Various
Pyramid Pieces 2 (Modern Jazz Australia 1969-1980)

Last Resort: ...One of life’s most difficult arts is learning to let go. You can try to cling to control in the face of a turbulent world, but the only constant we can count on is change—the tendrils of cleansing fire wiping away the old, new life springing forth from the dust and ash. So what’s the point? Give yourself over to the depths. Surrender to the flow.G.S. Schray’s new solo album The Changing Account is an appropriate soundtrack for learning to cope with a world we can’t count on. Each piece is full of elliptical melodies that swirl with the unstable logic of dreams. Flurries of piano, guitar lines, and other more alien instrumentation shimmer delicately, but before they coalesce into familiar shapes or rhythms they change, then change, then change again. Listening is a bit like falling asleep on a long road—with each passing song you’re waking up somewhere new, trying to get your bearings in another strange world. How did I get here? Where are we going? It doesn’t matter. Close your eyes, drift away again.

LITA: ...Ethiopians’ deep-seated ethiocentrism, the legacy of a thousand years of history, has contributed in no small way to their music’s strong national identity, particularly impervious to any African influences. Latin influences, so pervasive in the great musical centers of West Africa and the Congo, have been similarly rebuffed, despite the brilliant attempts of a musician like Mulatu Astatke. He was the first and for a long time the only Ethiopian to have studied music abroad (England and USA). In the late ‘60s, he brought back ’ethio-jazz’, as well as a passion for Latin rhythms that was not readily shared by the Ethiopian audience. As early as 1966, he released a single and two LPs in the US entitled Afro-Latin Soul (and a third LP, Mulatu of Ethiopia in 1972), with his Ethiopian Quintet composed of American and Latin-American musicians (Worthy Records). That was three years before Fela’s first American tour and six years prior to Manu Dibango’s key breakthrough with the release of Soul Makossa in the Western ‘pre-World music’ market. All this goes to show how much the history of the African continent’s musical modernity should be reconsidered in light of the Ethiopian adventure, even though this lone spark bore little relation, musically or ideologically to the musical revolutions initiated most notably by Ghanian highlife, South African jazz, Congolese rumba or, much later on, by Fela.

P-Vine: ..."Vibraphone" double cider, of course, super rare, which combines the finest mellowness of Roy Ayers and the local jazz-funk manners of Billy Wooten, and is quietly left in the rare groove important area = New Jersey! !!Rare groove important area = New Jersey-based vibraphonist Ted Coleman released in 1980, a phantom debut album that is also called the highest peak of hidden rare groove! "Maestro" Roy Ayers' vibes touch is softer and mellow, and Ted's unbearable play is a masterpiece of all songs original! Especially the vocal songs are wonderful, and it is convincing that the soft vibes and tight drums associated with Ted's tasty singing have captivated top collectors around the world who are aiming for the local unexplored board of US minor jazz. Probably the correct rare groove manners! "Jake is sober"? No, heaven will come only to those who sniff out this rare groove odor and pick it up, and if they pass by, they will regret it for the rest of their lives. That's what the diggers road is all about!