BARNEY WILEN Vinyl & CDs

Review: This first-ever reissue of Zodiac has been restored and remastered from Barney Wilen's personal copy of it after no others could be found for the job. It landed originally on Disques Vogue in 1966 and was recorded after Barney had been touring with Art Blakey's Jazz Messenger's and Miles Davis. It's a super exploration of free jazz that is dedicated to the signs of the zodiac. Photographer Jean Lariviere created the photos for the artwork which at the time was intended to create a film and storyline to go with the music, but the concept was never quite properly finished.

Review: 'Un Temoin Dans La Ville' as a piece originally featured as part of the soundtrack for the 1962 film Eva. A classic European cafe society film, it follows the tumultuous love affair of a gold-digging debutante with a hapless, anomie-stricken writer. Fittingly for movie tropes at the time, Barney Wilen's unmistakable jazz piece (oddly similar-sounding and contemporaneous with Mancini's Pink Panther theme) accompanies scenes of women putting on airs, men scuttling around after them, and the entire denomination of tense sexuality that undercuts this spectacular dynamic. This reissue of Wilen's album of the same name contains the original piece, as well as all manner of noir jazz originals, moody as a dejected bachelorette gripping a French opera-length cigarette holder.