friday feelings.

throwing up this stone cold soul jazz classic from 75 up before i have to go into my soul crushing job. this has been getting a lot of play around these parts lately.

jessica finds the beach.

a new favorite of mine by prime era herbie hancock.

hymn for the sun.

a great way to start out the new year with some fiery soul jazz. the david lee jr song is a gem.

lamp of the south.

another gem from the vaults of numero as part of their local customs series. this one is near & dear to my heart since i've been feeling real heartsick for the beautiful vistas & warm weather of texas. probably my favorite compilation from them, this makes me think of smoking unfiltered pall malls & drinking sweet tea & whiskey on friend's porches on warm summer nights. essential.

breton's ghost.

beautiful cosmique nite flite jazz from my main man pharoah.

moon nightclub.

weirdo lo-fi outsider minimal electronic reichian jazzy funk rock. yep, a sentence of random words that somewhat accurately puts a finger in the general direction of how insanely good this is.

hi hi hi hi hi hi hi hi.

it's been a while.

keeping this short because i'm seeing r. stevie moore in a couple of hours, so gotta jet. have fun listening to this. we jammed to it a lot last summer when we went to the beach. if you've never heard this genius, then yr downloading.

love is a bull market.

Dixon, who died last year at 84, is typically described as a force in the free jazz that emerged in the1960s. He was that, but Intents and Purposes defied labeling when Dixon recorded it more than four decades ago. This long overdue reissue confirms that the album withstands categorization. Its daring and forthright iconoclasm has substance that outlives much music that was conceived in protest or defiance in the roiling atmosphere of that era.
Dixon's trumpet and flugelhorn improvisations flow, jab, dance, flutter, growl and brood through, around and over the other musicians. In some cases, the other musicians are Dixon himself, overdubbed. The first of the two brief Nightfall Pieces has multiples of Dixon and flutist George Marge creating a mesmerizing soundscape. In the second, Dixon ruminates in call-and-response with himself across the stereo channels. Favoring low notes on his own instruments and those of others, he employs the ten-piece group in Metamorphosis to create rich substrata voicings. Bass trombone, bass clarinet, cello and two double basses are among the instruments that provide oddly reassuring contrast with Dixon, alto saxophonist Robin Kenyatta and bass clarinetist Bayard Lancaster, whose solos search almost to the edge of desperation. Metamorphosis includes written passages of subtle complexity that it would be easy to overlook in the passion of the performance.
In Voices, whether he achieves it on paper or by contrivance in the studio, Dixon manages to give his trumpet, Lancaster's bass clarinet, Jimmy Garrison's bass, Catherine Norris's cello and Robert Frank Pozar's drums fullness of sound one might expect from an ensemble half again bigger. Dixon's choice of musicians was eclectic; avant gardists like Kenyatta, Lancaster and Garrison alongside the mainstream trombonist Jimmy Cheatham and Marge, a reliable reed specialist of the New York studio scene.
To his credit, reissue producer Jonathan Horwich saw to it that the Dixon album looks like the original RCA Victor LP, down to the striking cover shot. It is a reminder that record packages were once a pleasure to handle and the notes easy to read. The liner notes are included as an insert that unfolds to nearly the size of an LP sleeve. More important, the quality of the sound recorded in RCA's storied studio B is flawlessly remastered. In a brief addendum to the notes, Horwich writes of Intents and Purposes, ''It stands as one of the most important and revolutionary musical expressions of the 20th century.''
That may be true.
''There was nothing like it before 1966/67 and there has been nothing like it since.''
That is true. --Doug Ramsey, Rifftides, 3/28/11 - via amazon (i know i'm lazy)

this is by far one of my favorite albums, right up there with mingus' black saint & the sinner lady. i could sum up the haunting beauty of this lp in two words: midnight jazz. it screams to be played in the dark dark hours of the night when yr spiritual quest is at it's most needed.

broadway sam.

The late Larry Young was an organist whose fairly brief career had lots of highs and very few middles or lows. Take this session from 1973 -- his first non-Blue Note date as a leader and post-Lifetime -- as a for instance. It is startling for its fresh look at how the organ is used in jazz and in improvisation, period. On Lawrence of Newark, Young enlisted a host of younger New York session cats who were hanging around the fringes of the funk and avant-garde scenes -- James Blood Ulmer, trumpeter Charles MacGee, Cedric Lawson, and about a dozen others all jumped into Young's dark and freaky musical stew. Made up of only five tracks, rhythm is the hallmark of the date as evidenced by the conga and contrabass intro to "Sunshine Fly Away." Deirdre Johnson's cello opens up a droning modal line for Young to slide his organ over in what passes for a melody but is more of an idea for a theme and a trio of variations. Armen Halburian's congas echo the accents at the end of the drum kit and Young's own tapering pronouncements moving back and forth between two and four chords with a host of improvisers inducing a transcendent harmonic hypnosis. The centerpiece of the album is "Khalid of Space Pt. 2: Welcome." Sun Ra's edict about all of his musicians being percussionists holds almost literally true in Young's case. The soprano saxophonist sounds as if it could be Sonny Fortune (billed as "mystery guest"), but he's way out on an Eastern modal limb. Young's right hand is punching home the counterpoint rhythm as Abdul Shadi runs all over his kit. Blood Ulmer is accenting the end of each line with overdriven power chords, and various bells, drums, congas, and djembes enter and depart the mix mysteriously. Young is digging deep into the minor and open drone chords, signaling -- à la Miles -- changes in intonation, tempo, and frequency of rhythmic attack. And the cut never loses its pocket funk for all that improvisation. It's steamy, dark, brooding, and saturated with groove. The CD reissue has fine sound and sells for a budget price; it should not be overlooked. The DJs just haven't discovered this one yet. Awesome. - some clown on allmusic

seriously can not say enough good things about this album. fucking grooving shit man, just put on & feel yr mind expand. also, not to step on anyone's toes, found this in some anonymous pastebin with no tags, so all thanks to the original ripper/poster whoever ye be.