"Archive release. This debut release of Neil Ardley and his New Jazz Orchestra BBC broadcasts from 1971 measure a year of change for the band's musical director.
The first session captures the full majesty of the NJO at the height of it's powers in a Jazz Club session from February with a 20-performer line-up pre-recorded at London's Camden Theatre. Humphrey Lyttelton helms proceedings; musicians include Ardley, Harry Beckett, Ian Carr, Henry Lowther, Derek Wadsworth, Mike Gibbs, Don Rendell...

The Artchipel Orchestra, led by conductor / arranger Ferdinando Farao, is a Italian big band (over 20 participants) and Ferdinando is a big fan of the British jazz and jazz rock scene of the 70s, having previously covered tunes by Alan Gowen, Dave Stewart, Mike Westbrook & Fred Frith, among others.

Here, he's tackling the Soft Machine boo, but even though the title is "Play Soft Machine", a more accurate title would be "Plays Hugh Hopper's Tunes For Soft Machine", as that's what this mostly is....

"Although this album contains a varied selection of material, including one original composition and three tracks from a 1998 Mike Westbrook project, I'm just going to write just a few words about what seems, at the moment, to be at the core of this great orchestra's repertoire: namely, some classic British jazz-rock from the 1970s. This music was always on the margins, of course, even at the time. Back when I was a schoolboy, most of my friends were listening to soul, blues, punk, disco, heavy metal...

This is apparently an authorized-by-Brian collection of rare live recordings from 1968 from the Piper Club in Rome and their appearance on "Ce Soir On Danse" from Paris! Quite good sound for the time period.

"In May 1968, Brian Auger and the Trinity & Julie Driscoll were part of an international rock 'n' roll disaster. That fiasco created a stash of urgent, commanding recordings, capturing a golden moment that took half a century to reach the wider world. A year after Monterey Pop but a year....

"A reissue of Derek Bailey's Solo Guitar release on Incus in 1971, with additional tracks included on previous reissues and a performance at York University in 1972.
Recorded in 1971, Solo Guitar Volume 1 was Bailey's first solo album. Its cover is an iconic montage of photos taken in the guitar shop where he worked. He and the photographer piled up the instruments whilst the proprietor was at lunch, with Bailey promptly sacked on his return.
The LP was issued in two versions over the years...

"A reissue of Derek Bailey and Tristan Honsinger Duo, originally released by Incus in 1976. Born in Burlington, Vermont, and conservatory-trained in the US, the cellist Tristan Honsinger moved from Montreal to Amsterdam in 1974, quickly linking with Han Bennink and Misha Mengelberg and opening a long and fruitful musical relationship with Derek Bailey. Recorded in 1976, Duo displays a performative musical approach already characterized by the lack of inhibition which would later endear him to The Pop...

Django Bates is a Brit-jazz band leader, pianist and tenor horn player of great reknown in the UK. He founded Human Chain in 1979 and in the 1980s he rose to prominence in the big band Loose Tubes. He has performed as a member of Bill Bruford's Earthworks and in the bands of George Russell and George Gruntz.
For this release, he has revisited The Beatles 'Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band', with rather great results, as long as you don't mind hearing a cultural icon get shaken up and remade...

Gordon Beck - piano
Jeff Clyne - bass
Tony Oxley - drums

"Pianist / composer Gordon Beck, one of the true forefathers of modern British and European Jazz, has been a source of inspiration and musical joy to Jazz connoisseurs since the 1960s. His formidable technique and more importantly overwhelming musicality are completely unique and unrivaled. This, his 4th recording as a leader, deserves a special notice for many reasons. Stylistically it is somewhat atypical to Beck’s usual output...

Gordon Beck (piano)
John McLaughlin (guitar)
Jeff Clyne (bass)
Tony Oxley (drums)
Joy Marshall (vocals)
This is very nice, lightly swinging jazz standards. John gets one solo. Don't buy this expecting Extrapolation or Bitches Brew.

"Gordon Beck, English jazz pianist and composer, broke onto the London scene in the early 1960s joining the Tubby Hayes group in 1962. Forming his own succession of groups from 1965 onwards. A subsequent 26 album career established him as one of

A great set in the classic Ornette 4tet vein, mixed with a Brit-jazz feel! I dont know any of these players (Roberto-double bass, Claude Deppa-trumpet, Jason Yarde-alto & soprano sax & Brian Abrahams-drums), but all play fabulously well. [SLAM]

"Tenor saxophonist Binker Golding and drummer Moses Boyd are two of the most exciting young jazz musicians on the London jazz scene.
One year on from their highly praised mega work Journey To The Mountain Of Forever (Urban Album Of The Year 2017 : MoJo Magazine), Binker And Moses return with a blistering assault on the senses.
Their third album in as many years, Binker Golding and Moses Boyd are trailblazers in arguably the most exciting jazz explosion London has ever seen.
Is it a st

Robin Lumley-keyboards
John Goodsall-guitar
Percy Jones-bass
Phil Collins-drums

The good news: This captures Brand X in their early prime, from around the time of their 1st album and with all the fury and fire they had in that period. And in really good 'live and smokin' sound, as this was recorded for a radio broadcast.

The bad news: the radio broadcast was 25' long and that's all that is here.

So - half a great album. And something you'll have to decide if it's wo

This release includes a CD of a new stereo remix, and a DVD with a new 5.1 surround sound mix along with the original 1978 mix, all taken from the original 1978 analogue tapes.
This album, originally released in 1977, established (ex Yes, King Crimson, Genesis, National Health) drummer Bill Bruford as a (very) credible composer and bandleader. For me, this is one of the finest fusion albums to have come out of the UK.
In addition to Bill's excellent playing, there is Dave Stewart on keyboards...

An Italian band who have a great love for Brit-jazz and, more specifically, the Ogun sound. The musicians are:
Pino Minafra trumpet, flugelhorn, voice
Roberto Ottaviano saxophones
Livio Minafra piano
Roberto Bellatalla bass...

Like the somewhat better known Michael Gibbs or lesser known Neil Ardley, bassist/composer Collier is a long time leader in the field of large and small scale jazz compositions that effortlessly meld US jazz (and especially the work of Charles Mingus) ...

Like the somewhat better known Michael Gibbs or lesser known Neil Ardley, bassist/composer Collier is a long time leader in the field of large and small scale jazz compositions that effortlessly meld US jazz (and especially the work of Charles Mingus) ...

"Colosseum's 1969 debut album is a notably pioneering endeavor in its combination of British blues-rock with British jazz-rock, even if the writing and singing aren't as impressive as the confident playing. Graham Bond and some of the horn-augmented...

“Music recorded at London's ICA in July 1982. It's a miracle of group interaction, wonderfully paced, moving steadily between moments of mounting intensity and tension. The passage about halfway through -- when Derek Bailey's harmonics ring out above a sheen of inside piano tremolos and shimmering electronics, topped off by Julie Tippetts's soaring vocalese -- is simply sublime. After which it's fun to try and tell the two pianists apart. Are those runs Ursula Oppens, with her formidable technique honed...

"This double CD set collects together, amongst other things, all of Outtakes for Other Occasions and The Small Screen, both of which were never commercially released, all four pieces from The Classic Guide to NoMansLand, the subscription 7” Pictures...

“This recording from the earlier years of Cafe Oto documents the impossible pairing of four contemporary giants. It's the reason the venue opened in the first place, for miraculous one-off groupings like this.
"The magic of the first minutes -- an alto solo by Joe McPhee of true purity -- soft-spoken, masterful and accomplished -- brought back to mind the blissful Coleman/Haden duet last year at the Royal Festival Hall. 'Ornette gave me freedom to move in a certain way,' said McPhee. He searched...

More roots of Brit-jazz here.
"Digitally remastered reissue of this 1961 album from the jazz drummer. Whole Lotta Tony was recorded and released in 1961 on Ember, and credited to Tony Crombie & His Friends. Drummer Crombie's CV to date had...

With Alex Maguire, Mark Sanders, Paul Dunmall, Simon Picard, Nick Evans, Jim Dvorak, Tony Bianco, Roberto Bellatella, Paul Rogers and others perform with Elton in duets, trios, quartets and quintets. Elton dusts off his Fender Rhodes chops for the 1st ...

Live recording of Elton's splendid band includes four saxists (Elton, Paul Dunmall, Simon Pickard & Trevor Watts), plus the rhythm section of Paul Rogers & Tony Levin. A mixture of heads and freedom. [Ogun]

A very deserving reissue of a semi-obscure, 'free-blowing free-bop with heads' quartet, co-led by Elton Dean & Alan Skidmore (saxes) with Chris Laurence-double bass & John Marshall-drums. Originally released in 1977, jazz/free jazz fans will have their socks knocked off by this!

“Apart from lending his forename to a certain Reg Dwight, Elton Dean is probably still best known for his contribution to Soft Machine, where his fuzzy, amplified alto grafted a jazz sensibility onto that band's organ...

Finally available again after being unavailable for nearly 30 years are the two albums by the group that, had you asked Elton Dean what was the musical association/group he had been a part of that he was most proud of, Ninesense would probably have been the answer. I know, because I asked him!

Ninesense were a combination of the original Keith Tippett Group with many of the players from the Brotherhood of Breath and it combined the sound of both of those groups, along with Elton's compositional....