In my copious spare time (heh) I've been known to pen brief CD reviews for the Internet music service eMusic. Somehow, happily, over there I'm enlisted as a jazz specialist, which is good for keeping that work from conflicting with my regular gigs. And a true bounty arrived just this week, as eMusic added a sizeable number of new titles from the catalogs of the Italian labels Black Saint and Soul Note.
To call these labels -- or perhaps "this label," since they're both imprints operated by a single operation -- important is to understate the case by an order of magnitude: I literally can't imagine a scenario regarding jazz in the '80s, nor my own education and immersion in the music, without the efforts of label owner Giovanni Bonandrini and his colleagues.
Lucky me, I was allowed to review three longtime favorite discs: John Carter's magnificent Dauwhe, Paul Motian's mellow The Story of Maryam and Cecil Taylor's mysterious Olu Iwa.
Other crucial albums in the launch -- many reviewed by some of my favorite writers, including Kevin Whitehead, Britt Robson and Peter Margasak -- include two more desirable Taylor sets, Winged Serpent (Sliding Quadrants) and For Olim, as well as the self-titled debut by Old and New Dreams, Antony Braxton's Eugene, the World Saxophone Quartet's Revue, Trickles by Steve Lacy and Roswell Rudd, Henry Threadgill's Spirit of Nuff...Nuff, Voodoo by the Sonny Clark Memorial Quartet, and so very much more.
Even if you're not an eMusic member -- and I'm certainly not trying to sell you a subscription -- this is worth a look, and definitely something to celebrate. Me, I'm a paying subscriber, and I can't wait to dig in and hear more than a few albums I've always meant to hear, but never quite got around to.
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