Search results: Libra

Review: Hamburg based soul outfit Angels of Libra serve up a second single here in collaboration with Irish singer/songwriter Nathan Johnston. It's based on a bunch of instrumentals recorded on a TASCAM 388 8-track in a remote house outside Copenhagen by producer Dennis Rux with the group. The classic sounds were finished off with a more new school vocal style a la Anderson Paak to result in a track that is impossible to date but easy to love, with rich horns and seductive bass. It's a tune about the burning passion we all feel when we meet someone new and immediately fall for.

Review: Kai Alce's faultless NDATL label brings us more goodies direct from his base in Atlanta, which might be best known for its rap but also packs a punch when it comes to house music. This one is from Rasheeda Ali, a new name that might be familiar to anyone who heard Kai's 'Sheed's Move' tune from a previous EP. She has also been on stage with none other than Jeff Mills and here her flute skills come to the fore with production from Kai. 'Libra Ascending' has a snappy bounce, then 'Sheed's Rising' showcases Rasheeda's gymnastic flautist abilities. A fine debut.

Notes: Librae Legio is a dynamics processor designed to take a whole patch to the next level. Compression, expansion, limiting, noise gating, and two styles of gentle distortion: Librae is the perfect tool to bring your mix together. And while it can do extreme limiting and really squash your sounds together, Noise Engineering developed it with transparency in mind - whether you want to hard-limit your techno mix or gently bring the sounds in your ambient patch together, Librae is the end-of-chain dynamics processor you've been looking for.

Review: Craft Recordings and Jazz Dispensary announce the first-ever vinyl reissue of Johnny Lytle's long-sought-after soul-jazz gem, People & Love. Primarily hailed for his talents on the vibraphone, Lytle led an enviable career, combining his talents with his ability to bandlead, and People & Love was surely among this mode's most matchingly enviable productions. Guides his fellow musicians through five sublime tracks, including extended, soulful covers ('People Make the World Go 'Round,' 'Where Is the Love?') and groovy originals ('Libra', 'Tawhid,' 'Family'). The 1973 session also boasts a stellar line-up of players, including Daahoud Hadi (formerly Butch Cornell) on the electric piano and organ, Bob Cranshaw on the electric bass and harpist Betty Glamann.o

Review: Two key pushers of New York tactile ambient-techno, Anthony Naples and DJ Python, here present a fittingly named compilation (and the third in the series) curating only the best found in that style and scene: 'Air Texture VIII'. Spurred on by a cost of living crisis in Manhattan, areas further afield in neighbouring Brooklyn have become much more central to artists such as Beta Librae, Downstairs J and 5AM, spurring their rise and that of producers like them. Don't miss this important chronicling of the scene, which still unfolds in real time.

Review: Those of a certain vintage may remember Blue, an IDM and ambient techno duo who released a string of pleasingly otherworldly EPs and albums in the late '90s. The Path of Least Resistance Meets The Point of No Return marks the duo's return to action after 22 years, albeit via a set of tracks originally intended to be released as an ambient album back in 2001. These updated and reworked versions are apparently different to those in their archives, but that doesn't matter; what's on offer is becalmed, otherworldly, often unusual and uniformly emotive, with highlights including the squelchy bass and elongated organ chords of 'Spacepport', the Pete Namlook style ambience of 'Ava X', the deep space symphony that is 'She Found The Colours' and the becalmed brilliance of 'Crystalline Form'.

Review: Way back in 1975, two albums slipped out that would effectively establish the synthesizer-fired "new age" sound. Arguably the more important - and better quality - of the two was "Inter-dimensional Music", the debut LP from California-based musician Iasos. Here reissued on vinyl for the first time in a decade, the superb set combines drowsy ambient chords, gentle organ melodies and other subtle instrumental flourishes (bass guitar, pedal steel, lazy electric guitar solos) with field recordings of lapping waves, babbling brooks and so on. While new age would become a bit of a cheesy cliche in later years, "Inter-Dimensional Music" is a superb collection of drifting, meditative tracks that soothe and seduce the senses.

Review: Politically charged Motor City jazz collective Tribe has undergone something of a career rebirth in the last few years. The releases they played, produced and put out on their Tribe Records imprint in the '70s are rightly revered, but the truth is that they've made equally as good music since getting back into the studio in 1990 - as this brilliant retrospective from Strut proves. The ten-track set contains both released material and previously unheard recordings, with highlights including a fantastic new version of "Juba" featuring Harold McKinney and his "McKinfolk" musicians, a daring new version of Tribe member Phil Ranelin's "He The One We All Knew" and the spiritual rallying cry that is "Marcus Garvey".

Review: Members, Don't Git Weary is a Max Roach classic that now gets reissued by the Gilles Peterson-curated Arc Records. It has been mastered in mono from the original analogue tapes by the multi-Grammy winning Bernie Grundman. It comes with new sleeve-notes featuring Charles Tolliver and Gary Bartz and never before seen images of Roach from Warners archives. Originally released in 1968, it's a highlight of Roach's discography with post-bop sounds and modal workouts, some of which are written by Roach, some by Stanley Cowell and one by Gary Bartz.

Review: On her new album Across Water Made Us, Jamila heads into all new musical territory. 2017's HEAVN album was one that found the artist connecting with the lineage of Black feminist movements, then in 2019 Legacy! reframed her own experiences through iconic Black and brown artists. Now she cross new genre borders, sharpness up her hypnotic wordplay and lats down plenty of playful melodies that all help make for one of her most personal albums to date. It is fun and intimate as it tackles veracious subjects from new romances to endless love with features from Chicago natives such as Saba and Peter CottonTale.

Review: The Zodiac's Cosmic Sounds is an album from November 1967 that very much reinvented the psychedelic rock blueprint. The basic idea for it was one by Elektra Records head honcho Jac Holzman who was inspired by the commercial success of the debut album from The Doors which was released on his label. He enlisted some top people to get involved with the record from composer Mort Garson to lyrics written by Jacques Wilson via produciton from Alex Hassilev of The Limeliters. Lots of spaced out Moog sounds define the record and some interspersed folk poems add another edge entirely.