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Review: Colin Curtis returns with another finely-curated selection of the best 'Jazz Dance Fusion' records he could find. In Curtis' own words, Volume 4 reflects a combination of new music, unreleased music, and tracks that have never been on vinyl before or have not attained the recognition they deserve. A whopping 26 tracks are racked up on the digital edition, but this special vinyl record yields just thirteen further selections from that initial batch; leading the charge is the Rhodesy, hi-hatty '46 To Somewhere' by the Sultan's Swing, capturing the free-spiritedness of hitching a ride to somewhere untrammeled. Further choice sonic infections, infusing elements of vocal jazz, salsa and Latin spoken word, include Somos Amigos' 'Pa'gozar' and GeeW's 'Kyoto'. Get grooving!

Review: The Jazz Dance Fusion series is a compilation-based series collecting some of the finest songs in the Jazzdance, Latin Jazz and Fusion. Each volume is careful cultivated by the well-known British DJ Colin Curtis. After the first three successful editions, the fourth boasts tracks like 'Mother Of The Future" by Venus Dodson, 'I Face East' by Mary Greer Mudiku and 'Ponteio' by Miho Nobuzane, to name but a few. Volume Four Part 2 is spread across two pieces of vinyl housed in a beautiful gatefold vinyl. If you are a jazz fan looking for a compilation to expand your knowledge and love the style, then look no further than this one here! Thanks ro Colin Curtis for continuing to curate such a great series!

Notes: Michael Gira - The Knot: Complete Words for Music, Collected Stories and Journals

Paperback; 7 1/4 x 10 1/4 inches, 408 pages, includes 101 colour images printed on high quality photographic paper.

Paperback has bookplate signed by M Gira.

Journals, stories, and songs span the years 1981 to present. Includes visual archives and artwork dating back to 1974.

"From the Preface to The Knot: This book contains the words to every song I've written worth collecting to date from all my musical projects throughout the years. I've left out various imbecilities and feckless half-starts. Also included in this book are several previously published short stories. They're taken from the collections The Consumer and The Egg, as well as a few other hand- made limited editions of stories. In a few cases I've included excerpts rather than the entire story. This was done for aesthetic purposes, with the overall feel of this current volume in mind. There are a great many journal entries in this book. For the most part they are also, emphatically fiction. They're from an ongoing journal, not a diary. My journals are where I often allow a disembodied, fictional 1st person narrator to take over and unspool imagined events, diatribes, impossible scenarios, psychic auto-cannibalisms, and corrosive or ecstatic dreams etc. Again, these are fiction. Certain things I've written about (in fiction and in song form) seem to exist beneath the surface (in myself and others) and I find them compelling to look at and to describe. I view this as a positive act. In acknowledgment of the constricting and microscopically judgmental and censorious times we live in, the usual authorial caveats apply here. Certainly there are many purely anecdotal journal entries included in this book as well, and my presumption is that an intelligent reader would be able to differentiate one from the other. Personally, I'm very suspicious of memory (especially my own), so I can't definitively vouch for the veracity of the recounting of the literal events herein either. I have also excised material that I felt too personal to include, out of respect for the people involved as well as for myself. There are several large gaps in the journal entries over the years. This is due to lost journals of the time, and in one case a lost laptop (which, painfully, contained a great deal of writing). There are also periods where I didn't keep a journal and didn't write fiction. In any event, I've tried to include fiction and journal entries that correspond roughly to the period before and after a musical album's release and the words that were written for that music. The end section of this book consists of recently unearthed visual documents and imagery and functions here as an incidental archive. The images span the years from 1974 to the present."

Michael Gira

Notes: Optional accessory replacement panel.

Black anodised alu + heavy duty screen printing.

Review: Peaktime zoneouts from Rodhad and company; Crimson Rubeus is the first compilation on WSNWG to be curated by the techno titan, and hears eight rising bubblers of the scene contribute to a well-rounded octagonal sonic prism in double LP form. All circulating for months in demo form and as fixtures of Rodhad's sets across Europe, every track here - from the snappy synaptics of Nastia Reigel's 'Limit Y' to the non-duped beffudlery of O (phase)'s 'Exiting The Delusion' - drips with an aural crimson rouge; truly a hematophage's dream. Rodhad does the almost impossible here; squeezes blood from the stony style that is hypnotic techno.

Review: Beautifully arranged, elegant and wistful, Dream Talks is a set of ten carefully crafted classic songs; From the autumnal opener 'Today is the Day' to the hot summer night finale of 'Turquoise Moon', Still Corners have created a sound that is focused, stylish and seductive. Written in various places - the south of France, East Sussex, UK and Woodstock, New York - the album is matchingly riven both in style and subject matter, with the former spanning ethereal electronica and crystal-clear dream pop, and the latter moving to themes of obsession to reality to "ships in the night".

Review: &Chakib is the debut album from Swiss Producer, DJ, and live-act Dominik Traub, also known as Dandara. Infusing influences from Africa, Asia, and Latin America with European techno and house, Dominik's signature sound shines through. The album's inception came after a fateful encounter with Algerian vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Chakib Bouzidi at a festival in Basel. Despite Chakib's untimely passing, Dominik continued the project, honouring his memory by completing the work. Infused with Chakib's voice notes and collaborative recordings, the album serves as a heartfelt tribute and through resilient collaboration and creative influence it emerges as a fine collection of globally influenced dance music.

Review: Hailing from the Adirondack Mountains in New York, Blackbraid is the one-man black project of Jon Krieger, also known by his pseudonym Sgah'gahsowah (Mohawk name meaning "The Witch Hawk"). Following on from his exceptional 2022 debut full-length, Blackbraid II furthers Krieger's sonic marrying of esoteric blackened chaos with elements of traditional indigenous music, including the use of Native American flutes and pan instruments. With lyrics touching on racism, genocide and displacement; Krieger attempts to relinquish the far-right neo-Nazi rhetoric surrounding the black metal genre by imbuing it with earnest, despair-driven, authentic history. Imagine if a black metal band provided the score to Martin Scorsese's Killers Of The Flower Moon, and Blackbraid is precisely what you'd get.

Review: Chet Baker's Round Midnight 79 is a captivating live studio album that showcases his exceptional talent as a jazz trumpeter and song arranger. Recorded in one take with no overdubs, the album captures the raw energy and intimacy of a live performance. Baker's trumpet playing is both sultry and expressive, particularly on tracks like 'What's New?'. Accompanied by Rachel Gould's cabaret-style singing on 'All Blues', adds a unique touch to the album. The supporting musicians, including Henry Florens on piano, Jean-Paul Florens on guitar, Jim Richardson on bass, and Tony Mann on drums, provide a solid foundation for Baker's improvisations. Together, they create a cohesive and captivating soundscape that transports listeners to a smoky jazz club. It is a timeless album that continues to captivate and inspire listeners to this day.

Review: Shoegaze and indie rock fans rejoice! The new Ride album - their first for five years - is here, featuring 12 new songs in total, many of whch were with some of them being debuted on their recent tour. 'Peace Sign' triumphantly begins the album with the signature wall of sound that Ride is so well known for, while 'Last Frontier' seems to be a firm fan favourite already. Stunning , dynamic and beautifully crafted, the album comes on double colored vinyl complete with insert and MP3 download code and looks likely to be the best shoegaze album of 2024.

Review: When 2017's Weather Diaries marked the first full-length from Oxford shoegaze legends Ride in 21 years, many welcomed what was presumed to be a reshaping of legacy so as to not have bowed out with the negatively received Tarantula. This made 2019's This Is Not A Safe Place even more of a joyous sonic spectacle (before touching on the fact that the LP legitimately bore some of the band's finest work to date). Now that the dust has settled on a plethora of tour dates and festival appearances, we arrive at the third of their post-reunion albums with the highly anticipated Interplay. From the bubbling, ethereal synths of lead single 'Peace Sign' to the hazy, neo-psych dream-pop of 'Last Frontier', Ride appear more rejuvenated and hopeful than they've ever sounded, and it's a miracle in and of itself to be on the cusp of nearly having as many post as pre-break up records.

Review: Meiko Kaji is renowned for her influential contributions to Japanese cinema and music and none are as standout as Gincho Wataridori which stands alone as a masterful musical odyssey that was first released in 1973. The record is a sonic tapestry that weaves traditional Japanese folk elements with contemporary arrangements all the while showcasing Kaji's evocative vocals and poetic lyricism. The title track, 'Gincho Wataridori,' encapsulates the album's ethereal beauty and finds Kaji's emotive delivery accompanied by lush instrumentation to create a haunting atmosphere that resonates with listeners. A cinematic journey throughout, Gincho Wataridori stands as a testament to Meiko Kaji's ability to transcend genres and craft timeless musical soundscapes.

Review: Brion Gysin was a true original who left his mark on modern culture when he introduced William Burroughs to the cut-up technique, but he also recorded a swathe of experimental, funk-fuelled releases including the 1983 single 'Kick/Junk'. That single has been expanded into this album for Wewantsounds, which features Don Cherry's trumpet work on 'Kick' amongst many other talented players. It's a freewheeling listen which takes its inspiration from many places, finding space for tender folk experimentation with an African twist on 'All Those Years' and embraces jazz as a vessel for sonic and rhythmic exploration when the moment calls for it.

Review: Wewantsounds press ahead with their hotly-awaited reissue of Japanese piano jazz master Fumio Itabashi's acclaimed album from 1981, Watarase. A seminal document of the history of jazz recorded at the rough moment that the pianist reached his career apogee - the eighties saw him perform several international tours - Watarase is exemplary of Itabashi's unorthodox piano playing for the time. Virtuosic, yet not indulgent of sustained notes or boilerplate consonance, Watarase is keen to wring out the purity of each composition, seeming less interested in style or ornamentation over pure composition. The result is an album which we're not surprised was raised to the heights of jazz standard exalt, with the title track being of most note in this regard; although the less obvious cuts here are also particularly enchanting, such as the rollicking two-chord improvs of 'Miss Cann'.

Review: Following the success of their previous Tokyo Glow compilation, Wewantsounds once again team up with Japanese Tokyo-based DJ Notoya to dig up the rich Electric Bird catalogue, and come with a subsequent, versatile selection of sunny jazz-funk gems recorded between 1978 and 1987 for the label. A tasty selection featuring Yasuaki Shimizu, Toshiyuki Honda and Mikio Masuda, together with a few American musicians such as Ronnie Foster and Bobby Lyle, most tracks here are making their debut outside of Japan, the album comes with a full annotation by Notoya and is a multifarious meander through every angle of the polygonal gamut of J-jazz, disco, city pop, and funk. Highlights include Masuda's 'Let's Get Together' and Foster's prototypical wonky funk number, 'Night Life'.