Hieroglyphic Being/2Yang, Art+Sound 12" Shikaakwa

NEW ORLEANS  funky boogie soul disco bomb 45!

Latest Soul Jazz Records/Sounds of the Universe SOUL 7-inch series - after the now sold out Brief Encounter 'Human' 45.

A massive slice of New Orleans genius - arranged by Wardell Quezergue, produced by Senator Jones, originally released locally in New Orleans in 1979.

It's a bomb! Exact replica reproduction, wicked sound, killer funky soul boogie 7" 45!

THIS 7-inch can ONLY be bought directly here from Soul Jazz Records or Sounds of the Universe websites and shop. It is a very limited 500-copies pressing and you need to buy it now!

Trippy experimental club tracks from Steven Warwick aka Heatsick exclusive to our Sounds Of The Universe imprint. Limited to 300 copies - available only direct from our store or websites

All artwork designed by Heatsick himself and includes 12 X 12 hand-screen printed numbered artwork.

"Snakes & Ladders" - where Casio stabs and a barking bassline builds up to a stretching crescendo of white-noise percussion - a rhythm track from the Music Box heyday performed in striking Casio tones. 

The ultimate night driving music  - "Time Smudge" is an interstellar journey through trippy space pads and grinding pedalled bass. 

Heatsick explains:

"Snakes & Ladders deals with game theory on the grid, slithering around precariously only to fall down a worm(snake?) hole on Time Smudge, reprogramming the ride"

Check out the "Snakes & Ladder" here video directed by Pedro Maia with BRÁULIO BANDEIRA AND SMEETA NARANG Production RGB/XYZ STUDIO

Limited 12” (300 copies worldwide) and ONLY AVAILABLE exclusively from Sounds of the Universe record store and Soul Jazz Records.

This unique Art+Sound 180 gram vinyl only is the second release on our own Sounds of the Universe label and features music from Tevo Howard on one side and exclusive hand-etched art engraving by graphic artist Kutmah on the other side.

New generation Chicago house artist and DJ, Tevo Howard, is also the son of legendary bluesman Rick 'Poppa' Howard. ‘Summer Romance’ is the new exclusive track made for our new Sounds Of The Universe label, launched by Soul Jazz Records.

Tevo's sound incorporates drum machines, melancholic melodies which reference Detroit alongside the deep warm sound of New York. But above all it is a sound matured at home in the heart of house music, Chicago.

Graphic artist Kutmah is the California-raised illustrator and DJ who has worked with many of the Los Angeles underground electronic hip-hop community - Gaslamp Killer, Flying Lotus, Gonjasufi and Dabrye - through his affiliation with the Dublab collective and the groundbreaking electronic/hip-hop club 'Low End Theory'.

Check also the video by KORKUSUZ, filmmaking twins hailing from Turkey via Eastern Europe.

Limited 12” (300 copies worldwide) and ONLY AVAILABLE exclusively from Sounds of the Universe record store and Soul Jazz Records.

This unique Art+Sound 180 gram vinyl only is the second release on our own Sounds of the Universe label and features music from Tevo Howard on one side and exclusive hand-etched art engraving by graphic artist Kutmah on the other side.

New generation Chicago house artist and DJ, Tevo Howard, is also the son of legendary bluesman Rick 'Poppa' Howard. ‘Summer Romance’ is the new exclusive track made for our new Sounds Of The Universe label, launched by Soul Jazz Records.

Tevo's sound incorporates drum machines, melancholic melodies which reference Detroit alongside the deep warm sound of New York. But above all it is a sound matured at home in the heart of house music, Chicago.

Graphic artist Kutmah is the California-raised illustrator and DJ who has worked with many of the Los Angeles underground electronic hip-hop community - Gaslamp Killer, Flying Lotus, Gonjasufi and Dabrye - through his affiliation with the Dublab collective and the groundbreaking electronic/hip-hop club 'Low End Theory'.

Check also the video by KORKUSUZ, filmmaking twins hailing from Turkey via Eastern Europe.

Their first single was released on Kieran Hebden (FOURTET)’s own label and Rocketnumbernine have been touring and performing alongside FOURTET since 2010.

The meeting between Fourtet and Rocketnumbernine came from both group's connection to Steve Reid, the veteran radical drummer who recorded a number of albums on Soul Jazz.

Rocketnumbernine have recently had live sessions on GILLES PETERSON's RADIO ONE show as well as performing at the Gilles Peterson WORLDWIDE Awards.

The group have just returned from playing with RADIOHEAD in New York.

This is a VERY LIMITED 12” single EP on SOUL JAZZ RECORDS.

RocketNumberNine are London based brothers Ben (keyboards) and Tom Page (drums).

Soul Jazz Records presents this amazing 3 disc/5LP + dvd Box set Afro-Colombian music and film project made in Colombia.

Film-makers/music producers Santiago Posada and Simon Meija came to Palenque, near the Caribbean coast of Colombia,  to record the music of the area and to make a documentary film about the music and people of Palenque.

Palenque, the location of the first free slave (or Maroon) community in the Americas, is also a central location for Afro-Colombian culture. With its own unique style of music and language, heavily influenced by its African heritage, it holds a unique position in the world and is today proclaimed by UNESCO as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.

The Colombian-born film-makers, who were fascinated by this culture, traveled to Palenque to build a studio in the remote town, west of Cartegena, in order to record the highly percussive roots music that uniquely mixes African and Latin traditions in equal flavours. They stayed in the town for three months, filming the everyday life and recording music from the area and once finished left the studio for the people of the area to use.

Once back home they enlisted a select number of like-minded electronic, house and dubstup artists to produce a mindblowing second disc of remixes - including some incredible music from Osunlade, Mattias Aguayo, Kromestar and others to interpret the original works.

This set includes the DVD, the CD of original music and the CD of remixes. It comes in a stunning three case box set with sleeve notes  about the project and the history of Palenque and exclusive photography.

There is also an extremely limited (1000 worldwide) incredible 5LP (comes with free DVD) box set available.

NB Digital Download is for music only.

Read more about the project here.

Jende ri Palenge from Simón Mejía on Vimeo.

Soul Jazz Records are re-releasing keyboardist Eddie Russ’s seminal debut deep jazz LP Fresh Out (and the first album ever released on Soul Jazz Records!) in a new limited edition COLOURED vinyl 1000 copies worldwide (+ free download code) and new CD edition.

Eddie Russ's Fresh Out was independently released in Detroit in 1974 and has remained a collector's item ever since. Russ was an important figure to emerge from the vibrant underground jazz scene that thrived in Detroit in the early 1970s, existing in the cultural and economic desolation of the city after the departure of Motown in the late 1960s.

This scene included the musical collective Tribe (including members Wendell Harrison, Marcus Belgrave, Phil Ranelin, Harold McKinney and Doug Hammond) and Kenny Cox’s Strata Records. Eddie Russ’s Fresh Out was first released in 1974 on the independent Jazz Masters record label.

As well as including the classic jazz dance cut The Lope Song, Eddie Russ’s Fresh Out featured the debut of the group The Mixed Bag who subsequently recorded for both Tribe and Strata Records. Eddie Russ released two further classic jazz funk albums in the late 1970s, See the Light and Take a Look at Yourself.

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).

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

Roots music flourished in the 1970’s as Rastafarianism, Black consciousness and self-determinization became the most important aspects of Reggae music. Bolstered by the international success of Bob Marley and Burning Spear (both who began their careers at Studio One), Roots music became the major musical development of Reggae in the 1970’s. Coxsone Dodd and Studio One’s connection to Rastafarianism had begun long before the arrival of ‘roots music’ as a distinct genre that arrived at the very tail end of the 1960s.

By the start of the 1960’s Coxsone Dodd was making his way to Count Ossie’s Wareika Hills Rastafarian compound to hear Rastafarian drummers play whilst the Skatalites’ front-line horns – Tommy McCook, Don Drummond, Johnny Moore would jam alongside. Similarly, Count Ossie would appear during Sir Coxsone’s dancehall sessions, performing live at the height of the evening. This is the third in the series of Rastafarian inspired music from Studio One, and features classic foundation artists alongside some seriously rare tracks from the label. 

With the involvement of the crack studio house bands – be it the Sound Dimension, the Soul Defenders or the Brentford Road All-Stars – as well as Clement Dodd and Studio One’s seriously high quality control, these tracks are all a healthy addition to the pantheon of roots music at Studio One. Sleevenotes by David Katz and Stuart Baker.

In the early 1970s pianist and composer Adegoke Steve Colson and vocalist Iqua Colson were both members of The Association for Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), the radical home of jazz music in Chicago, and spiritual home of the Art Ensemble of Chicago.

In 1980, Colson released ‘Triumph!’, recorded in Chicago with a stellar line-up of Art Ensemble and AACM members in the group including Joseph Jarman and Doug Ewart. This album was released on the private-press Silver Sphinx label, and distributed mainly in the local Chicago area. Universal Sound/Soul Jazz Records are releasing this extremely rare deep spiritual jazz album for the first time ever as a hardback edition CD and a very limited edition of 1000 –copy exact reproduction vinyl.

Brand new album featuring non-stop killer Studio One cuts from The Skatalites, Heptones, Lone Ranger, Horace Andy and loads more. 

Album comes in jewel case with slipcase style CD, limited edition gatefold heavyweight double vinyl and EXCLUSIVE DIGITAL DOWNLOAD from here.

This is the first new Studio One/Soul Jazz release in over 3 years and is being released to coincide with our forthcoming monster new deluxe hardback 12x12" 200 page full colour book featuring hundreds of super classic and rare Studio One sleeves.