Mainstream Jazz

Artist: Christian Redl Label: Goldbek

Artist: Various Artists Label: Zyx Music (ZYX)

Artist: Branford Marsalis Label: Music on CD

As an accomplished 12-string guitarist/composer, Alexander Turnquist was naturally alarmed when the ulnar nerve in his left hand seized up in 2013, but after a surgical procedure he gratefully started the process of learning to play guitar again. His recovery was cut short when not long after the surgery he was hospitalized with meningitis. Though his recovery is ongoing, and he continues to struggle with a weakened immune system and memory loss, he was inspired to soldier on, rather than being deterred by his physical struggles. Turnquist's latest full-length Flying Fantasy confirms the idea that out of great hardship can come great art. As he wrote the material for the new album it became clear that his sensitivity had sharpened, his empathy magnified, and his sense of purpose blossomed. The unfortunate circumstances he endured ostensibly forced his metamorphosis from a remarkable guitar player to a truly great composer. Much like the butterflies that adorn the album cover, he seems to have changed form and taken flight. The album opens with the sparse harmonics of "House of Insomniacs", which are soon joined by lush swells of vibes, cello, and even wordless vocals. On the tracks that follow, Turnquist continues to make use of this dynamic sonic pallet, even adding organ, piano, marimba, steel drums, violin, and french horn to the mix. From "Red Carousel", which was inspired by Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes, to the somber lilt of the love song "Wildflower", to the truly arresting title track "Flying Fantasy" which uses only 4 open strummed guitars and loops of damaged tape and wire recorders, every note vibrates with life as Turnquist ushers us though his intoxicatingly colorful worlds of sound Record Label: Western Vinyl Style: Avantgarde

Sára Vondrásková, known by her stage name NEVER SOL, is a Czech singer and composer based in Prague. Writing her first songs in the age of 15 mostly for herself and studying music for 8 years at the conservatory, the important moment came around 2011, when she started to play her songs constantly at one of the most vibrant Bohemian venues in Prague at Café V Lese. Focused on piano and voice she shared the stages with friends and musicians, becoming more confident about her own artistic approach and vision. Shortly after her first concerts producer Jan P. Muchow got in contact with her and the two years long composing process of her debut album UNDER QUIET began. To give her songs a frame Sára Vondrásková created the rather abstract pseudonym NEVER SOL. The piano has always been central in her music writing, but in the past years she was more and more gaining knowledge in using music production software. Creating sounds turned out to be another starting point to evolve her music and to get rid of the patterns and techniques taught in her classical education. Lyrics are very important and ideas evolve naturally when singing along the first song sketches. Sára Vondrásková possesses a voice that seems impossible to shackle to just one musical setting. Therefore she and producer Jan P. Muchow construed a musical architecture for her debut album, full of details and contrasts in question of instrumentation and arrangements. UNDER QUIET is mainly built from piano based on jazz harmony with a strong sense for haunting melancholic melodies and inscrutably captivating atmosphere. While songs like "Lake", "Lay Down" or "Femme Fatale" are nourished by thundering percussion, warm courses of classical orchestral instruments and majestically background chorals - marked by eclectic musical flourishes - the album knows to counterbalance those epic moments, when highlighting Sára's inimitable husky and soulful voice in the more hushed tracks "Run with the Wolves" (mostly accompanied by guitar) or the duet "Saint Fly" together with her close friend Káca Santrochová. "Places" and "The Dive" have been written in the last months of finishing the album. Pulsing beats as well as synthesizer sounds disclose a venturous character of what to expect from NEVER SOL's near future. Sára Vondrásková is a regular guest singer with Czech musician and Denovali artist FLOEX. Touring and performing with Floex is an essential influence and of course strong female artists like CAT POWER, FIONA APPLE, JESSIE WARE or BAT FOR LASHES keep inspiring her work. UNDER QUIET will be released for the first time outside the Czech Republic and on vinyl format in a new artwork. This edition will feature completely re-mastered songs as well as bonus material, resulting in a sound that manages to be simultaneously powerful, intimate and beguilin Style: Independent

Blackest Ever Black presents to you "Dead Unique", an album by OFFICER! recorded in 1995 but never before released into the public domain. This then is not a reissue or a revival; it's a new record that just happens to have been maturing in the cask for, oh, a little shy of 20 years. It also happens to be a lost classic of English art-rock, and the crowning achievement in the career of its mercurial creator, Mick Hobbs. Initially as guitarist in THE WORK (alongside Bill Gilonis, Rick Wilson and Henry Cow's Tim Hodgkinson), and subsequent related groupings THE LOWEST NOTE, THE LO YO YO, and THE MOMES he became closely associated with THIS HEAT and their Cold Storage studio in Brixton over the course of the 1980's. OFFICER! - the project that this incorrigible collaborator and connector calls his own - surfaced in 1982 with a cassette tape entitled "Eight New Songs By Mick Hobbs". It marked the blossoming of a singular writer and improvisor, with a gift for plangent melody, ingenious arrangement and lyrics at once caustic and courtly, playful and profound. The Cold Storage-recorded "Ossification" LP arrived a year later, followed by "Cough" (1985) and "Yes Yes No No Yes No Yes" (1988). By the start of the 1990s Hobbs had joined Jad Fair's HALF JAPANESE (he continues to play in that group as well as Strobe Talbot, a trio with Fair and Benb Gallaher). In the early months of '95, HALF JAPANESE were in Baltimore to record their "Hot" LP; Hobbs stayed on to cut the bulk of the songs that comprise OFFICER!'s "Dead Unique" - songs drawn from a rich store of material written and refined in the seven years since the band's last outing - with a talented assemblage of local and visiting musicians. Returning to the UK, Hobbs brought the tracks to producer Julia Brightly to mix at her 16-track home studio in Bethnal Green; by the end of the reasons that no one, least of all Hobbs, can remember, "Dead Unique" was shelved, all but forgotten about until 2012, when Blackest Ever Black chanced upon it while trawling the OFFICER! archive maintained for Hobbs by Andrew Jacques. Finally and rightfully the album will be made available to all for the very first time - on double-vinyl, CD and digital formats. A complex but thrillingly immediate avant-pop song cycle that charms and confounds at every turn, "Dead Unique" will give immense pleasure not only to OFFICER!'s existing cult following, but to anyone with an appreciation of summer. For piquant, idiosyncratic songcraft - fans of Kevin Ayers, Flaming Tunes, Art Bears, Woo, Dislocation Dance, R. Stevie Moore, Robert Wyatt, Cleaners From Venus, Lol Coxhill or The Monochrome Set should especially pay attention. It touches upon ragged-raw rock'roll, sumptuous chamber music, pastoral folk, blowsy prog-jazz and paranoid dub-space, effortlessly shifting from skronking abstraction to rousing harmonic refrain and back again Record Label: Blackest Ever Style: Avantgarde

Artist: Amos Lee Label: Music on Vinyl (Cargo Records)

Artist: Friedemann Label: Exile on M (Godbrain Distribution)

Artist: Judy Collins

Artist: Krokus Label: Rock Candy

Artist: Neil Cowley Trio Label: Naim Jazz

Artist: Jimmy Giuffre Label: Elemental

Artist: Bugge Wesseltoft's OK World Label: Jazzland

Artist: John Zorn Label: Tzadik

Artist: Noura Mint Seymali Label: Glitterbeat

Artist: Dexter Johnson Label: Teranga Beat

Artist: Slim Smith

Artist: Gwilym Simcock Label: Act

Artist: Arto Lindsay Label: Ponderosa