This Cosmic Jazz show dives into a bunch of new releases and checks out a couple of rarities from Don Cherry and McCoy Tyner. There’s so much great new jazz around at the moment that it’s difficult to keep up so check out the many links that are scattered through this blogpost and enjoy!
Your Brother’s Keeper – Cauldron from Where Rivers Meet
We begin with a new album from drummer Jake Long and his outfit Your Brother’s Keeper, featuring saxophonist elder statesman Gary Bartz, Released just a couple of months ago, the new band is born out of previous project Maisha (featured several times previously on CJ), with this first album Where Rivers Meet appearing on Gilles Peterson’s Brownswood label. There’s electronics, dub, funk and more than a touch of spiritual jazz on this mix and, whilst the record is patchy, there’s some great playing from Bartz here – a saxophonist whose career now spans more than five decades. He emerged performing with Charles Mingus, Max Roach and Art Blakey before joining Miles Davis during the trumpeter’s electrifying early-1970s period. Bartz soon became a defining figure of the spiritual jazz movement through his celebrated NTU Troop recordings, creating a body of work that continues to resonate across generations of musicians and listeners alike. Perhaps the most celebrated of those 1970s records is his excellent live at Montreux recording from 1973, and featuring the epic I’ve Known Rivers (later covered by Courtney Pine). On this one, the leader fires off long, impassioned solo statements equally informed by head and heart. And then there’s the huge slab of electric funk that is Dr Follow’s Dance, featuring rare wah-wah sax acrobatics. On the new record, Bartz and Long are joined by Chelsea Carmichael on sax, Ali MacSween on synth, Axel Kaner-Lidstrom on trumpet), Twm Dylan on bass and Tim Doyle on additional percussion. It’s well worth a listen.
Chris Potter – Into Africa from Alive With Ghosts Today
From the ever-inventive Edition Records comes a new Chris Potter record – his seventh for the label. It’s a really interesting one too as there’s a clear theme: it’s the story of John Brown, the Christian Abolitionist who saw slavery as sin and, horrified by the state-backed violence of the pro-slavery armed forces, finally chose violence after years of facilitating the Underground Railway to assist escaped slaves. He was subsequently the first man in the States to be hung for treason. It’s a story that holds the complexity and tragedy of America in one moment, Potter says. It felt important to engage with it now. Potter’s approach is typically eclectic, with the opening title track a statement of intense intent, followed by the bluesy groove of Osawatomie Brown, with its echoes of Marvin Gaye in the bass line and its tough tenor stance. The violin is still a rare instrument in jazz but on this record Sara Caswell is a vital force. Guitarist Bill Frisell laces it together, sometimes resonating with his African heroes like Ali Farka Touré or rocking out as of old. Into Africa begins with a typically inventive tenor solo before some terrific ensemble playing (including some lovely bass clarinet from Rane Moore. All of Potter’s huge output is worth exploring but this new album is right up there with the best – check it out now.
Skerik – Air Garden from 061725
Skerik (or Eric Walton) is a tenor and baritone saxophonist from Seattle, Washington who uses a range of electronics and loops to create a unique sound. 061725 is his first fully fledged ambient album in a 30 year career and across six tracks he creates a series of dreamlike states, full of sonic textures that have come to be called saxophonics. An influence on this unique sound was Eno’s Music for Airports (1978) which his mother played around the house while he was growing up. Later, he was introduced to ECM Records and artists like Eberhard Weber, so deepening his connection to spacious, atmospheric compositions. You can listen to and buy the album here on Bandcamp. For more music in a similar vein, Neil recommends Anenon – listen to the title track from his latest Dream Temperature album.
Don Cherry – Desireless from Relativity Suite
Ah – now Neil has had this record since it first appeared on vinyl in 1973 and he’s played this 1 minute and 22 seconds of aural perfection innumerable times, every time marvelling at Carlos Ward’s gorgeous alto saxophone melody. CJ listeners will recall a similar enthusiasm for Ward’s more extended but equally beautiful solo on Abdullah Ibrahim’s The Wedding from the African Marketplace album. We didn’t acknowledge Ward’s death in January 2026 but this vastly under-rated alto saxophonist deserves much more attention than he received in his lifetime. He featured on many albums over the years although released only four under his own name. Ward was born in Panama City but moved with his family to Seattle where he began to study the clarinet. Joining the US military, Ward was stationed in Germany where he met and played with Albert Mangelsdorff and Karl Berger. In 1965, before returning to the United States, he met and spent time with Don Cherry who was playing with Abdullah Ibrahim, Ward went on to record 11 albums with Ibrahim including the superb The Journey (1978) and Water From an Ancient Well (1983). Ward was also featured on John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle, recorded in 1965 and issued in 2021 – it’s one of only two live recordings of A Love Supreme, the other being recorded in Juan-les-Pins, Antibes. For more Carlos Ward, listen to him here on Bra Joe from Kilimanjaro from the recently released The Third World Underground album, recorded with Don Cherry and Dollar Brand (Abdullah Ibrahim). That album is available now on the WeWantSounds label on DL, LP and CD here on Bandcamp or in your local record store – but good luck with finding a copy of Relativity Suite!
Shabaka – A Future Untold from Of the Earth
Recording completely solo is a real challenge in jazz. Interaction between musicians is usually at the heart of the form but (as we’ve just heard with Skerik) it’s not always necessary. Of the Earth is built around multiple loops across a range of different reed and wind instruments. Shabaka is back on his A record built entirely from your own parts inevitably puts composition and editing in the foreground. The structural foundation of Of the Earth is the loop – rhythms of various shapes and sizes tumble out of silence and whirl in place, and when Shabaka lands on an interesting pattern he’s not afraid to let it play on its own for a few bars. More than this, Shabaka raps on the album: I’ve never rapped before but was actually inspired by André 3000’s courage in exploring new dimensions with fearlessness and sincerity; I decided to find my voice on this album. It’s often difficult to know where each tune is going – but that’s part of the delight of this album and surprises abound. Step Lightly even sounds like a bunch of school recorders for the first few bars before a kind of soca rhythm and metallic chimes kick in and the tune goes in a different direction. Worth an exploration – track it down here on Bandcamp or in you local record store.
McCoy Tyner – Goin’ Home from Asante
This neglected album has just appeared in a Tone Poet edition on Blue Note. Sadly that means parting with around £36 (€41) unless you can track down the original 1974 copy. However, unless you’re wedded to an original pressing, the Tone Poet reissue is the one to go for. This is a superb sounding reissue win a gatefold sleeve with excellent notes by Syd Schwartz that is well worth checking out. Pianist McCoy Tyner had been increasingly looking to Mother Africa for inspiration on his Blue Note recordings of the late-1960s on pieces like African Village and Message from the Nile. With Asante (recorded in in 1970), he brought those influences to the fore with a powerful set that’s rooted in the swirling percussive rhythmic bed laid by drummer Billy Hart and percussionist Mtumé. Buster Williams delivers those characteristic fat basslines, and guitarist Ted Dunbar is much more than just rhythm accompaniment. Alto saxophonist Andrew White (who was an equally good bass player on Weather Report’s Sweetnighter album as evidenced by his playing here on 125th Street Congress) makes up the rest of this exciting group. The wordless vocals of Songhai on the extended album opener Malika and the title track also contribute to the atmosphere of this terrific album. The music looks forward to the sounds that Tyner would create on his Milestone records including one of Neil’s all-time favourite albums, Sahara (1972) – here’s the extended title track. Indeed, it’s probable that the success of Sahara prompted Blue Note to reissue Asante some four years after it was recorded.
Simon Moullier – Ceiba from Ceiba
Vibraphonist Moullier is one of those random discoveries made by Neil as he explores new online sounds – but he has also appeared earlier on an Cosmic Jazz show this year when we featured the new Edition Records album by Ben Wendel. BaRcoDe included Moullier along with two other leading vibes players we know well on CJ – Joel Ross and Patricia Brennan. Ceiba is Moullier’s sixth album as a leader and the third release with his quartet – Lex Korten on piano, Rick Rosato on bass, and Jongkuk Kim on drums. The album also includes guest percussionist Keita Ogawa on two tracks. All original compositions, Ceiba is full of strong melodies and really effective interplay. Indeed, Joshua Redman notes that Ceiba is one of the best modern mainstream instrumental jazz records I’ve heard in years: gorgeous writing; flawless yet fearless playing; impeccably crafted from beginning to end.
As an improviser, Simon has that holy trinity: melody, feel and flow. And what a sound. It’s difficult to add more. Ceiba is available in DL and LP formats – again from here on Bandcamp or in your local record store.
Omar Sosa – Back Home to My Dwelling from We Are Not the Headliner
It’s thanks to promoter Rob Adams up in Scotland for this one – a brand new live recording from Cuban multi-instrumentalist and Grammy-nominated Omar Sosa. The new album has the frankly awful title We Are Not the Headliner, but get past that and you’ll have a great tiem with this music… The new record features Sosa’s new ensemble Quarteto Americanos – reeds player Sheldon Brown, drummer Josh Jones and bass player Ernesto Mazar Kindelán. The 11 tracks feature tunes the band has presented on tour over the past few years plus several new pieces, There’s special guest contributions from Natascha Atlas (vocals), Guillermo Gómez-Peña (spoken word), Reggie Stephens (spoken word), Tito Leliebre (percussion), and Camilo Landau and Kai Lyons (tres). For more Omar Sosa you could start with his excellent Mulatos album (2004) or that album’s rather good set of remixes – including this take on La Tra from Basephunk.
Nightmares on Wax – You Bliss from In a Space Outta Dub
Our final tune is from the outer edges of jazz – but it is excellent. With dub wizard Adrian Sherwood at the controls this set of remixes from the Nightmares on Wax album In a Space Outta Sound is predictably inspired. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of In A Space Outta Sound, George Evelyn (aka Nightmares on Wax) handed over the tapes to Sherwood who went on a heady version excursion with eight tracks from the original record, in the spirit of the reggae and sound system roots that informed the original album. You Bliss [not My Bliss as Neil referred to it in the show] is a reworking of the original You Wish with its charming sample of Judy Clay and William Bell’s lovely Private Number. As well as his trademark mixing desk wizardry, Sherwood also brought in some of the core On-U Sound players to add additional instrumentation and turn this collaboration into something which is much more than the sum of its parts. Neil absolutely loves this one! Available (of course) from Bandcamp and your local record store.
More from Cosmic Jazz soon…
The return of Neil is listening to…
- Eiji Nakayama – Aya’s Samba
- Joe Henderson – Fire
- Alfonso Soliano – Masth Chantani
- Akusmi – Rain Dance
- Curió Curió – Bem Querer
The full length track on 1970’s Bitches Brew is over 20 minutes long and – uniquely for a jazz tune at the time – features over a dozen studio edits and loops from producer Teo Macero. Jazzwise noted that Miles would Never again would he turn himself, and the music of his time, inside out acknowledging Bitches Brew as the last epoch-making album to appear in jazz. Now whilst Cosmic Jazz might question this unequivocal statement, the influence of this double album on the world of jazz cannot be overestimated. I’ve written about Bitches Brew many times on this platform and elsewhere (see our first Miles @ 100 show) and so had to feature the album once more, choosing the second single edit from the 
Get Up With It is a rather misunderstood album in the Miles Davis canon. It emerged in 1974 and is the second of two sort-of compilations that emerged that year, the first being Big Fun. Both feature music from the 1970-74 period when Miles was wilfully bending genres – and Big Fun contains one of Neil’s favourite out-takes, the improbably funky 
An odd pairing? Not really: in 1982 Brian Eno travelled to Ghana where he spent time recording ambient sounds on a portable cassette recorder and then listening to the results on his headphones. In his liner notes to Ambient 4: On Land released later that year Eno noted that The effect of this simple technological system was to cluster all the disparate sounds into one aural frame: they became music. In the revised reissue notes he added that after returning from Ghana, Eno noted that the guitarist Robert Quine had given him a copy of Miles Davis’ He Loved Him Madly and that Teo Macero’s revolutionary production on that piece seemed to me to have the ‘spacious’ quality I was after and … it became a touchstone to which I returned frequently. 
Live at the Fillmore East is notable in that it records the final concert with saxophonist Wayne Shorter in Miles’ band. A few months after, he would join Joe Zawinul to create Weather Report – striking out in another direction completely. If Weather Report is new to you then compare what they do with Zawinul’s tune 
It’s About That Time originally appeared on A Silent Way (1969) forming the core of the side-long experiment that was bookended by the title track. This remix from a 2007 tribute-cum-reinterpretation of some classic Miles tunes features rapper Nas on vocals and his father Olu Dara on trumpet, Carlos Santana on guitar and Miles’ nephew Vince Wilburn, Jr. on drums and programming, with co-production by drummer Lenny White. The centrepiece of this unusual EP is the updating of It’s About That Time but there’s a 
Miles had returned to the studio in 1980, after a long hiatus during which he left the trumpet alone and focused on women and cocaine – according to his autobiography. He was certainly not in good health at this time but he recorded the patchy The Man With the Horn (1981) and then formed a live band with Mike Stern on guitar, Al Foster on drums, Bill Evans on soprano sax, Mino Cinelu on percussion and Marcus Miller on bass. It had been six years since Miles had played live and audiences were nervous about the outcome. They needn’t have worried. Miles subsequently won a Grammy for best jazz instrumental performance by a soloist but, characteristically, said that he didn’t know why… Neil saw this group in April 1982 when Miles performed three nights at the Hammersmith Odeon, London and where Back Seat Betty – a highlight of We Want Miles – was a standout. Writer George Cole in his excellent blog The Last Miles has written persuasively about this show – find out more 
Perhaps the most conventional of Neil’s choices for this second Miles special but, nonetheless, this final set of performances by Miles with John Coltrane is a must have. So What comes from a performance at the Tivolis Koncertsal in Copenhagen. It’s the same group that recorded the previous year (in 1959) the iconic Kind of Blue album with Wynton Kelly replacing Bill Evans on piano. These are intense performances with Kelly being an admirable foil for Miles’ modal constructions and Coltrane’s increasingly muscular solos. This anthology was released as part of the ongoing Bootleg series in 2018 and is available as a 4CD with a single vinyl edition of the complete Copenhagen concert also in the racks.
Betsu no Jikan is the culmination of a two-year exploration by guitarist Takuru Okada, improvising with 
Rubberband was recorded in 1985 but not released until 2019. As such, it qualifies as ‘lost album’ – with all the critical uncertainty that this status brings. Of course, it’s not a great Miles album – that would have been too much to expect. But there are many redeeming features – not least the vocals of Ledisi on this version of the title track. It’s a highlight of this patchy album, recorded when Miles had left Columbia Records and was heading to Warner Bros., and it’s very much a record of it’s time – there’s lots of synths and slap bass but there’s still the unmistakeable Miles tone liberally sprinkled across the record (and note that – uniquely on CJ – throughout this piece we will be referring to the trumpeter by his first name alone).
This celebrated soundtrack to Louis Malle’s film (1958) was improvised by Miles while watching a playback of the film in the studio. Miles was playing the Club Saint-Germain in Paris in November 1957 and was introduced to Malle by Juliette Greco (with whom Miles had previously had an affair). Later he was invited to a private screening of Ascenseur Pour L’Echafaud (Lift To The Scaffold) before taking his group to the studio and improvising to a projection of extracts from the film. The result was this perfect soundtrack recorded in just three hours. The band he used was the Barney Wilen Quartet: Wilen on tenor sax, Rene Urtreger on piano, Pierre Michelot on bass and American expat drummer and bebop pioneer Kenny Clarke. In his autobiography, Miles claims he chose the studio for its gloomy, dark ambience and that’s translated into this stunning music. Just check out 
Very recently re-released, The 
Neil acknowledges that there are good reasons why this didn’t make the final cut on In A Silent Way, the album that first saw Miles breaking out of the classic Quintet structure and instead beginning to deploy a bigger cast of what would become the most important musicians in jazz. Splashdown is simply not good enough. But it is fascinating in these box sets to hear the evolution of what becomes some of the most influential music in the genre. By early 1969, Miles’ core working band had stabilised around Wayne Shorter now on soprano sax, Dave Holland on bass with Chick Corea on Fender Rhodes and Jack de Johnette on drums. For In a Silent Way, Miles added Tony Williams (again) and Herbie Hancock (again) and then included English guitarist John McLaughlin and Austrian keyboard player Joe Zawinul (who had been in Cannonball Adderley’s band). Significantly, this was the first jazz album to be extensively edited by producer Teo Macero whose techniques were informed by classical sonata form. The result was that the first and third sections of each of the two tracks on the album were the same. Check out this alternative take on the stunning 
Now, this is music to make you cry – indeed Neil knows people who do when they listen to this early example of work by the First Great Quintet as they were called – Miles on trumpet, John Coltrane on tenor sax, Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums. As his star rose in 1955, Miles had formed his new quintet and – in order to fulfil contractual obligations – he went into the studio in 1956, recording in just two sessions enough material for four albums. These were subsequently titled Workin’, Cookin’, Relaxin’ and Steamin’. From Workin’, It Never Entered My Mind was a Rogers and Hart tune recorded by – among others – 
Another selection from one of the Columbia boxes, this track comes from the Complete Jack Johnson set, collected in 2003. Named for Panamanian boxer Roberto Durán, this track is also one that didn’t make the final cut on the Jack Johnson album (1971) – but it is a terrific piece, driven by Jack De Johnette’s rock-powered drumming and Steve Grossman’s stunning soprano sax. The album was conceived by Davis to accompany a documentary about Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion and was clearly inspired by the political and racial subtext of Johnson’s story. The musicians on the two day session also included John McLaughlin and Sonny Sharrock on guitars, Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea on keyboards with new electric bass player Michael Henderson setting an irresistible groove.
We end this show with a wonderful tune from Miles’ favourite singer, Shirley Horn. This would be the final guest appearance on record from Miles – just a few months after recording this in 1991 he would be dead. But there’s no sense of loss of tone here – that unmistakable trumpet sound weaves around Horn’s vocal with the same mesmerising effect that we heard on It Never Entered My Mind. In a magazine interview Horn noted Well, I loved Miles so much. He got to be like a part of me. Of course, I knew about him many years before actually. I met him, but I was a married woman and I got a call. To this day, I don’t know how he got this phone number, but I was with my mother-in-law and my husband down in Virginia having breakfast and this party said, “This is Miles Davis. I want you to come to New York. There is some people, I think, you should get to know.” And I thought it was somebody, some friends playing a joke or something. So I thought about it and I thought that maybe I should go to New York. And she did… If you don’t know Shirley Horn’s unique vocal styling then Neil also recommends her later 1998 tribute to Miles which features a cover drawing by Miles of them both. It’s a fitting image to end this first Miles @ 100 show. There will be more.
Welsh harpist Amanda Whiting is making waves on the UK jazz scene and this special edition of her 2025 EP includes her previous record The Liminality of Her. Production is by Adam Scrimshire (see our previous show) and there are guest appearances from vocalist Alice Russell, Chip Wickham and others. Whiting’s style is laidback, thematically inquisitive and – like the great Alice Coltrane – definitely on the spiritual side. It’s something that the contemporary use of the harp in jazz seems to inspire – think of current players like Brandee Younger from the US, Alina Bzhezinska from the UK and Edmar Castañeda from Colombia. For more check out this 
This is a terrific record from San Francisco-born Sacha Berliner and her stellar group featuring Marcus Gilmore on drums, Burniss Travis II on upright and electric bass and James Francies on piano and Fender Rhodes. Special guests include Jaleel Shaw on alto saxophone, Julius Rodriguez on analog synths and vocalist Thana Alexa. Onyx is only Berliner’s second album and this 2022 issue captures her fiery, dense sound beautifully with production from analogue specialist Steven Mandel and engineering from GRAMMY® winning Ben Kane. Very highly recommended.
Another acclaimed vibraphonist, Brennan describes the inspiration for this late 2025 release: I’ve always been captivated by the night sky, endlessly wondering about what lies beyond. Amidst the vast expanse of stars, there is a sense of balance and symmetry that fascinates me—an order within the chaos. The innate patterns of the constellations sparked my curiosity, prompting me to explore how these celestial forms might be translated musically. In the summer of 2024, I developed a process that allowed me to collect pitch and numerical data from constellations. I overlaid the shapes of constellations onto a circle of fifths, intrigued by whether the symmetry of the constellations could translate into musical symmetry—whether harmonic or melodic. The circle of fifths is already a highly symmetrical structure that organizes pitches in a sequence. By mapping the constellations’ shapes onto this circle, I discovered new relationships between pitches, chords, and even key signatures. These relationships emerged purely from the constellations’ symmetry, not from traditional music theory. Err – wow! The instrumentation for this record is a traditional jazz quintet – piano, bass, drums, guitar, and mallet percussion – along with a standard string quartet and additional electronics. Another highly recommended album and available in all three formats from your local specialist record store or 
Neil saw young vibes player Lewis Wright many years ago at a local pub jazz gig in Suffolk. Since then, he released a first album in 2018 before going on to perform internationally with Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and working with Hugh Masekela, Tony Allen and Melody Gardot. The Color of Intention features drummer Marcus Gilmore along with bass player Matt Brewer and was originally released in 2019 but is now available on vinyl – again, check it out 
Saxophonist and composer Ben Wendel releases his new album BaRcoDe next month on Edition Records. It’s a daring new electroacoustic album for saxophone and mallets (vibraphone and percussion). The project features four leading vibists and percussionists – Joel Ross, Simon Moullier, Patricia Brennan, and Juan Diego Villalobos – and was recorded at The Bunker Studio in Brooklyn. There’s a blurring of the line between chamber music, modern jazz, and electronic experimentation and this takes Wendel’s creative language into new territory. The question, of course, is – Does it work? And the answer is resolutely, Yes. There’s something of Steve Reich’s minimalist music here – and you can certainly hear it in the album’s opening track Clouds. Not surprisingly, this is another highly recommended release – and it looks and sounds spectacular in the 
Up next on the show is another of our ‘doing it different’ features – one tune in two different versions. This time it’s something of a modern standard – On the Nile. This is a Charles Tolliver composition but it first appeared on McLean’s 1965 classic Jacknife, just reissued by Blue Note in the Tone Poet series. Jacknife captures the saxophonist in a post-bop mode with trumpeters Lee Morgan and Charles Tolliver, pianist Larry Willis, bassist Larry Ridley, and drummer Jack DeJohnette. There’s modal explorations, churning rhythms, and good old hard bop grooves – and, of course, this Tone Poet vinyl edition is produced by Joe Harley from the original analog master tapes and sounds amazing. If you’ve not experienced these pristine vinyl reissues yet then treat yourself to this one.
Tolliver waited until 1969 to record On the Nile for his first album with the Music Inc. quartet, formed with pianist Stanley Cowell. The recording first came out on Freedom Records but then appeared on Arista Records. But this shorter and more powerful version of On the Nile comes from a slightly later release – Tolliver’s first on the label he created with Cowell, Strata-East. This 1971 version compares well with McLean’s take but there’s the additional power of a huge horn section augmented by Bobby Brown, Wilbur Brown, Jimmy Heath, Clifford Jordan, Howard Johnson, Garnett Brown, Curtis Fuller and more. By the end of its life, the label had released 58 albums of near-uniform artistic excellence – a remarkable achievement for an independent company run on a shoestring by two musicians with no previous business experience. We’ve featured the 
Pittsburgh-born pianist Horace Parlan recorded seven records for Blue Note, of which Up and Down is probably the best. The quintet is top drawer – Booker Ervin on tenor, Grant Green on guitar, George Tucker on bass and Al Harewood on drums. The sound is more soul-jazz than hard bop and all six tunes give space for the soloists to shine. Better still, this was one of Neil’s favourite Blue Note Tone Poets from 2025: all have great depth and spaciousness, but this is one of the best. We’ve chosen the title track Up and Down – a Horace Parlan original – but the whole album is hard to beat.
Alluding to the DJ reference in the title of his latest album, Gerald Clayton explains that it’s a record where the A side can be played simultaneously with the B side… you hear two separate pieces at the same time. Each side of the twelve-track album is meant to be heard separately and simultaneously. The music in the latter experience is obviously twice as dense as on the detached tracks. Neil’s not tried this yet but the tracks certainly work individually – and that’s probably down to the calibre of the musicians involved – Marquis Hill, Elena Pinderhughes, Joel Ross, Kendrick Scott and drummer of the moment, Kassa Overall. Spotify (which Cosmic Jazz will never normally endorse because of the 
DeJohnette was born in Chicago where Ahmad Jamal’s drummer Vernel Fournier was an early inspiration. But as well as learning the standard drum kit, DeJohnette was also a talented pianist and bass player – with this breadth perhaps contributing to that uniquely diverse sound. As he said, I see myself as a colorist, not as a drummer, per se... We’re going to begin with his two year association with Charles Lloyd and his 1960s quartet with a live take from a 1967 classic – it’s the best selling album Forest Flower and bassist Cecil McBee’s tender Naima-like composition Song of Her. DeJohnette’s shimmering cymbal work is perfectly judged here and an indication of the sensitivity he would later go on to show in the Keith Jarrett Standards Trio.
Next up we celebrate his tenure with Miles Davis and what is sometimes called the lost quintet. Before he was deployed as the principal drummer on the epic Bitches Brew album (1970), DeJohnette appeared in live sets with Davis on trumpet, Wayne Shorter on soprano and tenor saxophones, Chick Corea on Fender Rhodes, Dave Holland on bass and DeJohnette on drums. In July 1969 the band appeared at Festival Mondial du Jazz d’Antibes and these two dates comprise CD1 and CD2 of the Live in Europe 1969 set, issued by Columbia Records in 2013. They are a revelation. Just listen to DeJohnette’s drumming (and everything else that’s going) on right from the beginning of the band introductions and a version of Directions.
While Bitches Brew was widely recognised as one of the most innovative records in jazz, 1972’s On The Corner polarised opinion. Indeed, Davis biographer Paul Tingen stated that it became the most vilified and controversial album in the history of jazz. Only more recently has its worth been more accurately judged. Writing for The Vinyl Factory, Anton Spice described it as the great great grandfather of hip-hop, IDM, jungle, post-rock and other styles drawing meaning from repetition. DeJohnette was the key drummer on this unique record and he’s heard to maximum advantage with his pattering repeated drum pattern across pretty much the whole of the first side of this extraordinary record. And talking of vinyl, some versions of the record can sound rather muddy, so for a more detailed and balanced version it might be worth exploring the MoFi Original Master Recording – 
DeJohnette began recording for Manfred Eicher’s ECM label in 1974 with the Timeless trio featuring John Abercrombie and Jan Hammer and in the same year he appeared on Steve Kuhn’s superb Trance album. He went on to appear on more essential ECM recordings including Kenny Wheeler’s Gnu High (1975), Gary Peacock’s Tales of Another (1977) and George Adams’ Sound Suggestions (1979). But it was with the Pat Metheny album 80/81 that he joined the jazz superstar ranks with a 2LP live double set released in 1980 and featuring Metheny’s handpicked quartet with Michael Brecker or Dewey Redman on tenor saxes, Charlie Haden on bass and, of course, Metheny on guitars. We’ve chosen the lengthy Two Folk Songs (1st) which includes Metheny’s characteristic strumming, Brecker’s edgy and imaginative tenor solo and DeJohnette’s furious drumming.
DeJohnette established his Special Edition group in 1980 and this first incarnation is possibly the best. It features David Murray and Arthur Blythe on saxes and more and along with Slip Murray on bass and DeJohnette on drums, but also melodica and piano. There are two fantastic versions of Coltrane tunes – Central Park West and India – along with three compositions by DeJohnette. We’ve chosen Zoot Suite which has a great 4/4 bass groove with quirky accents and solos from Blythe on alto and Murray on tenor, along with DeJohnette on melodica. The tune ends with some characteristically powerful drumming from the leader. This is Neil’s favourite Special Edition record and it’s worth finding a copy on vinyl or CD if you don’t know it. It was reissued on CD via ECM’s Touchstones series in 2008 and Neil recently picked up a near mint vinyl copy in the excellent 
Of all DeJohnette’s collaborations with other musicians (and there are many) perhaps the most celebrated and enduring was that with the Keith Jarrett Standards Trio. The association began with the first Standards album in 1983 and continued the trio was disbanded in 2014. Along with bassist Gary Peacock, Jarrett on piano and DeJohnette on drums, the trio have released over 30 albums including some 20 live recordings. By 2000, the musical communication between these three performers had become nothing short of telepathic, and their group improvisations frequently take on a complexity that sounds almost composed. The Trio undertook frequent world tours of recital halls and was one of the few truly successful jazz groups to play both straight-ahead and freely improvised jazz. Derek has already featured one of our favourite tunes from this extended repertoire – the remarkable take on Autumn Leaves from the complete Live at the Blue Note box set (1995) – and we’ve chosen two very different tunes to end this DeJohnette tribute. First up is one of Neil’s favourites – an album he bought on vinyl on its release in 1983 – it’s the extended take on God Bless the Child from that very first Standards album. 
Now this one is very much not a standard. The Jarrett Trio occasionally strayed into free improvisation but only two albums focus on this approach – Changeless (1989) and Inside Out (2001). Both capture the trio departing from its regular format to improvise freely without the framework of the American popular songbook or bop standards – and the result on both albums is spell-binding. The authors of The Penguin Guide to Jazz wrote that Changeless contains original material which is deeply subversive (though also respectfully aware) of the whole tradition of jazz as a system of improvisation on ‘the changes’… On Changeless, there are no chord progressions at all; the trio improvises each section in a single key, somewhat in the manner of an Indian raga. The results are impressive and thought-provoking, like everything Jarrett has attempted.
Breathe is an early preview single from the forthcoming album Cook by the US sextet Lettuce, due for release on their own label on 3 December 2025. This is more boundary-crossing music – there’s jazz, funk and soul in this mix although Adam Deitch, the band’s drummer/percussionist, describes it as a chill hip-hop flavoured joint and the accompanying publicity calls it as a blissed-out track tinged with a retro hip hop vibe – an accurate description of it’s effect and very much representational of the sort of sounds Derek been listening to lately (and Neil adds that there’s more than a touch of George Benson-style guitar too). Lettuce recently produced a version of the Keni Burke classic 
Derek wanted to add his tribute and remembrance of Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist Hermeto Pascoal (22 June 1936-13 September 2025). He was innovative, independent and unpredictable: there is a story of him bringing live pigs into the studio for his first recording for Warner Bros and using household objects alongside the many other instruments he learnt as a self-taught musician – for example, piano, flute, melodica, saxophone, guitars and drums. Miles Davis called him the most important musician on the planet and he featured prominently on the Davis album 
The next tribute is to Eddie Palmieri (15 December 1936-06 August 2025) the influential Latin jazz and salsa pianist, composer and bandleader. Palmieri fused the rhythm of his Puerto Rican heritage with jazz. His parents came to New York in 1926from Puerto Rico, Eddie Palmieri was born in Spanish Harlem and raised in the Bronx. His elder brother Charlie Palmieri was also an outstanding and internationally-known Latin and jazz musician. Eddie Palmieri released more than 40 studio albums – many of them on the New York Latin label Fania Records. The tune Solito was the title track of a 1985 album but is taken here from a UK Charly Records 1993 compilation Salsa Brava. This record does not provide any details of the musicians on the record, nor does further research. It is a record with played with fire ; jazz fire and Latin fire. There is Latin percussion providing the basis throughout but early on comes a blazing trumpet solo followed by a free, improvised and unpredictable piano solo from Palmieri then timbales and percussion in tandem ending with a blast from the brass and vocalist- masterful!
Derek read another DJ acknowledgement to Chris Hill coming – perhaps surprisingly from Gary Crowley, a radio DJ, now on BBC Radio London but many years ago on Capital Radio. Derek notes that we would typically associate him with New Wave and then indie music rather than soul DJ, Crowley described being at a club where Hill played a record he had never heard before – one he found amazing and which he has loved, played and treasured ever since. That record came from Brazil and was Gilberto Gil’s Toda Menina Baiana. It’s a tune we at Cosmic Jazz just love. Derek recalls playing it one night in a bar in Ipswich around 01:00 on a Friday night/Saturday morning where there were some Portuguese speakers. The place went wild and the effect was electrifying. It was identification with the music, the environment and a sense of total joy. For Derek, this remains one of my all-time dance favourites. Matti Klein in his Echoes Magazine interview (see above) said he saw music as being about bringing joy – and if you want a shot of real joy just listen to Toda Menina Baiana.
Just as Derek was ready to record this programme the news came through of the death of D’Angelo aged 51 on 15 October 2015. Derek had been lucky to share musical tastes with his two sons and it was his eldest son who introduced him to D’Angelo through the Voodoo album, produced by Questlove and J. Dilla. In particular, it was the track played here – Spanish Joint – that was so memorable. Derek notes that his son felt he was the Marvin Gaye of his time and, indeed, this comment has been made in several tributes released in the short time since D’Angelo’s death. He is credited with being the founder of neo-soul, although he once claimed he simply made Black music. Neo-soul moved away from the pop influenced R’n’B of the time to a more chilled sound and one that merged elements of soul, R’n’B, jazz, funk and hip-hop. This is all there in this amazing track with its stripped-down, ultra-cool sound that swings like crazy with the bass and percussion – and, to cap it all, has the constant intervention of jazzy brass. What more could we ask for on Cosmic Jazz? More music soon.
Comin’ Home Baby was recorded in 1961 by Herbie Mann before lyrics were added by Bob Dorough and was then popularised in 
This 1969 title track is an arranger’s masterclass. The sidemen here include Freddie Hubbard, Hubert Laws, Roland Kirk, Bob James, Grady Tate and more. The walking bass comes from Ray Brown and Valerie Simpson is on vocals – she was later to find fame as one half of soul duo Ashford and Simpson. This version of a tune from the musical Hair (who remembers the hippie anthem Aquarius?) has more than a touch of David Axelrod in the complex arrangement that soars and dips across its full 12 minutes. Also on Walking in Space is an, er, killer version of the late Benny Golson’s Killer Joe and there’s a great take on Edwin Hawkins’ Oh Happy Day to close the album. This one is well worth seeking out as a perfect example of Creed Taylor’s CTI records of the time.
The opening riff of Summer in the City is perhaps more famous now as the basis for the hypnotic 
We shouldn’t forget that Quincy Jones put together the charity record We Are The World, so this extravagantly star-studded album which includes brief ‘e-appearances’ from Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, James Moody, Ella Fitzgerald and George Benson and genuine contributions from Herbie Hancock, George Duke, Chaka Khan and the Brothers Johnson has some familiar limitations. Overall, it’s too diffuse but the track sequencing works and there are some memorable tunes too, including I’ll Be Good to You, Setembro (Brazilian Wedding Song) and the concluding The Secret Garden. Birdland has Joe Zawinul on keyboards – naturally…
Now this one is better than anyone could have expected. Miles Davis died just four months after this 1991 live recording from Montreux. The record featured both the Gil Evans Orchestra and the George Gruntz Concert Jazz Band – an idea conceived and conducted by Quincy Jones. The focus is on Evans’ stunning arrangements for those seminal albums Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess and Sketches of Spain and although they can’t match the originals, the results are well worth a listen. Although gravely ill, Davis is (mostly) on fine form and there’s excellent backup from Wallace Roney and Kenny Garrett.
Haynes replaced Max Roach in Parker’s later quintet before Coltrane used him whenever Elvin Jones wasn’t available – you can hear him on After the Rain (see below). In the 1960s and 70s Haynes worked with Gary Burton and Stan Getz ,but it was his association with Chick Corea that was to prove one of the most durable. Beginning with the landmark Now He Sings, Now He Sobs trio album (1968) with Corea on piano and Miroslav Vitous on bass, Haynes was to feature in a series of excellent trio records for ECM with Dave Holland taking the bass chair. He went on to record with guitarist Pat Metheny on before leading his own appropriately named Fountain of Youth band well into the new century. Before this, Haynes led the Hip Ensemble – another band title that befitted his accolade as one of Esquire magazine’s best-dressed men in America. We need to reflect on this incredible legacy: from pre-swing bands to post-bop, into fusion and out into the world of 21st century jazz – Haynes was an in-demand player throughout all of these stylistic changes.
We opened this tribute to Roy Haynes with a classic from Coltrane’s first album on Impulse! Records, issued in 1963. The record is something of a mixture, with both live and studio tracks recorded from 1961 through to 1963. Two are from the celebrated Live at the Village Vanguard record and two come from Van Gelder studio recordings. When regular drummer Elvin Jones was unavailable, it was Roy Haynes who was Coltrane’s preferred choice and so he appears here on perhaps what is the standout tune, After the Rain. Haynes is also on My Favourite Things: Coltrane at Newport (1963) where you can hear him on the 23 minute take on 
Unusually for Pharoah Sanders’ Impulse! albums, Thembi (1971) has shorter tunes recorded with two different ensembles. Sanders is on tenor and soprano saxes, plus an assortment of flutes, a bailophone, a cow horn and small percussion. Lonnie Liston Smith is the dominant voice on his own composition, Astral Travelling, but there are also delights from Michael White’s violin on the title track and an intense, five-minute bass solo by by Cecil McBee on Love. Interestingly, Astral Travelling was Liston Smith’s first outing on Fender Rhodes: he recounts that I saw this instrument sitting in the corner and I asked the engineer, ‘What is that?’ He said, ‘That’s a Fender Rhodes electric piano.’ I didn’t have anything to do, so I started messing with it, checking some of the buttons to see what I could do with different sounds. All of a sudden I started writing a song and everybody ran over and said, ‘What is that?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know, I’m just messing around.’ Pharoah said, ‘Man, we gotta record that. Whatcha gonna call it?’ I’d been studying astral projections and it sounded like we were floating through space so I said let’s call it ‘Astral Traveling.’ That’s how I got introduced to the electric piano.
This 1977 Galaxy Records album was re-released on CD along with the same year’s Vistalite – and it’s well worth looking out for this ‘twofer’. There are currently 
This was one of the first records out of the gate in the Blue Note Tone Poets reissue series and it’s an essential album for any jazz collector. If you can find one, get the beautiful gatefold Tone Poet version – it’s a visual and sonic feast you will keep coming back to. The record originally appeared on the Solid State label in 1968 and, remarkably, it was only Corea’s second album. There are five original tunes with the titles emerging from lines in the I Ching. This trio recording has Corea on piano, Haynes on drums and Miroslav Vitous on bass – a group that was later to record a series of superb albums for the ECM label. It’s a wholly successful grouping: you can hear that it’s Chick Corea, but there’s a freedom of expression here that’s picked up by Haynes and Vitous, with the result that this is a near-perfect piano trio album.
Haynes chose a perfect title for this album – recorded when he was 79 years old, the music is that of a much younger man. Recorded live in 2002 at Birdland in NY, Haynes leads a quartet that also features pianist Martin Bejarano, saxophonist Marcus Strickland and bassist John Sullivan. Question and Answer is a Pat Metheny tune, first recorded in 1990 on a trio album with Metheny and Dave Holland, but this is a wonderfully spirited version. The rest of this excellent record has no fewer than three Thelonious Monk tunes and a great jazz waltz take on Greensleeves, clearly inspired by Coltrane’s version.
Alto sax player Kenny Garrett is one of the jazz greats and a CJ favourite. We have featured much of his music on the show over the years – from a stunning solo playing with Miles Davis to several of his own releases. His influences and tastes are eclectic. The 2016 album Do Your Dance draws upon the many dance styles that have influenced him and, by association, it recognises their links to jazz. Philly soul, bossa, calypso, waltz and Persian steps are the ones acknowledged in the track titles. The tune selected here, Backyard Groove, is a driving, heavy number in which drummer Ronald Bruner Jr. (brother of bassisit Thundercat) forcefully and powerfully leads us through an urban-sounding landscape.
This a jazz dance favourite from one of jazz music’s greatest legends. Now aged 98, drummer Roy Haynes has been a major player since the 1940s. He was a member of Charlie Parker’s celebrated quintet, played with Bud Powell, and Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane and Miles Davis, Chick Corea and Pat Metheny – and hundreds more jazz greats. His son Graham is a well known cornetist and his grandson Marcus Gilmore has followed in Haynes’ footsteps as a drummer. Quiet Fire is a compilation of two 1970s releases on the Galaxy label and is well worth looking out for on CD. Neither have appeared as a vinyl reissue – yet. On Quiet Fire (what an appropriate title!) Cecil McBee provides the propulsive bass and the great George Cables is on piano.
Herbie Hancock is a true elder statesman of jazz. Always at the forefront of innovation in the music, he has (like his old boss Miles Davis) championed the new and the experimental. Currently on tour with a hot new group that includes Lionel Loueke on guitar, Terence Blanchard on trumpet and James Genus on bass, he’s been joined by young drummer Jaylen Petinaud. Neil was lucky enough to see him in London in late July where he delivered a terrific show. This take on Actual Proof (originally on the 1974 album Thrust) comes from what was for many years a Japanese only release. It’s a live version from 1975 concerts in Tokyo and it’s close to what Neil heard in London just a few weeks ago.
Neil first heard this tune on the Somethin’ Else radio show way back in the 1980s. It comes from what is often acknowledged as the Crusaders’ best album – Southern Comfort, and also released in 1974. Neil featured it on his Neil is listening to… selection in last show’s blogpost – you can still access all ten choices right here. Stomp… is a composition by trombonist Wayne Henderson who is joined by the Crusader regulars – Joe Sample on piano and keys, Wilton Felder on bass and sax and Stix Hooper on drums. For this album they were joined by guitarist Larry Carlton – who played on Steely Dan’s Aja album, including on 
We move to contemporary London for our next two tunes. Sarah Tandy is a piano/keyboards player we love and make no apologies for returning to her album – named after a poem by Emily Dickinson. Sarah combines her love of music – which made a journey from classical to jazz – with a love of literature drawn from her Cambridge degree studies. Infection in the Sentence emerged in 2019 on the 
Kokoroko, whose name means ‘be strong’ are a London-based eight-piece band, whose album Could We Be More was released on Brownswood Records in 2022. West African Afrobeat and Highlife coalesce with jazz but with a sound that feels spontaneous and free to fit in with the contemporary London scene. Up front is the horn section of Sheila Maurice-Grey on trumpet, Cassie Kinoshi on alto saxophone and Richie Seivwright on trombone but throughout there are strong rhythmic beats from Onome Edgeworth on percussion and Ayo Salami on drums. It’s music that fits in with the feel of this Cosmic Jazz programme – uplifting for body and soul at any time and place.
The Japanese band Sleep Walker were long favourites of the show until their disbanding in 2009. Indeed, we were lucky enough to see them at London’s Jazz Café a few years ago. Into the Sun features a guest contribution from Pharoah Sanders and is a consistently entertaining record, full of good danceable tunes and lively soloing – especially from saxophonist Masato Nakamura and group founder Hajime Yoshizawa on piano and keys. Yoshizawa went on to release several records under his own name including the recent Double Moon from 2017. Here’s 
The mention of the Paris neighbourhood of Saint-Germain-des-Prés conjures up images of cool, hip cafés, bars and small jazz clubs frequented by pre- and postwar avantgarde artists and intellectuals. A series of CD compilations emerged in the 1980s designed to (vaguely) invoke the essence of the place. This tune comes from Volume 7, released in 2005. The musical medium chosen to evoke Saint-Germain-des-Prés was nu-jazz with attitude through both contemporary compositions and remixes of classic jazz artists. Metropolitan Jazz Affair is a band from Lyon France created in 2002 and their measured up-tempo sounds of percussion and Hammond organ lets us dance the show away – until next time.
My top ten tunes for this CJ checks out some great new vinyl reissues from the Jazz dispensary label and Blue Note’s Tone Poets; a couple of tunes that didn’t make it into our summer funk set above; two great Coltrane versions from Marc Johnson’s Bass Desires group (featuring the twin guitar lineup of Bill Frisell and John Scofield) and Wes Mongomery; another tune featured in Herbie’s London show; Miles at his funkiest from the 1971 Live/Evil set; and a Chaz Jankel Compass Point recording that will leave you dancing.
All of this is apparent in the music we have selected for this show and we’ve included an iconic compositions from his early days with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers to his later quartet compositions. We begin with Ping Pong which Shorter wrote for Art Blakey. It’s a typical early Shorter tune – memorable, quirky and very stylish. Neil first heard it on an old New Musical Express jazz sampler cassette from the early 1980s and was immediately drawn to this perfect example of hard bop. Familiar with Shorter’s Weather Report compositions, this was the start of Neil’s journey back through the Shorter Blue Note catalogue. Shorter spent four years with the Jazz Messengers and, by the time he came to record his first solo album for Blue Note, he was beginning to become better known as both a composer and unique voice on the tenor saxophone. His run of eleven albums for the label between 1964 and 1970 is one of the most influential series of individual jazz albums from anyone in the jazz world and all titles are highly recommended.
We’ve chosen two tunes – the first is the title track from Speak No Evil, recorded in 1966 and the third of those Blue Note albums. In his excellent
Next is Shorter at his most lyrical – and this one is a soprano sax feature. The album Alegria was released in 2003 and features the quartet that was to form Shorter’s working group for almost the next twenty years. Shorter is on tenor and soprano saxes, Danilo Perez is on piano, and with John Patitucci on bass and Brian Blade on drums this incredibly accomplished quartet released some of the best music of Shorter’s long career. Derek’s choice from this album is as enigmatic as Wayne Shorter himself – a setting of an anonymous 12 century carol that is just beautiful.
We follow this with a first dive into the music of Weather Report, a group Neil was fortunate enough to see twice in two of their very different incarnations. Three Clowns (a typically cryptic Shorter title) comes from 1976’s Black Market, one of the group’s most satisfying records. This tune is rather dismissed by Cook and Morton but it’s actually an atmospheric vehicle for one of Shorter’s excursions with the Lyricon, an electronic wind instrument which had only been developed a few years previously and which allowed him to match the increasingly intriguing sounds being created by Joe Zawinul on his armoury of electronic keyboards. As almost always with Weather Report, the outcome is not bombastic and driven by a desire to impress but rather, the music is subtle, emotive and – above all – creative.
The next tune is one that Shorter has revisited a number of times, including with his later quartet. Neil saw the group perform Plaza Real in a shockingly different version on Shorter’s live tour of 2003 but it actually first appeared on the Weather Report album Procession from 1983. Here Shorter is again on soprano saxophone and using that clear, piping lyrical tone that is so immediately distinctive. The whistling (probably by Joe Zawinul) and concertina (from percussionist José Rossy) is a neat touch. This band were all about subtlety. Unfortunately, the later years of Weather Report are characterised by the marginalisation of Shorter’s nuanced approach to composition and improvisation and if you’re a beginner with the group, the early records are the ones to go for.
In the mid-1970s, Shorter began to extend the Brazilian influence that had been apparent on his later Blue Note records and recorded essentially a duet album with singer Milton Nascimento. Gilles Peterson remembers borrowing Native Dancer from his local library and being enchanted by the combination – and Neil recalls very clearly buying the record on release in 1975 from the late lamented Sunshine Records in Oxford. Airto Moreira is on percussion on our choice Lilia and elsewhere on the album Shorter’s Blue Note pal Herbie Hancock is featured. Nascimento’s wordless vocals are featured along with some very fine concluding soprano from Shorter and with a fabulous groove and organ swirls from Wagner Tiso this is a magical tune.
As we bring this all too short tribute show to an end, we come to another tune that Shorter revisited with his late quartet – the composition Joy Ryder. This take is again very different from the tune’s first incarnation, on Shorter’s 1988 album with the same title. For comparison, check out that 
We end the show with another return to a classic Shorter composition, Nefertiti. Originally, recorded by the Miles Davis Quintet of which Shorter was a key member in 1968, the composition is noted for its inversion of what usually happens in jazz. Here the horn section repeats the melody numerous times without individual solos while the rhythm section (Ron Carter on bass and Tony Williams on drums) improvises underneath, reversing their traditional role. You can hear that magisterial original take with Miles 
First up was a track that sounded like it came from Bali – but actually, it’s from the northwest of England. There’s a guy called Seth Sutton who is a percussionist, producer, instrument builder and painter whose band goes by the name Contours. This track uses the balafon – a wooden block instrument from west Africa – along with some gamelan instruments and Sutton’s homemade percussion. Experimenting with balafons and a gamelan alongside his homemade string and percussive instrumentation, then adding in delay and reverb pedals, resulted in a unique organic sound. The music was all recorded in a local house in Cumbria – a more remote part of the UK up in the far northwest. You might still be able to find a 12in EP or the cassette version on Bandcamp. We wanted a pretty chilled start to the show and this delivered – before we gently faded into some classic jazz-inflected rap…
Now this one might be more familiar – or at least the sample should be. It was also used by Massive Attack on their Blue Lines album – and the sample is from US saxophonist Tom Scott – 
So, still in the 90s for the next tune: Flip Fantasia is from 1992 and a product of the British jazz rap group Us3 – Rahsaan Kelly (doing the rap) and with Geoff Wilkinson and Mel Simpson producing. This is basically a big sample from Herbie Hancock’s 
Now we go deeper into dance mode with a track from 1984. The sound may remind you of the classic 
Still staying with Africa, but also the UK too, as Dele Sosimi is from Hackney, London but he joined Fela Kuti’s Egypt 80 band when he was just 16 – what a crazy responsibility that must have been! He then became musical director for Fela’s son Femi in his band Positive Force. Dele is still based in the UK and has recorded some brilliant records with his own band. This 12in single remix is 
And we faded into a second bit of classic afrobeat from the man who invented it – Tony Allen from Nigeria. There used to be a great African record shop in London called Sterns in the 1980s and this is where I tracked down this great EP. Originally on the label Earthworks (which doesn’t exist anymore either!) but reissued recently. You can now get a 
Ok – this is absolutely one of my favourite club tracks – it never fails! Much played in the 80s in those great New York clubs with DJs like Larry Levan and David Mancuso, I finally found my copy last year in a café in London which was selling a DJ’s collection – it was very lucky to see it in the wild like that. This is classic Latin house and comes from Fania superstar Willie Colon – the trombonist you hear in the music. I actually don’t know who created this 12in version – it says it’s produced by Willie Colon but I think is actually from celebrated NY engineer Bob Blank who created what was called the ‘mutant disco’ scene – left field remixes from artists outside the mainstream. I’m talking about Kid Creole, James Chance and Lizzy Mercier Descloux. You can hear the complete Mambo Nassau album 
Is Ron Trent the godfather of Chicago House? Maybe. I’ve certainly long been a fan of his deep house sound but his new full length album is something of a departure. Guesting on this track is veteran jazz violinist Jean Luc Ponty, following on from the long-awaited release of an amazing track called In the Fast Lane that appeared on a 1989 album called Storytelling. You can still 
Now – we need to introduce this track with some back story. Nearly 50 years ago, jazz trumpeter Miles Davis and his new band rocked up at the Festival Hall in Osaka, Japan and played two all-out, no-holds-barred concerts in one day. Both were recorded by Columbia – known as Sony in Japan. The afternoon gig was released later in 1975 as the double-LP Agharta, with the evening set coming out a year later under the name Pangaea. The album titles are both significant – Agharta was the name given to the mythological city located at the centre of the earth and Pangea the ancient landmass that existed before the five continents we know today existed. It’s appropriate – this is massively primitive music that exists in its own unique space. There had never been music like this before and no one has managed to make anything sound like this since. For many people this is not jazz – they can listen to Kind of Blue but they can’t take this! But for me, this is the Miles that sends a shiver down my spine. At the time of these recordings Davis was in a bad state: a few years before he had broken both his hips in a horrific crash in his Lamborghini Miura and was addicted to both painkilling drugs and cocaine. These were to be the last recordings he made before he retired – and he didn’t play his trumpet again for another five years. But what about the music itself? It sounds chaotic but actually it’s tightly structured by Miles Davis himself who gave silent movement cues to the band or signalled when he wanted a change with chords on his electric organ – those are the stabs of sound you hear before the rhythm picks up again. The music is driven by the drummer Al Foster and the young bass player Michael Henderson, who Davis literally stole (didn’t ask permission at all) from Stevie Wonder’s band. On sax is Sonny Fortune (who had played with McCoy Tyner), on percussion is Mtumé and on spaced out guitars are Pete Cosey and Reggie Lucas. The tune we played on the show is called Prelude – and I played just the first half of it… It’s actually based on the opening guitar riff from the Sly Stone tune 
So who might come close to that Miles Davis sound from the 1970s? Maybe this guy – Norwegian trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer. This is his best album, released in 1998 on the ECM label – but it’s not very much like many ECM albums! There’s ambient sounds here but also – as on this track – a driving breakbeat-approach with heavy bass too. Soaring above this is Molvaer’s trumpet – very Miles-like here with the Harmon mute on the end to give that wispy sound. The electronic effects here are from a guitarist called Eivind Aarset – another Norwegian – and his own albums are worth looking out for. The album title and beautiful art is important here too – Molvaer is referencing the Khmer civilisation which spread across much of south east Asia for over 600 years and created the remarkable Angkor in what is now northern Cambodia.
This is English remixer and solo performer Kieran Hebden – better known as Four Tet – and he’s been releasing music for nearly 20 years – including work with drummer Steve Reid, Burial and Radiohead front man, Thom Yorke. As a remixer, he’s worked with Madvillain, Beth Orton, Bonobo and The xx. Hebden’s first albums were a great mix of hip hop beats, electronica, folk and jazz. Recommended ito get you started on his music would be the excellent Rounds from 2003. Like DJ Shadow and the Avalanches, Hebden often used hundreds of sample on his records– all beautifully knitted together in his home studio. The key sample on Love Cry is – apparently – Brandy’s Almost Doesn’t Count and the track appears on Four Tet’s excellent 2010 album There Is Love In You. 
And so here’s where we end this dance-oriented set – chill out music from American radio DJ Rick Holmes and vibes hero Roy Ayers. This one of those roll call/name check records – as Hannah noted, like Stevie Wonder’s magnificent Sir Duke (which celebrates Basie, Miller, Satchmo/And king of all, Sir Duke) and, like Prescription, this one really works. Holmes was a Los Angeles DJ on KJLH FM (a station which was actually owned by Stevie Wonder!) but his very smooth voice was soon in demand on records too. Look out for any of the three records he made with alto sax player Cannonball Adderley, including the fantastic Soul of the Bible (1972). Incidentally, only two 12in records were ever released on the Gold Mine label – and they even got the label wrong on this one calling themselves Gold Mink Records…