Schnellertollermeier Rights

Schnellertollermeier

Tight doesn’t even begin to describe the high level of interplay displayed by this Swiss guitar bass drums trio. Somehow, with just four albums under their belt they have managed to map out an alternative route to  the conventional guitar-led power trio format and take it to an altogether different level. Schnellertollermeier is in fact  […]

Sam Rohrer Brightbird

João Paulo Esteves da Silva, Mário Franco, Samuel Rohrer

To some the album Brightbird might be considered an expression of modern jazz. I beg to respectfully disagree. This incredibly well recorded album sounds like a modern version of baroque music. It is very intricate and rich in tonal colour and harmonies. It is also almost ‘algebraic’ and often cerebral in its composition, requiring both […]

Guris

Jovino Santos Neto, André Mehmari

Guris is a charming and in places romantic Brazilian antidote for super-hot summer days of the sort we occasionally experience in the UK. It is a musical smorgasbord that contains flavours from many musical styles but is fundamentally a testament to the very unique charm and magic of Brazilian music and culture. Those looking for […]

Ote-Maloya

Various Artists

Subtitled The birth of electric maloya on Réunion Island 1975 – 1986, the music on this compilation is something else. Réunion is part of the Mascarene Islands in the Indian Ocean and a melting pot of different cultures for centuries, maloya is it’s traditional music, originally described as the music of slaves. This album however […]


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National Symphony Orchestra

Earlier in the year Mike Valentine’s most ambitious recording project to date came to fruition when he brought the NSO together with conductor Debbie Wiseman and mezzo soprano Rosie Middleton at Air Studios in north London. This was the first orchestral direct cut vinyl recording he had done and as you can imagine it wasn’t […]

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Omer Klein

Every few years one comes across an album such as Sleepwalkers. An album that jolts one awake with its brilliance, but Sleepwalkers is that kind of an album. It is played with talent and confidence that justifies putting Omer Klein on a scale normally reserved for the work of fellow pianist Tord Gustavsen, it has […]

yogev shetrit

Yogev Shetrit

Yogev Shetrit and his fellow musicians are a brilliant bi-product of the land they live in. It would appear that in addition to being a pressure cooker, Israel is a melting pot of many cultures and musical genres which are represented here in a polished and mighty impressive set of world music style jazz that […]

Rez Abbasi & Junction Behind the Vibration

Rez Abbasi & Junction

Rez Abbasi, a stalwart of the New York jazz scene with a good twenty five years’ experience and twelve recorded albums under his belt informs us that the music on this new release is intended to create an intersection, a junction where all the music that he and his band love can come together. In […]


Nucleus with Leon Thomas Live 1970

Nucleus with Leon Thomas

It is almost unbelievable that this recording has sat in a vault for well over four decades. Thankfully, Gearbox saw fit to release it first on 180gram vinyl and now in a gatefold cover CD. On paper nobody would have ever put Leon Thomas on the same stage as Nucleus but, thanks to Peter King […]

Hammond Follow your heart

Ross Hammond

The life of the purist finger guitar player is not an easy one. The potential audience for acoustic finger pickers appears to be a tiny fraction of what it is for those that sing at the same time. At any given time there are only a handful to be found producing commercial releases, that’s one […]

club d'elf

Club D’Elf

This conclusion to this review goes as follows: This is likely to be the most impressive release of 2017. Get it now. Live at Club Helsinki is as immense as it is intense. A double album that in uncompressed WAV form requires 1.2Gb of space on the hard drive, with a set of 12 tracks […]

melissa menago little crimes

Melissa Menago

Binaural recordings are made using a pair of omnidirectional mics mounted inside a pinnae-equipped dummy head at the precise location of the ear canals, capturing the same naturally-reverberant, three-dimensional sound a listener would experience if they were present at the performanc. Due to the way the brain processes directional cues, enjoyment of binaural recordings has […]


Ross Hammond Upward

Ross Hammond & Sameer Gupta

Ross Hammond is a genuine troubadour, seemingly spending his life on the road playing acoustic and electric guitars to anyone that has the sense to listen. His style on Upward will be familiar to those who appreciate the work of John Fahey and Ry Cooder, steel string picking on 12-string acoustic guitar with a strong […]

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Erlend Apneseth Trio

If you think Arvo Pärt’s Fratres sounds beautiful then this gem from the consistently  fascinating Norwegian label Hubro should be on your must hear list. It’s stark music lead by Hardanger fiddle player Apneseth but it is also radiant with Nordic light, timbrally rich and unquestionably essential. Stephan Meidell provides accompaniment on guitar and electronica […]

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Stein Urheim

If there’s a stringed instrument that Stenin Urheim can’t play and play well I’d like to know what it is. However that’s not a reason to listen to his third release on the excellent Hubro label, unless of course you enjoy hearing different stringed instruments that are very well played and recorded. The best reason […]

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John Renbourn

In the early sixties when British ‘folkies’ like John Renbourn were honing their licks, few were truly aware of the origins of the blues tunes they were playing. YouTube wasn’t even a notion and genuine blues musicians were very scarce in the UK ,so they learnt songs from friends and records. This excellent collection of […]