Rare Silk
Storm

BBS013 - US - 2021The Rongetz Foundation is back with a new album named Velvet Bullet. The forceful music of the adapting sextet is generating a wide range of sensations. From the punchy « Sun Strike » to the hypnotizing « Optophobia », auditors will be able to bounce and dance to « Velvet bullet », « Whirling Dervish » and « Baroque Buffoon ».Rongetz acts as caster in chief and brings in some of the most promising talents of the New York jazz scene. Simon Moullier on Vibes is already recognized by Herbie Hancock and Quincy jones as one of the best musician of his generation, same goes for Jonathan Barber (Drums) Tivon Pennicott (Tenor Sax) and Alexander Claffy on Acoustic Bass. Also featuring on the album is a Nuyorican gem that Rongetz discovered in Manhattan few years ago, Carlos Jimenez (Flute). Keita Oggawa (Percussion) from Snarky Puppy has also joined the team on two tracks.Elegant and powerful, as demonstrated by the breath taking opening piece « Sun Strike », the Velvet Bullet will be out February 19th 2021 and is surely not to be dodged.

2021 repress.The legendary movie soundstrack based out of Kingston, Jamaica in April 2008, telling the story of the original vocalists and musicians involved. The sixteenth release on the Moll-Selekta label shares its title with a wonderful film, a heartwarming homage to the golden age of rocksteady. It documents the recordings being made for this very album at the Tuff Gong studios, Kingston, Jamaica in April 2008, telling the story of the original vocalists and musicians involved. Excerpts from an all star reunion concert staged in Kingston and older archive material complete the picture. Never before in the history of Jamaica, which already occupies a unique place on the world map of song, its sound embraced by western popular music, has such an illustrious collection of singers and players been assembled. The album showcases 15 rocksteady classics in sparkling, deeply inspired new versions, recorded in the studio which also played host to album sessions of a certain Bob Marley. Under the musical direction of Ernest Ranglin, a guitarist of considerable renown not only on the reggae circuit, but also on the jazz scene, mixed by legendary engineer Errol Brown - in Duke Reid's employ at the Treasure Isle studio in the sixties - and freshly arranged by Lynn Taitt.

Marcos Valle is one of the few artists you cannot miss if you have the slightest interest in Brazilian music. Whether your taste is focused on bossa jazz, samba, psych folk or soul, Valle has surely recorded a great album for you. By the late 60s he had already put out enough quality records to secure a place within the top Brazilian songwriters of all time, but his career luckily did not stop there and he continued releasing amazing music over the following decades until this day. He settled in Los Angeles in the mid-70s, tired of living under Brazil’s military dictatorship, and started to collaborate with such talented artists as Leon Ware or Chicago.This self-titled LP from 1983 is the follow-up to the great “Vontade de rever você” (1981) and his second album after moving back to Brazil. It shows all the music influences received during his US years, especially boogie, soul and funk, featuring stellar collaborators: Lincoln Olivetti & Robson Jorge on keyboards and guitar and Leon Ware on backing vocals.The opening track, the Brazilian boogie anthem ‘Estrelar’, is Marcos Valle’s biggest hit from the 80s and one of the most celebrated songs in his entire career, making clear that what he accomplished while in LA would now make its way into Brazil. ‘Estrelar’ is devoted to workout exercises under the sun and Valle pictures a beach lifestyle and summertime vibe across the entire album that pretty much describes his surfing days in Southern California.A couple of early Valle’s classic songs, ‘Samba De Verao’ and ‘Viola Enluarada’, are updated here to sit nicely next to soaring disco tracks, ‘Para Os Filhos De Abraao’, killer vocal boogie numbers, ‘Dia D’, and blissing instrumentals, ‘Naturalmente’. And the list goes on and on over a well-balanced tracklist that satisfies both the listening pleasure and the dancefloor needs.This is an essential album for lovers of 80s cool sounds and the work of Leon Ware, who is the co-writer of three songs in the LP, including the massive ‘Estrelar’ that was first drafted when both artists were working together in the States and then recorded again when Valle returned to Brazil.

Muriel Grossmann’s new album is a great opportunity to experience the energy of a live performance. UNION was recorded in early autumn of 2019 during a two-day recording session in Mallorca studio Caja Del Ruido. In the context of this record and the previous ones, we can clearly talk about Muriel Grossmann’s music as a style of music that is distinctive and recognizable from the very first note. This is music performed with a great artistic concentration, integrity and energy. Released on a 12" heavyweight vinyl record in old-style sleeve with spot matte varnish on top of glossy laminate. Includes insert with liner notes and band photos. Edition of 1500 ex.

Sol Invictus 10" by Colin Fisher

After NEF's album in 2019, Ici Bientôt is happy to present today the reissue of "Comme Au Moulin" by Nyssa Musique. Paris 1985... ‘Extra-European’ Traditions meet Jazz and Minimal Music. An unusual array of instruments turn music into a dialogue. For a unique record ... vivid, full of texture, somewhere between Midori Takada, Don Cherry and Jon Hassell.Beginning of the eighties, 5 musicians rehearse in a contemporary dance class hall, upstairs from the ‘’New Morning", renowned Music venue in Paris. Nyssa Musique is born. Passionate for a long time about traditional music, like those of the Middle East, India and East Asia, but also about African traditions, they throw a bridge between Jazz and ‘Extra-European’ traditions, resulting in what would be called "Spiritual Jazz" today, a little bit in the style of Don Cherry's Organic Music or Pharoah Sanders. With the notable difference, however, that their creations are strongly infused by contemporary classical and repetitive music, notably Steve Reich's work with whom they share a great interest for the traditional cultures of Southeast Asia, particularly Indonesia and its gamelans.In the original group we have Armand Amar, Ballet Music composer and John Boswell. Both specialists of traditional hand percussion which they had been studying for a long time in India and the Middle East, they are also very fond of synthesizers. Three other talented musicians quickly join them: Jean-François Roger, percussionist, marimba and vibraphone specialist, Henri Tournier, multi-flutist and Renaud Garcia-Fons, double bass player, who has a passion for the Middle East and has developed a virtuosic play of the bow, reminding that of Cecil Mc Bee.Each of them enriches the ensemble with their personality, originality and musical generosity. The rehearsal hall is rapidly invaded by the phenomenal instrumentarium put together by Armand Amar. A great opportunity for the musicians, for the dancers, to have access to an endless choice of instruments, offering infinite possibilities for mixing different colors and timbres. Their sense for being a group and their great capacity for improvising culminates, in 1986, in the composition of their first and only album Comme au Moulin (« As by the windmill"), testimony of years of creating without hidden agenda.Authentic, free and vibrant, still today, this album has no real equivalent. Even though it recalls the Fourth World current by its combination of traditional instruments with a subtle use of synthesizers, Comme au moulin gives more space to improvisation. It may also recall those of Midori Takada, less the New Age esthetics. An album that should delight as well lovers of "Love Supreme" by John Coltrane, of "Vernal Equinox" by Jon Hassell, as those of Moondog, an artist who, like them, invented a music based on the use of untypical percussions, at the confluence of 'Extra-European' traditions, Jazz and Classical, all together complex and hypnotic.