What a magnificent find! Salah Ragab is the father of Egyptian Jazz. He produces a sound that blends the best elements of the venerable genre, as well as bits of Latin, soundtrack, and even cha-cha-cha in his concoction.
Instrumental
[Music] Companyia Elèctrica Dharma – Diumenge
Companyia Elèctrica Dharma are a band out of Barcelona, Spain. They manage to mix jazz (ethnic and free), fusion, progressive rock, and even touches of folk into their compositions.
[Music] Eero Koivistoinen & UMO – Arctic Blues
Today’s treasure comes from a release from 2016. Finland’s Eero Koivistoinen pairs with his UMO Jazz Orchestra for a mellow, occasionally hot, new work. Not quite as wild as his 70s material, but still quite impressive.
[Music] On Two Stunning Artifacts of the Italian Avant-Garde issued by Die Schachtel – Lino Capra Vaccina’s Echi Armonici da Antico Adagio and Claudio Rocchi’s Suoni di Frontiera
Bradford Bailey at The Hum, a great blog for experimental music, writes on two releases from Die Schachtel, a record label out of Milan, Italy.
[Music] Between Sound and Space: ECM Records and Beyond
It comes as a very pleasant surprise to see that ECM Records has its very own blog now. Simple, beautifully designed, and a great repository for promoting their new releases and reissues, as well as highlighting the reviews given to said releases. Bravo!
[Music] George Hadow / Dirk Serries – Outermission
George Hadow in an English percussionist currently residing in Amsterdam. It was a bit of a shock to see that he would be pairing with Dirk Serries, who won his fame as Vidna Obmana, his dark ambient project out of Belgium, but they blend together rather nicely.
[Music] Simon James – Akiha Den Den
I think this is a case where the description of Simon James’ latest release speaks for itself:
This vinyl and CD package collects electronic music created for an abandoned space: Akiha Den Den, the crumbling amusement park at the centre of a surreal radio drama, and the setting for a story woven from the very fabric of radio.
Radiophonic and other dimensional library inspired cues soundtrack dilapidated ghost train rides, rusty dodgems and the domed Panatrope. The dark musings inside the mind of a talking thought-mining cockroach, a mysterious character known only as Monday Man and the main protagonist, M.R Cuttings (played by Star Wars’ Ian McDiarmid), a radio ham picking up the desperate transmissions from this strange ethereal place they call Akiha Den Den.
Simon James has conjured up an eerie world of pure escapist sound for this fever dream of radio waves and half heard transmissions. The full radio drama can be heard at http://www.akihadenden.com
Radio interference, snatches of intercepted broadcasts, codes, tones, signals and other haunting sounds from the wireless feature heavily alongside the soundtrack conjured up on an array of vintage, unfathomable synthesisers including the Buchla 200e Electric Music Box and the EMS VCS3. Occasionally the voices of Akiha Den Den’s inhabitants and M.R Cuttings burn through the white noise offering a glimpse of their tangled patchbay story.
Released on a specially requested opaque clear vinyl LP, the physical package also includes a redacted Akiha Den Den booklet (all artwork designed by Nick Taylor) and a beautiful bonus CD filled with over 70 minutes of Buchla Modular, EMS, drones, dramatics, cassette 4 track abuse and noise from the Akiha Den Den radio series.
The 70 minute CD “The Panatrope” is NOT available for download and is only available as part of the vinyl LP package.
Simon James has previously released space age synthesiser records as The Simonsound (with Matt Ford) and as celebrated night time doom project Black Channels (with Becky Randall) on Death Waltz Originals and Castles in Space.
This package is a must for fans of radio, inventive electronica, radiophonics, vintage synths and imagined worlds. It’s the future and the passed.
Legendary electronic pioneer Scanner has reviewed the radio drama:
“…. employs some truly inventive and exploratory use of sound in its structure…. frequently submerging and corroding voices beyond all recognition, as if burning the meaning of the words in a sonic inferno. “Akiha Den Den offers an immersive world for the listeners to lose themselves in a most alluring fashion. Free of the screen, let your ears roam around this imaginary world and let the sound take you into a lost world of fact and fiction, balancing on the borderlands of illusion and reality”.-Electronic Sound Magazine.
[Music] GlerAkur – The Mountains Are Beautiful Now (Luxus)
GlerAkur is the monicker of Icelandic composer Elvar Geir Sævarsson, who also happens to the sound engineer for the National Theater of Iceland (Þjóðleikhúsið). The music sits comfortably between post-rock and ambient music with a cinematic feel to it.
[Music] The Best Jazz on Bandcamp: July 2017
Jazz is in wonderful hands over at Bandcamp. Click this link to see what new treasures you’ll be running into on the platform.
[Music] Estrada Orchestra – Jazzbeatjäätis
Estonia’s Estrada Orchestra are a funky jazz combo that blends the best of groups the The James Taylor Quartet with the soundtrack to the old Starsky & Hutch TV series.
A Miscellany Of Tasteful Music 