The Listening Guide
🎶 The listening guide: five albums, released during the past twelve months, chosen around a weekly theme 🎶
This week, five fantastic LPs from artists based in or well connected to our nation’s capital. Maisha’s Open the Gates features two sprawling tunes, one cut in the studio and another captured live in Lille, whilst Binker & Moses’ Escape The Flames is an entirely live recording, dating back to the launch of their Journey to the Mountain of Forever album at London’s Total Refreshment Centre. Elsewhere, there are two Ubuntu Music releases: a new trio record from Will Glaser, Matthew Herd and Liam Noble, plus a new record from Solstice — a group featuring Tori Freestone and Brigitte Beraha amongst others — and Snowpoet’s eponymous release for Edition Records completing the set. Support them all on Bandcamp!
Will Glaser, Matthew Herd, Liam Noble – Climbing In Circles
Album of the Week
Our NQ Jazz album of the week is is pianist Rolf Zielke’s Beaches in Your Soul, a beautifully recorded album with a warm, celebratory tone. An interesting mix of instruments feature on the record: Stephan Braun’s five-string cello in place of an upright bass, and instruments such as the oud, darbuka, bendir, udu from players Mohannad Nasser and Mustafa Boztüy. All songs, with the exception of the traditional Arabic song Enta Omri, are Zielke’s compositions. Support the project on Bandcamp!
Classic Album
Our classic album this week is another released forty years ago, this as part of Philips’ Música Popular Brasileira Contemporânea series. Guitarist and vocalist Célia Vaz’s Mutação features delightful harmony vocals, lush instrumentation and plenty of Azymuth-esque jazz-funk grooves!