Rabshakeh

My Friend John. There is the Coltrane modal thing. The influence is not always great (the last track) but it is still a very good record.

What is this record? Looks interesting as a concept. Is this for budding saxophonists to practice with, like in the Conversation?

I wonder whether trad groups are statistically more likely to feature venues on covers. A lot of trad groups are closely attached to the pubs they play in, so if could be possible. Ha!

Various – The Passion Of Charlie Parker Interesting record. I'm not sure why I've only just heard of it. For those who don't know it, it is the jazzish band from David Bowie's final record Black Star, featuring Ben Monder and a saxophone player called Donny McCaslin, with the addition of Craig Taborn, playing behind commercial jazz vocalists, singing specially written songs arrived at by setting lyrics about Charlie Parker's life to well known tunes associated with Parker, with very generous solo time for the musicians. It's quite successful. McCaslin is a bit limited, but he does well enough on most of the tracks. The lyrics are good, and the singers, most of whom I don't like at all in their normal roles, sound very silky and sumptuous. Weird how they went to all the effort with the concept, though, but didn't bother to put any money whatsoever into the cover artwork. It just looks like a generic cheapo Charlie Parker record.

Art Pepper - Thursday Night at the Village Vanguard

Thank you, both.

The Cecil Taylor Quartet Featuring Archie Shepp – Air

I don't really know Irabagon other than MOPDTK. Are there any of his records you'd recommend?

It's easily available. I used to own it on CD, which I brought in a mass market record shop (back when that was a thing) in a provincial.

Johnny Dyani Quartet – Mbizo

We’re the Stitt sessions ever released before this?

Was that a distribution thing? It is easy-streamin'.

The Afro Blues Quintet Plus One – Introducing

Uyama Hiroto – Freeform Jazz (Roph, 2016) First listen to this. I wasn't paying attention and I assumed it was some new London group playing blissed out electric jazz in the current style. I'm quite impressed that it is actually a hip hop production but just some guy. Very sophisticated stuff in production terms. am not sure I will listen to it again though.

I think that we are currently very well served for streaming, but I do worry about the future. At some point in the near future I suspect that the current situation where various services all compete with each other but offer essentially the same very wide range of music will fracture, with different services offering only a specific catalogue. That's already happened with film, where you would need to subscribe to seven or eight services to get a half decent range of old and new films.

This was the one that caught my eye in the shop: Maarten Altena Octet & Nonet – Quick Step

John Butcher gets the Epiphanies slot in this month's Wire. A good article that won't take much of your time, and worth searching out.

These are my favourite of his records. But I don't own them! Bob Belden – Black Dahlia

Now back on the Brax.

Now onto this one:

Yep. It's a lot cheaper with a gift voucher!

Anthony Braxton / John Lindberg – Six Duets (1982) A record shop near me that mostly does obscure indie and non-jazz avant garde has a job lot of fairly obscure Braxton in, and let's just say I had a gift voucher to cash in. I'd never heard of this one. A good simple on that focuses on the saxophone playing in quite a straight setting. There's always more Braxton.

This is such a fantastic answer. Thank you.

I see his records fairly regularly in shops, and there used to be a jazz kissa account on Ex-Twitter that I followed that used to post his records next to a coffee or glass of red wine. Not a musician whom you see discussed much though, outside of the context of Porto Novo. Does anyone have any records they'd recommend?

I guess the king of the genre: