Company
1981

Seance Centre: ...Muldrew, recorded on the northern Ontario lake by that name, is the culmination of several years of this collaborative tradition. Resisting their penchant for composition and arrangement, the duo embarked on this project with only an open framework that encouraged restraint. The result is a sparse and improvisational album, hung on enough structure for each song to evoke a distinct, albeit ambiguous mood. Space is paramount and even the most digital elements breathe with the resonance of the room and mingle with creaking floors. The resulting album is steeped in the placid stillness and northern ambience of a lake at dawn, and the emotive expanse of a forest at dusk. Imagine an ECM cottage-series, or Jon Hassell, Hiroshi Yoshimura, and John Martyn scoring a Bela Tarr film set in rural Canada. This is the future-proof music of metropolitan polyglot minds invigorated by nature’s mute refusal to follow a click-track.

Introducing Pachakuti and young.vishnu! “Semilla” is the first teaser from an exciting new project by multi-instrumentalist Pachakuti and producer young.vishnu.Although only 2:22 minutes short “Semilla” catches the listeners mind and soul completley and utterly. Over a laid-back rimshot groove chopped by young.vishnu, Pachakuti is having a conversation on rhodes & saxophone.“Semilla” can be labeled as jazz funk and we believe that beat lovers will dig it as well. At the same time, “Semilla” only shows one root of the musical vision of Pachakuti and young.vishnu who are fusing hip-hop, jazz, latin, funk and soul with strong messages about politics, identity, globalization and neocolonialism.

The Roundtable: ...Beyond the striking photography of the cover artwork, a cursory glance at this LP may appear misleading. One could be forgiven in thinking that what they had discovered was of a more obvious British provenance, but on closer inspection the truth is revealed… London in fact refers to London, Canada, an artistic hotbed that famously spawned the highly influential insurgent noise ensemble, ‘The Nihilist Spam Band’. Less celebrated yet equally remarkable was the improvisational powerhouse ‘The London Experimental Jazz Quartet’, a short lived group led by the forward thinking saxophonist Eric Stach. Their debut album, Invisible Roots is an overlooked jewel from the Canadian jazz scene. Inspired by the revolutionary artists from the New York free-jazz movement, (namely Ornette Coleman, Archie Sheep and Cecil Taylor), and fuelled by the exciting possibilities afforded by a completely free approach to music, Invisible Roots is an album of potent spontaneous composition, exhibiting both fiery unharnessed blowing alongside lyrical streams of consciousness. In recent years, the album has achieved notoriety in certain record collecting circles mainly due to the track Destroy The Nihilist Picnic, an infectious piece of vamping avant-funk. Despite the commanding presence of this track, it would be misguided to judge the merits of the album on this piece alone, for Invisible Roots is a much deeper and more complex musical statement. This is confirmed by the Iberian-jazz sketch, Spain Is For Old Ladies, the spiritual introspection of Jazz Widows Waltz or the ferocious yet soulful Eric’s Madness, a track which wouldn’t be out of place on an ESP-Disk or BYG Actuel album. Behold, a rare piece of fire music from the Canadian Free-Jazz underground.

EM Records: ...Roland P. Young is back for his fifth release on EM Records, back in the United States, back in San Francisco after sojourns in New York and Israel, back where he resided several decades ago. But despite all this talk of return, he continues to resolutely forge forward, combining his tradition-rooted horn mastery with an ever-expanding electronic palette, fusing wind with electricity, fusing American roots with an outward global vision. Recorded in his home studio, Young's expansive multi-instrumental mastery and studio skills have created a dense yet uplifting set of tunes, very melodic and groovy with a joyful sense of return and renewal. Roland is here, hear it on vinyl or CD.