T.D.

Excellent. But weirdly, I can't find any trace or announcement of this release on either JIB's website (which refers me to Bandcamp) or Bandcamp page. Even if it already sold out, I'd expect to see at least an image.

+1 Held off for a long time, bought it used after many years, probably should have passed. Don't really care for the "fusion" material. Not the fact that it's fusion per se, but this particular performance.

My bad. Like a dumbass I always assumed that if there's a Volume 1 there must be a Volume 2. But on the plus side, I haven't missed out. 😄

It be good.

Cool! There was a release by the Ensemble Modern that's much easier to find (CD or LP), but it of course lacks the awesome DG cover art. Same deal for the DG 20th Century Classics reissue paired with Tactil. Looking at discogs, I'm surprised at how rare the original LP is. Something to search for long term... I dig Kagel because of his sense of humor, a commodity exceedingly rare in classical music.

My late father had a CD of this. I generally like Kagel but wasn't knocked out by it. I sold the disc for him years ago because I was able to get $36 (iirc) for it. I'm more into Kagel's "radio play" type compositions, especially if humorous / ironic. My favorite is >>...den 24.xii.1931<<, which is on Youtube, Apple Music, ... The radio plays Der Tribun and Nach einer Lektüre von Orwell are really funny, but non-musical, long and in German. Also can be found online.

I think those albums are pretty good (the Wilbur Ware is the only set from that Mosaic that I'm indifferent about), but I agree that they both sound rather dark and melancholy. Though Jordan's Glass Bead Games, also on the Mosaic, is better than ...C J in the World. Agreed on the photos...you can see the same thing in the Mosaic Beehive set's pics of straight-ahead players from the late '70s/early '80s.

Recently picked up a reissue of this. Excellent album recorded in UK with top British jazzmen. Much less out than I expected, in fact almost totally straight-ahead, but extremely swinging.

Agreed, outstanding. My only beef is that engineer Richard Alderson provided his customary out-of-tune piano (as so often happened at Prestige 🙄), which detracts somewhat from Walton's sound.

+1. I'm not big on vocals, but they work with the Tapscott material. And Dwight Trible is really excellent, I enjoy the other Nimbus West (and Build an Ark) albums on which he appears, and am considering purchasing his recordings as leader.

Zodiac (along with Clifford Jordan in the World, where KD played on a couple of tracks) was included in the Clifford Jordan Strata-East Mosaic, which is how I acquired it. I actually own Showboat and one of the Jazz Prophet releases (Volume 1; of course I have the Blue Note live Cafe Bohemia recording). Showboat is really good and the Jazz Prophets Volume 1 is recommendable. Will have to look for Volume 2, that's an omission.

Agreed. Looking at the booklet of the 2-CD P-APA Live at IUCC (1979), it appears that the only piece with choir is the short concluding "Lift Every Voice". By analogy, and recognizing some of the titles, I expect the same from the 1978 recording. Don't have time to listen to "1979" tonight, may check tomorrow.

To date I avoided this album because I figured I'd hate it, but I agree it's interesting, and the sidemen are impressive. I've been listening to Phil Ranelin lately, another instrumentalist who can't sing but somehow pulls it off. Ranelin doesn't do much more than speak and has very limited range, but his voice is smoother and more...mellifluous? than KD's. OTOH, KD has more range and does a lot of really interesting technical things, some of which I dig and others about which I'm more...equivocal. Going to have to explore the recording, thanks for the tip.

Dusty Groove now shows the 2-cd on their "Coming soon" page, expected release 15 April. https://www.dustygroove.com/item/141973/Pan-Afrikan-People-s-Arkestra:Live-At-IUCC-11-26-78-Church-Recordings-Vol-1-2CD-set?cat=jazz&incl_cs=1&no_incl_in=1&sort_order=release_date

If you have better vision than I, the cover art is explained in the latter part of the second paragraph here (photo courtesy discogs):

I always found the cover weird, but iirc the liner notes clearly explain that it's a Bunsen burner photographed through a 25-pound block of ice, "at the moment that the flame of a Bunsen burner on the far side burned through it, with the patterns and color being created by the flame" [I looked it up]. Brought back memories of school chemistry labs. You guys wondered about the cover but didn't check the liner notes? I'm an Ernie Henry fan, but like the OP go back and forth on the album...sometimes I enjoy it, other times it feels monotonous and wears on me (perhaps due to absence of piano).

[Italics added] True, but on the other hand, how widely has the release info. been disseminated? How big is Nimbus West's e-mail list? I suspect not very. I've no idea whether they've purchased advertising (is that done any more? 🤔). I only heard of the release through this board, so I'm not surprised the forum accounts for many of the sales.

Whoa, nasty stuff. Hoping the good guys prevail. Nimbus West might be in a transitional state these days...perhaps they're beefing up the website and operations. If you go to the Nimbus West bandcamp page https://nimbuswest.bandcamp.com/ it links to a nonexistent (domain expired?) site "nimbuswest.com" rather than nimbuswestrecords.com as given above in this thread.

I trust Matt will respond. Not knowing where the company is located (turned out to be USA), I e-mailed him last night (US time) and he replied almost instantly.

You mean currently? News has been scarce the past few years. Fairly recent (2021) interview at https://thequietus.com/articles/29717-carla-bley-interview

I guess that means "Carpe Diem". Interesting, because I've bought a whole lot of Nimbus West CDs from Dusty Groove's site @$9.99 apiece. But with a pressing of 250, I pre-ordered now rather than rolling the dice on that possibility.

[Emphasis added] I agree. What really turned me on to bebop was discovering Tadd Dameron's compositions, and I still think that's a good entry point. I'm paywalled from the NYT, and that's just as well, since the articles would only piss me off. I think those features are some odd combination of trolling and the author[s] striving to project as hipper than thou.

Thanks. I'm in. The 1979 Live at I.U.C.C. set released on Soul Jazz Records (UK) was really good.