‘Under Me Sleng Teng’ needs to have a word with themselves anyway." THE QUIETUS

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

Soul Jazz Records are releasing Count Ossie and The Mystic Revelation’s seminal 1975 album Tales of Mozambique in an expanded double album/single CD/digital format, fully remastered and with the inclusion of two bonus rare single-only tracks, full sleevenotes, exclusive photographs and interview.

Count Ossie is the central character in the development of Rastafarian roots music, nowadays an almost mythical and iconic figure. His importance in bringing Rastafarian music to a populist audience is matched only by Bob Marley’s promotion of the faith internationally in the 1970s.

Count Ossie’s drummers performed on the first commercially released single to integrate Rastafarian traditional music with popular music: the vocal group The Folkes Brothers’ groundbreaking song ‘Oh Carolina’, recorded for producer Prince Buster in 1959. In 1966 his drummers greeted the momentous arrival of Haile Selassie at Kingston airport.

His legendary jam sessions up in his Rastafarian compound in the hills of Wareika, Kingston, are famous for the many Jamaican musicians who attended including The Skatalites players – Roland Alphonso, Don Drummond, Johnny Moore, Lloyd Knibbs – and many others.

The Mystic Revelation of Rastafari formed in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1970, a union of Count Ossie’s Rastafarian drummers – variously known as his African Drums, Wareikas or his Afro-Combo – and the saxophonist Cedric Im Brooks’ horns group, The Mystics.

The Mystic Revelation of Rastafari are the defining group in bringing authentic Rastafarian rhythms into the collective consciousness of popular music, their unique music is at once rooted in the deep traditions and rituals of traditional drumming and chanting alongside a forward-thinking, even avant-garde, artistry influenced by the likes of John Coltrane, Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders and other pioneering African-American jazz artists radicalised and charged by the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

Tales of Mozambique is a truly unique and fascinating ground-breaking album.

Count Ossie and The Mystic Revelation of Rastafari are the central group featured on Soul Jazz Records recent "Rastafari - The Dreads Enter Babylon” a collection showing the influence of Rastafari in Reggae and Jamaican popular culture.

Soul Jazz Records will also be releasing Count Ossie and The Rasta Family 'Man From Higher Heights’ in the near future.

* Bonus tracks

REVIEWS

" All roads in Rastafarian roots music lead to Count Ossie.He’s the lead character in this compelling subplot, the musician who was one of the first to put Rasta tenets into the heart of popular music.

He did so from his camp in the hills above Kingston, Count Ossie and his drummers casting a spell on the musicians who gathered to check him out and then went on to spread the word about the powerful nyabinghi rhythms and mesmerising percussion.

This is a reissue of the 1975 album Count Ossie made with his Rastafarian drummers and saxaphonist Cedric ‘Im’ Brooks’s group The Mystics.

It’s a groundbreaking, majestic work, by turns righteous in tone and joyous in execution. It’s the sound of Ossie and his ensemble narrating a history lesson and you’d be daft not to want to find out more."  IRISH TIMES

"Hieroglyphic Being translates five years of experimentation into his best LP to date" Vinyl Factory

"Album of the week" BLEEP

"Chicago dance music hero Hieroglyphic Being releases one of the strongest albums of his incredible career" Pop Matters

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Stunning new album from Chicago’s finest electronic futurist Hieroglyphic Being, aka Jamal Moss, newly released on Soul Jazz Records. This is his third album for the label, following on from The Acid Documents (2015), and African With Mainframes (w/ Noleian Reusse) K.M.T. (2016).

Born and based in Chicago, Moss’s music embodies two of the cultural foundation blocks of the city’s musical lineage; that of Chicago’s original Acid House sound (c. 1986) - Frankie Knuckles, Phuture, Marshall Jefferson et al, alongside a rigorous experimental sound searching that taps into the cosmic musical lineage of pioneering artist Sun Ra whose Arkestra landed and was based in the city from 1946-61, and the equally pioneering work of The Art Ensemble of Chicago in the 1960s and 70s.

The association with Sun Ra is by no means hypothetical, Moss recorded with the Arkestra leader Marshall Allen and a host of free jazz players for the album Hieroglyphic Being & JITU Ahn-Sahm-Buhl’s ‘We Are Not The First.’ (2015).

Similarly, his relationship to Chicago’s original acid house pioneers of the late 1980s is no hyperbole. Originally mentored by artist/producers Adonis and Steve Pointdexter, Moss also runs his own Mathematics label, releasing a constant stream of new music by foundation acid house pioneers Lil’ Louis, Adonis and many others.

Moss grew up in the south side of Chicago. After being thrown out of the home of his adoptive parents, he then spent three years homeless living on the streets of Chicago, living a nocturnal existence as a gigolo in Chicago’s alternative clubs. He began his career as a DJ at the pioneering Liquid Love parties at Chi-town’s legendary Power House (home of Ron Hardy’s Music Box) around 1989.

What clearly defines Moss’s music is that while sometimes pushing the limits of sound to an ear-splitting dimension of experimentation and DIY-electronics – the music is always clearly a progression of the lineage of black music. In the words of fellow Chicagoans, The Art Ensemble of Chicago, it is simply ‘Great Black Music.’ And yet in this uniquely defined sound, Moss somehow manages to draw into this world elements of industrial music, German electronic music (Cluster, Harmonia etc), Detroit’s sci-fi techno artists (Atkins, Saunderson, Craig) and more.

‘Outsider House’ ‘Afro-Futurist’ ‘Rhythmic Cubism’, Moss’s near indescribable sound plays testament to the notion that he is perhaps the last of the line of producers directly influenced by Ron Hardy at the Music Box, uniquely qualified to write a new chapter of Chicago’s rich musical history.

Red Notes is the prolific artists new revelatory and unique project – in his own words ‘A homage to the Blue Note Jazz sound of Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock’ fused together with the classic Chicago House and Acid sensibilities of Larry Heard, Armando, Adonis et al, into a newly imagined futuristic and barrier-less musical landscape.

Featuring organic and synthetic electronic instrumentation, Hieroglyphic Being here fuses real-time live instrumentation and over-dubbed technologies to dramatic effect, as analog and electronic worlds collide.

In honour and dedication: Thelonious Monk , Weather Report, Black Herman, Larry Heard, Herbie Hancock, Marshall Allen, Danny Thompson, Sun Ra, David Hotep, Daniel Carter, Orphy Robinson, Shabaka Hutchings, Mark Sanders, Evan Parker, Yaw Tembe, Pat Metheny, Miles Davis, Armando Gallop, Jon Hassell, Heldon, Pekka Airaksinen, Popol Vuh, Joe Zawinul, Moebius, Plank, Neumeyer, Adonis.

Instrumentation: with Organic Flute, Piano, Guitar, Drums, Alto Sax, Hammond Organ, Korg Triton, Linn Drum, Korg DDD-1, Dr5 Drums, Casio RZ 1, Ensoniq Mirage Fairlight CMI Series III, Moog Mother 3, Allen & Heath Zed 24 mixer, Auria App for Sequencing.

The striking artwork features stunning graphics and illustration from Paolo Parisi (who also created the artwork for the Africans With Mainframes album as well the series of Acid Mysterons albums all on Soul Jazz Records)

"Jamal Moss has composed a modern afrofuturist suite as though in a state of perpetual grace" QUIETUS

Read full review here

While the righteousness of blackness is at the heart of the Rastafarian faith, this collection illustrates how black pride remained a central theme, if not the defining essence, at the very core of all the music created at Studio One Records.

Black Man’s Pride is the striking new Studio One collection of deep heavyweight reggae featuring Horace Andy, Alton Ellis, The Gladiators, Sugar Minott, The Heptones, Freddie McGregor, Cedric Brooks & more.

In order to understand the centrality of black identity in the music created at Studio One, we need look no further than Clement ‘Sir Coxsone’ Dodd who, who created the first black-owned record company in Jamaica.

In similar fashion Alton Ellis’s defining ‘Black Man’s Pride’ brings up emotions that are at the heart of many of these uplifting songs. Alton Ellis’ birthplace was the Trench Town ghetto of Kingston, also the birthplace of The Wailers, Ken Boothe and many other Studio One luminaries.

Clement Dodd established a musical empire firmly rooted by the core musicians working at Studio One many of whom came out of the Alpha School for Wayward Boys, run by Roman Catholic nuns, whose luminaries include Don Drummond, Johnny Moore, Leroy ‘Horsemouth’ Wallace, Cedric Brooks, Vin Gordon, Tommy McCook & more.

Many of the songs featured here come from the transitory phase in reggae at the start of the 1970s. After the exhilaration of Ska and following the cooling down of Rocksteady. While reggae awaited the arrival of roots, Studio One’s vocalists were already producing some of the moodiest music imaginable! Here are 18 heavyweight tunes, both classic cuts and super-rare tunes!

This new album is released as a heavyweight gatefold double-LP edition (+ download code), CD and digital with full text.

REVIEW

"The bottomless pit that is Coxsone Dodd’s Studio One label(s) yields more gems. Soul Jazz and before it, Heartbeat in the US, United Artists, Bamboo and various other labels in the UK have released numerous collections, yet the catalogue remains largely under-exploited, despite the late Mr Dodd’s tireless efforts to wring every last cent from it in unlikely ways. Little wonder that some reggae fans, spoilt by knowledge and racks of original vinyl, can be inclined to shrug when another comp emerges: there have been so many. However, Soul Jazz’s albums are different: not only have they encouraged a new, younger audience, parallel to the one that enjoys rare funk and spiritual jazz, to appreciate this music, their records are coherent. They’re not just a heap of tunes that happen to be sharing a black vinyl apartment. They’re themed and meld musically. They have a reason to exist.

In this instance, that reason is an exploration of (mostly) 70s vocal roots reggae with a theme of black pride and dignity. This music was recorded as a cultural statement, if not a cry, from the roots; strong stuff, deep, dark and heavy. But don’t mistake that for leaden. It may have bass frequencies that drive your neighbour’s dog under the sofa, thinking it’s 5 November all over again, but this is no gloomy exercise in musical storm clouds. Right from Alton Ellis’s title-donating opening tune, there are aspects of Black Man’s Pride that will have you skipping around the room, literally or mentally, and thanking Jah that you didn’t spend the money it cost you on a pizza, dough balls and Diet Coke meal deal. This is not musical junk food, it’s a keeper fit to lift the heart whenever needed.

One reason for this is the sequencing. Glen Miller (not that one) may have a light, soulful voice but the rhythm track he’s riding on Love And Understanding is a minor chord churner, as sad as a wet Sunday. But it’s held up on either side by Sugar Minott (and an uncredited Gladiators) floating through Woman Shadow (as sung by The Meditations as Woman Is Like A Shadow), and The Nightingales’ gorgeously swinging Rasta Is Calling, a glorious take on Delroy Wilson’s Cool Operator rhythm that’s a sod to find on 45. The Heptones make a rational case for Equal Rights in a manner that ought to have been perky enough to win them at least an audition for a CBBC presenter’s role. Their lead singer Leroy Sibbles pops up uncredited on John Holt’s heart-lifting yet cool Let’s Build Our Dreams. Heavy 70s roots is gloomy? Nope. Jamaica’s ghettos were suffering; they didn’t need more misery.

There’s also judicious joining up of vocals and their dubwise 45 flipsides: The Gladiators’ Roots Natty is one such. I heard the vocal, and immediately wished it was the devastatingly moving dub cut. Compiler Stuart Baker evidently thought likewise, so it extends to the version. For variety, there’s a lone sax instrumental to wreck things up too: Cedric Brooks’ melodic Why Can’t I.

There’s room for the unique, deep and breathy voice of Larry Marshall. More “international” stars Horace Andy and Dennis Brown are here too, recorded as youths, as is a teenage Freddie McGregor on a rootsy rewrite of Cat Stevens’ Wild World – with what sounds like JS Bach on synth! The set shuts with Johnny Osbourne’s sophisticated and spiritually openhearted Forgive Them.

With an informative, eminently enjoyable sleeve note about the growth of roots reggae and its place in Rastafarianism and black awareness, fittingly Black Man’s Pride lacks nothing." Ian McCann, RECORD COLLECTOR

This is the new edition of Soul Jazz Records’ long out of print first New York Noise collection, Dance Music From The New York Underground 1978-82.

This new 2016 edition features classic New York post-punk, punk funk and no wave tracks from Arthur Russell/Dinosaur L, James White and the Contortions, The Theoretical Girls, Mars, Konk, Material, Bush Tetras, Lizzy Mercier Descloux as well as new tracks by Alan Vega (Suicide), Chain Gang and Implog.

For more than ten years Soul Jazz Records have been exploring and documenting the sound of New Orleans Funk. Now we turn their attention to the flipside of this musical coin - New Orleans Soul.

These two musical forms share a lineage that begins with the city’s enormous rhythm and blues explosion in the post-war 1940s and 1950s. New Orleans Soul incorporated the soulful vocals of the gospel church, the driving beat of rhythm and blues, as well as traces of the second-line parade bands and the latinized rhythms of the city. Here you will find New Orleans soul in all its glorious variations – from the deep, deep soul of singers Aaron Neville, Willie Tee and Robert Parker to the storming northern soul of Maurice Williams and Eldridge Holmes, the funky soul of Eddie Bo, Lionel Robinson and Ernie K-Doe all alongside the Crescent City’s finest soul sisters – Irma Thomas, Betty Harris, Jean Knight, Inell Young and more! 

The main force behind New Orleans Soul is Allen Toussaint, a virtual one-man hit-making machine in the 1960s, writing, arranging and producing hit after hit for an unending list of unbelievably talented local singers such as Eldridge Holmes, Maurice Williams, Betty Harris, Ernie K Doe and Diamond Joe all of whom are featured. New Orleans is also a city of great musical families. Vocalist Aaron Neville was the brother of Art Neville (who formed The Meters) and later in the 1970s joined with brother Cyril to form The Neville Brothers. Soul vocalist supreme Willie Tee is also known as Wilson Turbinton, who alongside brother Earl, formed the super-heavy funk band The Gaturs and backed the Mardi Gras Indian group The Wild Magnolias. Also included here are rare, lost and killer soulful tracks from New Orleans artists Eddie Bo (and protégée vocalist Inell Young), Jean Knight, Jimmy Hicks, Francine King and more! 

This album tells the story of New Orleans Soul and comes complete with extensive sleevenotes, exclusive photography, supreme sound quality and comes as deluxe CD with slipcase, booklet, and super-heavy, super-loud limited-edition double vinyl album + download code.

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

Reggae Soundsystem! is a new deluxe 200 page hard-back 12”x12” book featuring hundreds of stunning full size record cover designs that span the history of reggae music. 

The book is compiled by the celebrated author and reggae expert Steve Barrow (Rough Guide to Reggae/ Blood and Fire Records) and Stuart Baker (Soul Jazz Records). 

Beginning in the 1950s, Jamaican music developed into one of the most important and influential music industries in the world. From its early Mento (Jamaican Calypso) beginnings through to the invention of Ska, Rocksteady, Roots, Dub and Dancehall, Jamaican music is also one of the richest and innovative veins in popular music.

This stunning hardback deluxe book looks at the endless visually creativity of  reggae record cover designs, iconic, classic, rare and unique artwork spanning sixty years of Jamaican sounds.

‘Chaos in the City of Angels and Devils’ is the new instalment of Soul Jazz Records’ Punk 45 series featuring an array of first generation Los Angeles punk bands including X, The Germs, The Zeros, The Urinals, The Weirdos through to second generation hardcore groups like The Circle Jerks, Adolescents and T.S.O.L.

Unlike the other major cities of New York and London, Punk in Los Angeles was pretty much ignored by the major record industry. As bands sprang up, Los Angeles punk gave rise to a wide range of its own DIY independent records with labels like Dangerhouse, Bomp!, What? And Upsetter documenting the nascent emerging scene.

Original Los Angeles punk came in two distinct phases. The first punk groups (c.77-79) all centred around The Masque club in Hollywood, and the birth of the first ever hardcore groups who emerged in the surrounding Los Angeles suburb and beach areas (c.1979-81), mixing punk, skate and surfer ideologies. This album includes music from both periods.

‘Chaos in the City of Angels and Devils’ documents this in detail. The 64-page outsize CD booklet features extensive notes, exclusive photography from celebrated original photographers Jenny Lens, Melanie Nissen (Slash magazine) and Edward Colver, original cover art as well as interviews and features on bands and labels (including The Urinals, Flesh Eaters, Dangerhouse, Posh Boy, Frontier, Upsetter and more!).

The deluxe double vinyl comes in gatefold sleeve, inner sleeves, insert + free download (+ full sleevenotes and photography). This is the sixth Punk 45 release on Soul Jazz Records and follows on from the earlier releases covering punk from Cleveland, Akron, UK, USA and proto-punk, as well as the book Punk 45 – Cover Art of Punk written in collaboration with Jon Savage.

Deluxe CD, 2xLP (+ free download) and worldwide digital 

Available in all good retail and internet stores  from 2 June 2014 or direct from Soul Jazz Records right now!

    This new album features the music of Calypso in its many styles. Included is music from its birthplace - the island of Trinidad - as well as a number of other Caribbean islands (including Jamaica and the Bahamas) and its subsequent onwards journey (Britain, Panama and the United States), recorded during the years 1955-69.

Calypso is one of the most exciting and enduring forms of musical expression to emerge from the beginning of the 20th century - swinging, persuasive rhythm, brilliantly expressive melodies and lyrics of great humour and wisdom.

Calypsonians songs play out a role in society similar to the storytelling Griots of West Africa (and the corresponding music of Kaiso); with their own tales about popular and incredible news items, modern life, local politics all mixed up with sexual innuendo, one-upmanship, comedy and more.

At its source, Calypso is intricately and inextricably bound to the social history of Trinidad and its myriad of traditions, beliefs, folklore and fables. As the music spread around the world, both from the diaspora of many of its performers, as well as its commercial success, the subjects of songs similarly took on local topics.

The most notable singer of Calypso in England was the Trinidadian Lord Kitchener (Aldwyn Roberts), who came to Britain in 1948 on HMS Empire Windrush  (along with fellow Calypsonians Lord Beginner and Lord Woodbine).

Here on this album you will also find other members of Calypso’s aristocracy & royalty – including Lord Cobra, Lord Hummingbird, Lord Growler, King Fighter, Lord Byron, The Mighty Viper, Lord Ivanhoe & more.

The songs vividly capture the popular news stories and fashions of the era - the first Man on the Moon, James Bond’s Pussy Galore, bed bugs, Voodoo, love in cemeteries, West Indians in England, Bossa Nova, the Iron Curtain, and a story of a white man who had a black heart transplant operation.

This album celebrates a criminally unsung and under-documented art form in the modern age and comes with extensive sleevenotes on the history, social context and geography of Calypso, as well as exclusive and stunning photography, original artwork and notes on all the artists and songs featured.

CD with 50 pages of notes, labels and exclusive photos in slipcase. 2xLP gatefold heavy vinyl + full notes, insert, free download code. Worldwide Digital release.

REVIEW;

"Decades before hip-hop became black America's most visible news source, Caribbean and British calypso stars were singing about current events in lilting tunes so seemingly carefree you barely noticed how sharply they were sticking it to the man. With chatty and conversational voices front and center, carnival stars like Viper, Lord Hummingbird and Lord Flea delivered their sass amid suave, jaunty horns and percolating Afro-Caribbean percussion. This collection focuses more on pop culture than on politics: Lord Cobra's enthusiastic account of the 1969 moon landing, for example, is followed by Young Growler's bawdy celebration of James Bond consort "Pussy Galore." Calypso's predominant voice, Lord Kitchener, is represented by the hilarious "Love in the Cemetery," wherein a resident warns him, "Mister, you be brave / To be bringin' your girlfriend atop me grave."

Top 50 best reissues of 2014 - Rolling Stone magazine

Exclusive Studio One Official T-shirt!

Soul Jazz Records' new 'Punk 45' album Burn, Rubber City Burn charts the rise of the music scene in the mid-west city of Akron, Ohio at a time when the city and the rubber industry it was associated with was in deep decline.
Featuring a fantastic collection of Akron groups including Devo, The Bizarros, Rubber City Rebels, Jane Aire, Chi-Pig, The Waitresses and more.
The album comes complete with extensive text as well as exclusive photos and original record artwork. CD comes with large booklet and thick slipcase. Vinyl edition is on deluxe gatefold double-vinyl with free download code.
The album follows on from Soul Jazz Records' earlier Punk 45 albums about USA and British punk (Kill The Hippies! Kill Yourself! and There Is No Such Thing As Society) as well as the cover art book Punk 45.
Burn, Rubber City Burn, coincides with the release of as a second album about Ohio’s early punk scene, Extermination Nights in the Sixth City – featuring the music scene of nearby Cleveland.
REVIEWS:
 “Soul Jazz Records’ story of American punk opens up a whole 1970s history that is still underexposed.” The Guardian
Read PITCHFORK piece on the album here.
Read Quietus feature here

NOW ON CD as deluxe Jap-style hard-cased exact repro digitally remastered box edition with Obi-card.

also:

Superb collectors edition very limited deluxe (1000 copies worldwide ) VINYL ONLY  release on Soul Jazz Records/Universal Sound. bespoke 180gsm remastered audiophile vinyl, w/jap obi strip and thick card sleeve.

This is the extremely rare debut first album from Gilberto Gil, first released in Brazil in 1967, at a time when Gil was a man already at the height of his creative powers and yet barely a few years into his career. 

In 1967 Gil was already established as a Bossa Nova star in Brazil and had helped launch Musica Popular Brasileira, introducing traditional northern folkloric styles into the urban bossa nova style to create a new hybrid that effectively defined Brazilian popular music for the next 25 years.

Just around the corner the musical and cultural anarchy of the Tropicalia movement was about to be created by Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Tom Ze and Os Mutantes. 

Gil had first met Caetano Veloso in Bahia in the early 1960s. Alongside Maria Bethania, Gal Costa and Tom Ze they had formed the Group from Bahia. In 1965 he moved to Sao Paulo to launch his solo career after Elis Regina had a hit with Gil's own composition Louvacao.

This debut 1967 album showed how confident Gil was in his musical inventiveness. As well as the title track, the album includes seminal tracks that have become classics of Brazilian contemporary music. 

Viramundo (later covered by Sergio Mendes) effortlessly blended the north-eastern accordion baiao and xaxado rhythms of Luiz Gonzaga. Procissao, in contrast, took its starting point as the religious processions found in the Afro-Brazilian centre of Salvador. Songs such as Roda, instantly became classics of Brazilian popular music.

Add to this the lyricism of poets and artists Chico Buarque, Torquato Neto, Capinam, Caetano Veloso, Tom Ze and Gil himself and we are presented with one of the most significant debut albums of Brazilian music from one of the most important artists in Brazil to this day.

Soul Jazz Records' new 'Punk 45' album charts the rise of underground punk in the mid-west city of Cleveland, Ohio, which for many people is the true birthplace of punk music in the mid-1970s.
Featuring a fantastic collection of punk 45 singles from Cleveland groups including Pere Ubu, electric eels, The Pagans, Rockets From The Tomb, Mirrors, X–X and more.
The album comes complete with extensive text written by Jon Savage as well as exclusive photos and original record artwork. CD comes with large booklet and thick slipcase. Vinyl edition is on deluxe gatefold double-vinyl complete with with free download code.
The album follows on from Soul Jazz Records' earlier Punk 45 albums about USA and British punk (Kill The Hippies! Kill Yourself! and There Is No Such Thing As Society), pre-punk (Sick On You! One Way Spit!) as well as the deluxe cover art book Punk 45.
Extermination Nights in the Sixth City coincides with the release of as a second album about Ohio’s early punk scene, Burn, Rubber City, Burn – featuring the music scene of nearby Akron.
REVIEWS:
“Soul Jazz Records’ story of American punk opens up a whole 1970s history that is still underexposed.”  The Guardian
Read PITCHFORK piece on the album here.
Read Quietus feature here