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Mats Gustafsson - Flute, baritone sax, live electronics, Johan Berthling - Electric bass, Andreas Werliin - Drums with Goran Kajfes - Quartertone trumpet, Mats Aleklint - Trombone, sousaphone, horn arrangements. Fire! tracking new paths and reaching new levels of excellence, still honoring their 12...
Standard edition release but with all the usual Japanese elements, including obi-strip and liner note translations. 4 tracks of previously unreleased Don Cherry material, including 3 new compositions. Recorded in 1965, Copenhagen, Denmark. Sourced from the original tapes. (Analogue recording,...
From A Love Supreme to The Sex Machine! The personal musical mantra of the late Philadelphia reedman Byard Lancaster informed an open-minded and varied lifetime in jazz. Strut presents one of Lancaster's lesser known classics, ‘My Pure Joy', recorded in 1992 for Black Fire. Lancaster had initially...
Clarinetist, composer, singer & spiritual jazz soothsayer Angel Bat Dawid presents this powerful live document alongside her band, Tha Brothahood. LIVE was mostly recorded on November 1st, 2019, at Haus der Berliner Festspiele in Berlin, Germany, during the 2019 edition of JazzFest Berlin. For...
Strut present the first ever international reissue of a live session for Black Fire by the late, hugely respected baritone saxman and flautist, Hamiet Bluiett, ‘Bearer Of The Holy Flame', recorded at Sweet Basil in New York in July 1983. Inspired by Harry Carney from Duke Ellington's band, who had...
Strut present the first ever international reissue of one of the most sought-after albums from the Black Fire catalogue, Lon Moshe & Southern Freedom Arkestra's life-affirming ‘Love Is Where The Spirit Lies' from 1977. "Lon was creating his own path in his music life at this time," remembers Black...
The American Negro is an unapologetic critique, detailing the systemic & malevolent psychology that afflicts people of color. It should be evident that any examination of black music is an examination of the relationship between black & white America. This relationship has shaped the cultural...
Though it's hard to pick a winner among the estimable Black Jazz catalog, this 1972 release from bassist Henry "The Skipper" Franklin would have to be near the top of the list. Franklin got his start woodshedding with Latin maverick Willie Bobo in the mid-‘60s and went on to play with The Three...
Strut continue their in-depth archive reissues from the Black Fire label with a definitive edition of JuJu's ‘Live At 131 Prince Street',recorded in 1973 at Ornette Coleman's gallery in New York and featuring a previously unheard recording of the Pharoah Sanders composition "Thembi". After forming...
Alto saxophonist, composer and producer Logan Richardson's career has been marked by his deep engagement with the Black American improvised music tradition as much as by his fearlessly open-minded embrace of the contemporary sounds of the global diaspora and his keen gaze towards the future....
In between acting as Producer on all of the Black Jazz label releases, keyboardist Gene Russell also cut two fine albums for the imprint, of which this is the second, released in 1973. Judging by the quality of their respective solo outings for the label, the fact that Russell's band includes...
Electric Jalaba comprises six accomplished musicians with an empathy that feels telepathic and a groove that immerses. In Arabic, the mother tongue of Moroccan-born singer and guimbri player Simo Lagnawi, a leading practitioner of Gnawa music in Britain, they call this indefinable quality, "El Hal"...
George Otsuka is one of the giants of the Nippon jazz scene. The drummer, who sadly passed away in 2020, enjoyed a 50 year career recording with the best musicians and labels in Japan. Born Keiji Otsuka in 1937 in Tokyo, Otsuka joined Sadao Watanabe's Cosy Quartet in the late fifties before...
Heaven and Earth Magick showcases Zorn's fabulous and compelling blending of Classical virtuosic instrumental writing with the improvisational world of Jazz. Completely notated works for piano and vibraphone brilliantly performed by Steve Gosling and Sae Hashimoto are set against a dynamic...
Pianist, composer, and vocalist Cameron Graves calls the music he's architected for his new Artistry Music/Mack Avenue Music Group release thrash-jazz, though that only begins to tell the story. Yes, upon an initial listen, the juggernaut metal force and hardcore precision of Seven can knock you...
Whereas Veronica Swift's 2019 Mack Avenue Records debut, Confessions, contained songs that played out like pages from her personal diary, on this captivating follow-up, This Bitter Earth, she flips the script by crafting an ingenious song cycle that tackles sexism ["How Lovely to Be a Woman"],...
The shadow that Gary Bartz casts over the last six decades of progressive Black music makes him an integral contributor to the Jazz is dead series. An alto saxophonist steeped in the history and tradition of his instrument, Bartz has earned the respect and admiration of his peers. A look at the...
Arriving in 1978, X-Dreams is an infatuating and resolutely feminine free-form exploration of the politics and dynamics of sex. In the pursuit to reconcile the duality of attraction & repulsion and love & cruelty, the album oscillates between an assertive opening side and a sweeter side B....
Keyboardist Carn's 1971 debut record for Black Jazz introduced his stylistic wrinkle of adding lyrics to jazz classics like John Coltrane's ‘Acknowlegement (A Love Supreme),' Horace Silver's ‘Peace,' and Wayne Shorter's title track, all sung by the gorgeous, thrilling voice of his wife Jean Carn. A...
Aside from McCoy Tyner's "Contemplation," John Coltrane's "Naima," and René McLean sic McClean's "Jihad," Doug Carn himself takes the composing reins on this masterful 1973 release, which further integrates Jean Carn's ethereal yet soulful vocals into the his impressive stylistic vision. And this...