MILES DAVIS - Miles At The Fillmore - Miles Davis 1970: The Bootleg Series Vol. 3

Yet more archival riches arrive via Sony Legacy's Bootleg Series, this time focusing on the complete recordings (four CDs worth!) of Miles' four-night June 1970 residency at New York's Fillmore East (as previously excerpted from/edited together by Teo Macero on Miles Davis At Fillmore), along with bonus tracks recorded in April of that same year at San Francisco's Fillmore West, totalling 135 minutes of music up to now unreleased.

"By the time Bitches Brew was released in April, 1970—and despite receiving a 5-star review in Downbeat—trumpeter Miles Davis was already under fire from mainstream jazz critics as having 'sold out,' despite the densely constructed, improvisationally unfettered music being as unapproachable to an audience looking for accessible music as anything he'd done with his increasingly liberated second great quintet of the 1960s. Sure, there were rock rhythms and, perhaps more disturbingly to the delicate ears of its detractors, rock energy and volume, but if anyone was thinking 'sellout,' it certainly wasn't Columbia Records, who had no idea what to do with side-long improvisational excursions, pasted together in collage-like fashion by Davis' longtime producer, Teo Macero.

But thankfully, the late '60s and early -to-mid-'70s was a time when the emergence of FM radio stations and open-minded music fans made the kind of music Davis and others in his circle made not just accepted, but massively successful...By the time Bitches Brew was released, Shorter was gone, replaced by Steve Grossman; Keith Jarrett was added to the keyboard mix, playing organ and the occasional tambourine; and percussionist/vocalist/flautist Airto Moreira was recruited to turn Davis' touring quintet into the septet heard on all but three tracks of Miles At The Fillmore, another archival release that demonstrates how the trumpeter may well have been absorbing the music of Jimi Hendrix, Sly & The Family Stone and James Brown, but what was coming from his pen and horn was something else entirely." - All About Jazz

BOHREN & DER CLUB OF GORE - Piano Nights

The dead of winter is not only the perfect time of year for Piano Nights' release, but also for one to acquaint themselves with Bohren's gloomy, haunting take on jazz in general, a catalogue that now runs (trudges?) a daunting eight albums deep.

"There's something about the brooding pace, the somber saxophone and the wistful keys of Bohren & Der Club Of Gore's music that evokes the imagery of midnight city streets more vividly than it seems music should be capable of capturing. Of course, when your music is often referred to as 'noir jazz' because it exists as a distant, moody offspring of noir film soundtracks, it benefits from the previously existing association that the noir era created between low-key jazz and dark cities. But there’s a reason this type of music was specific to that style. These instruments, when played at this brooding, lustful pace, simply ooze the shadowy, melancholy feelings that are naturally associated with rain highlighted by streetlights, fog illuminated by headlights, and jazz bar stage lights filtered through cigarette smoke." - Sputnik Music

VA - Theo Parrish's Black Jazz Signature: Black Jazz Records 1971-1975

Check out Sound Signature label head, unofficial ambassador of Detroit's long-fertile electronic music culture, and endearingly outspoken re-editor, DJ and producer Theo Parrish's mix commission for Snow Dog's ongoing CD reissues of the entire Black Jazz catalog, now featured in our listening post (and specially priced for a limited time)!

"Parrish, as would be expected, takes a low-key, backseat approach to mixing the tracks he loves; no Flying Lotus pastiches or potentially disrespectful attempts at taming grooves into linear house form. Instead, simple, quick transitions and deft choices keep the recordings entirely at the fore. The selections are astounding and the energy insistent from beginning to end. The majority of the pieces chosen by Parrish are hugely amorphous, the by-then elastic forms of the most adventurous modern jazz electrified into further flexibility. Black Jazz Signature captures a sheer flood of music, parts crashing and reforming around each other as they break away, jut out, drop back, or lace themselves around others." - FACT

"To get Parrish to do the mix, Snow Dog Records—a Japanese label that does licensed reissues and mixes of the BJR catalogue—sent a package of hard-to-find LPs to a PO box in Detroit. Some time later, Parrish sent back a few different versions of his mix, all of which sounded quite different—some more challenging, others more serene. The one that made the cut is somewhere in the middle: the whole thing is bright and upbeat, but a frantic, dissonant energy occasionally creeps in." - Resident Advisor

DAWN OF MIDI - Dysnomia

The most recent album in Thirsty Ear's Blue Series that's seemingly come out of nowhere to surprise and impress us (the last such instance perhaps being last year's Shipp/Spaceman/Noble/Coxon Black Music Disaster session), Dysnomia is a continuous suite of clicking, pulsing, well-honed electronic minimalist jazz, but minus the actual electronics, and in so reducing basically throwing down the gauntlet at likeminded, longer-standing acts from the rock side of the spectrum such as Battles (to give a listen, stream the entire album via the band's SoundCloud page).

"There's been plenty of jazz groups that tried to reach out to the rock kids in recent years—The Bad Plus and Brad Mehldau (both trios, incidentally) have shown up on the radar with covers of indie-rock songs, though the covers feel more like like a bait-and-switch operation to get a wayward rockist into their more straight-ahead jazz charts. Unlike those groups, Dawn of MIDI aren’t interested in coddling the uninitiated into the world of trading fours and Dmaj11 chords. On Dysnomia, they more interested in, or rather wholly focused on, rhythm. It's a new bridge out of traditional jazz to the rest of the world, and it's built with obsessive precision...It sounds close to an acoustic Beak> session playing a Steve Reich composition, though even closer to something totally unprecedented." - Pitchfork

THUNDERCAT - Apocalypse

Two years ago, Thundercat's debut album The Golden Age Of Apocalypse slowly but surely won over enough of us here to reach #11 on our Staff Best Of 2011 chart, and the pared-down title variation for this follow-up seems fully fitting, as Stephen Bruner's funky fusoid tendencies and falsetto vocal melodies continue to set him apart from any of his 'beat scene' peers, but with a slightly darker, barer tinge to it all this time around, due in part to the passing of keyboardist collaborator and friend Austin Peralta, to whom last track "A Message For Austin" is dedicated.

"The chord this record strikes hardest is an emotional and highly personal one; it’s a record that conveys with exceptional delicacy the transition from relative naivete to a more reflective and worldly view. For most of us, this happens in our twenties: much has been written on the subject of the 'lost years' when we establish, or fail to establish, relative stability, and peace with ourselves. For Bruner, this transition seems to have been provoked by a tragic event, but for most of us, it’ll be something experienced painfully and gradually for the better part of a decade.

Apocalypse is very literally a rewarding and difficult second album, with its roots in tragedy and loss and its furthermost fronds in hope and moving forward, an album that challenges listeners with an incredible level of subtlety, hidden depths and wash of openly expressed emotion. It might even just be the album that best sums up what the Low End Theory beat scene in LA has always been about: the perfect blend of virtuous technicality and cosmic self discovery with a message delivered wrapped in genuine human warmth." - Drowned In Sound

BILL FRISELL - Silent Comedy / PAT METHENY - Tap: John Zorn's Book of Angels, Vol. 20

Two virtuoso guitar vets, both based in jazz but versed in many genres, take left turns this year for John Zorn's Tzadik label, with Frisell freely improvising and making full use of his looper and pedal board on Silent Comedy, while Metheny applies his bespoke Orchestrion setup to tunes from Zorn's songbook.

"For all the self-generated hype that Tzadik releases carry on their spine inserts, the one that accompanies Bill Frisell's Silent Comedy is pretty close to accurate. This really is the guitarist as you've never heard him before—at least on record. He's improvising live in a studio with no edits or overdubs. Some of the 11 pieces included here carry traces of his signature bell-like tone, but this is a very free recording. The set's longest cut, 'John Goldfarb, Please Come Home,' is a meld of spaced-out sonic effects, harmonic invention, skeletal phrasing, and aggressive skronk that moves from halting melody to pure dissonance." - Allmusic

"Guitarist Pat Metheny is revered for his bright, accessible modern jazz. Saxophonist and composer is associated with much knottier, often dissonant experiments. Metheny's new Tap: John Zorn's Book of Angels, Vol. 20 unites these two known opposites of instrumental music, and the result is often intensely visual. These Zorn compositions are part of a mammoth series of songs inspired by (and built around) the ancient scales of traditional Jewish music. Zorn started the project in the 1990s. It eventually ballooned to more than 500 tunes, the last 300 written in a three-month period. Metheny selected some of those for this album, and began recording them in his home studio between tours. He plays all of the instruments except drums, which are handled by his frequent collaborator Antonio Sanchez." - NPR

COLIN STETSON - New History Warfare, Vol. 3: To See More Light

With Bon Iver's Justin Vernon providing guest-vocal cameos (including "Brute"'s uncharacteristically heavy-metal 'Cookie Monster barking') on this follow-up for Constellation (replacing Laurie Anderson and My Brightest Diamond's Shara Worden's contributions to Vol. 2), Stetson's multi-mic'ed roars and circular-breathed sax cycles continue to pummel with a delicate fierceness that's halfway between the dark ambience of Tim Hecker (whose work has likewise been mixed by Ben Frost) and the vein-busting baritone blowing of Mats Gustafsson.

"The physicality of Stetson's efforts is apparent here. The longest track at 15 minutes, 'To See More Light' is his crowning triumph. Stetson maintains the structure of the piece, building upon his circular breathing to create a hypnotic and trance-like state. About halfway through, he slows the proceedings to produce a heavier vocalization and thumping sound that crests into a zenith of growling energy." - All About Jazz

VA - London Is The Place For Me 5 & 6: Afro-Cubism, Calypso, Highlife, Mento, Jazz

Honest Jon's' longest-standing compilation series delves deeper still into the sounds of London's Afro-Caribbean diaspora during the '50s and '60s.

"At last, a fresh delivery of open-hearted, bitter-sweet, mash-up postcards to the here and now, from young black London. As then, calypso carries the swing. There are four more Lord Kitchener songs—in consideration of his wife leaving him for a GI, cricket umpires, a fling onboard an ocean-liner and West Indian poultry—besides a hot mambo cash-in, cross-bred under his supervision, and an uproarious, teasing Ghanaian tribute to him in Fanti by London visitors The Quavers. Other calypsos range compellingly from the devaluation of the pound through jiujitsu, big rubbery instruments, football fans, heavyweight champ Joe Louis and the sexual allure of English women police.

Expert jazz idioms course sophisticatedly through all the selections, which include a straight-up, South London version of Duke Jordan's 'Jordhu,' something from Dizzy Reece's soundtrack—brokered by Kenneth Tynan—to the British crime film Nowhere To Go, and a trio of magnificently hybrid, hard-swinging instrumentals led in turn by master-guitarist Fitzroy Coleman, Kitch's innovative arranger Rupert Nurse, and trumpeter Shake Keane—named after Shakespeare because of his love of poetry." - Honest Jon's

MILES DAVIS - Live in Europe 1969: The Bootleg Series Vol. 2

The second volume of Columbia's Bootleg Series focuses on a rare transition period between Miles Davis' great second quintet and his full-on embrace of electric music, presenting the Bitches Brew repertoire that would provide the core of his forthcoming live performances in its nascent form.

"Recorded as little as two weeks before and as much as four months after Bitches Brew Live's July 5, 1969 Newport Jazz Festival date, some within days of the 1969 Copenhagen DVD, and between four and eight months prior to the Live at The Fillmore East show, much of this music—three CDs, plus one DVD with a 45-minute, full-color performance of the quintet in Berlin on November 7, 1969—has been circulating in bootleg versions for years, but rarely in such sonically (and, in the case of the DVD, visually) cleaned-up form. The Bootleg Series Vol. 2 captures this quintet at two significant junctures: first, in July 1969, a few weeks before entering the studio (albeit with a much larger cast) to record Davis' seminal Bitches Brew (Columbia, 1970); and second, in November 1969, less than two weeks before once again returning to the studio to continue recording music that was ultimately collected on The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions (Columbia/Legacy, 1998).

This group was the first to introduce electric instruments to Davis' music in a live context—only one, actually: [Chick] Corea's Rhodes, which he employs almost exclusively throughout the four discs. Still, this is a far cry from the more rock-inflected music that was soon to come; if anything, the music on Live in Europe 1969 is some of the flat-out freest improvisational music released by the Davis estate to date. Of course, the second quintet—where saxophonist Wayne Shorter (here, that group's only remnant) was joined by pianist Herbie Hancock, bassist Ron Carter and Williams—regularly stretched the boundaries of its compositions, heard with crystal clarity on Live in Europe 1967: The Bootleg Series Vol. 1 (Columbia/Legacy, 2011); but this new quintet of Davis, Shorter, Corea, Holland and DeJohnette took the music to even more far-flung places—a function, most likely, of DeJohnette's formative years in Chicago and Holland's work in England, before Davis called upon him to relocated to the United States." - All About Jazz

PUCHO & THE LATIN SOUL BROTHERS - Saffron and Soul/Shuckin' and Jivin'

A great jazzy Latin set from BGP comparable in many ways to the label's late 2011 reissue of Cal Tjader's Latin jazz outlier Agua Dulce, another staff favourite which received plenty of plays upon its release; where that record's highlight was a cover of "Gimme Shelter," this two-fer's standout (to these ears so far) is a smoothly discordant revoicing of "Reach Out, I'll Be There" fully deserving of a listen!

"Pucho and the band were not yet reflecting the music that was taking off in the Latin clubs of New York; they were a more staid outfit with one foot in the jazz past. This was emphasised by their second album, Saffron and Soul...[T]he material mixed originals with jazz standards and current pop hits such as the Four Tops' 'Reach Out, I’ll Be There.' The originals varied from the soul jazz grooves of 'What A Piece' to intense Latin numbers showing the power of the multi-layered percussion. For their follow-up Shuckin’ and Jivin', vocalist Jackie Soul joined the line-up, immediately taking the record into Latin soul territory." - BGP/Ace

ALFONSO LOVO - La Gigantona

An incredible acetate find from those intrepid archivists at Numero, La Gigantona runs the gamut from frenzied desgargas to Spanish guitar, Afrobeat-ish horn charts, Echoplexed tape-delay dub-outs and stinging Santana-like leads, yet remains a stunningly coherent and cohesive listen.

"The son of a prominent Nicaraguan politician, Lovo was a choice target for the Sandinista rebels who hijacked his homeward flight from Miami in December of 1971, ultimately putting several rounds through the talented musician’s torso and hand. After several years, and as many surgeries, he would break new ground on this psychedelic swirl of Latin jazz and pan-American funk with his musical partner, percussionist Jose 'Chepito' Areas." - Numero Group

KARRIEM RIGGINS - Alone Together

The Detroit-born, multitalented drummer/beatmaker delivers a dense, dusted cratedigging expedition laced with synth squelches and MPC script-flips that sit strongly beside the sketch-sequenced instrumental work of peers/labelmates Madlib and the late J Dilla.

"Much has been written of the spiritual connections between hip-hop and jazz music over the years, and though hardly a household name even in the rap world, few could hope to embody this musical romance more effectively than Karriem Riggins." - Potholes In My Blog

"Incorporating heavy jazz elements, such as swinging bass lines, grooving drum patterns and free-flowing melodies, every song on this album is felt as live as Riggins recorded it. The feeling is strong and the vibe is all-powerful. It is obvious that Riggins really put his all into his long-awaited debut." - Hip Hop Speakeasy

WILLIAM SHELLER - Lux Aeterna

This newly-unearthed Omni Recording Corp. reissue has been getting major store play here, and with good reason—imagine a David Axelrod/Serge Gainsbourg/Jean-Claude Vannier dream-team collaboration (one which presciently narrowly predates the latter two Frenchmen's collaborations, even!), replete with lysergic Catholic mass choir.

Including 11 bonus tracks focusing on Sheller's poppier (but still fairly freaky) 45s, this is the very first time this rarity has ever been widely available.

"Originally composed as a wedding gift in 1970, it's an oddly beautiful recording which combines a weirdly sinister melange of ritualistic choral chants, melancholic psychedelic orchestration, whirling electronic oscillations, meditative kosmiche groove and devout spoken word recitations. I can only think of a handful of records to compare it to, the nearest touchstones being the dark instrumental passages of Jean Claude Vannier's L'Enfant Assassin Des Mouches or the mystical psychedelic liturgical paens of Majoie Hajary's La Passion Selon Judas, or maybe a few of the immersive orchestral reverberations found on Jason Havelock's Pop Symphony. As I said, comparisons are not easy. Whatever dark chemicals they were dumping in the Seine in the late 60's and early 70's to create such weirdly uncharted musical waters we can only guess." - A Sound Awareness

FLYING LOTUS - Until The Quiet Comes

Steven Ellison's last full-length, 2010's Cosmogramma, was an unanticipated favourite of that year—and would go on to be one of my most-played records of the following year as well. (I was uninitiated to his earlier works, although I've since come to revere 2008's Los Angeles with nearly equal fervour.) But despite catching me by surprise, Cosmogramma announced itself to me anything but loudly. It was a good four or five months of owning the record before I truly began to understand the complexity, craft, and sheer joy that lay within it. That's no accident, and, as its title suggests, Until The Quiet Comes is no different.

As Flying Lotus, Ellison builds his music—a simultaneously limping and striding brand of post-hip hop instrumental psychedelia that's peppered tenderly with guest vocals—with incredible care and subtlety. It's not that it isn't loud, vibrant, or throbbing. It manages its share of trunk-rattling boom and colour-inducing sheets of sound. But FlyLo isn't nearly as interested in direct statements as he is in fragments, half-thoughts, open propositions, and the space between the notes (whether that be notes on a scale or, as is often the case in his rhythms, notes between the meter).

That last phrase, of course, is oft used (both seriously and derisively) about jazz, and its inclusion here isn't accidental. Not only is Ellison the great-nephew of the legendary Alice Coltrane (a jazz artist notable for much more than just her marriage to saxophonist John Coltrane), but he is really a musician who represents one of the best ways forward for jazz in the new millennium. More so than many of his contemporaries, Ellison innately understands how to take the central tenets of jazz—the improvisational building in spontaneous directions upon a musical theme—and to then translate it to, for lack of a better phrase, modern music.

(I realize that this is a statement that would no doubt make purists wince. Perhaps it is better applied to the role of Flying Lotus as a listener/beatmaker/producer than his actual playing...but anyway, do with that suggestion what you will.) 

It's not that there aren't great current jazz players (far too many to name here, but Rob Mazurek, Jason Moran, Arve Henriksen to start, maybe...), or that those artists are not doing progressive contemporary things with their music. Nor am I sure that Ellison would like what he does to be called 'jazz.' But I would suggest that there's no better way to approach his music than how one ideally embraces jazz: open to all possible structures and interpretations. Open to endless growth of a performance, even a permanently recorded and captured one.

True to this idea, as great as Until The Quiet Comes sounded at first listen, that's just a hint of how great it has sounded on the tenth. And so I expect it to continue, almost exponentially so.

As with any year, there have been a number of highly anticipated albums in 2012. Some have fallen short, others have ably met the challenge, still more have done adequately. Unlike two years ago, however, I had Flying Lotus on my radar as one of those albums for which I could not wait. Maybe THE album for which I could not wait. But no matter how high the bar was that I set, this record has easily fulfilled its expected promise.

I can't wait to hear how wonderful it sounds to me come the new year. And if there's anyone left who still doesn't believe in the beauty of what computers can bring to music, sit with this album, please. It's magnificent.

ANNETTE PEACOCK - I'm The One

Annette Peacock's 1972 solo debut was only previously reissued in 2010 as a limited edition self-released CD, so hats off to Future Days for following up their release of Bo Diddley's The Black Gladiator with this funk-rock oddity, one that's often akin to Betty Davis belting through an array of Moog filters!

"The album’s wide range of vocal emotions and diverse sonic palette (featuring Robert Moog’s early modular synthesizers, which the singer actually transmitted her voice through to wild effect) places it firmly at the forefront of the pop avant-garde. Originally released by RCA Victor in 1972 to widespread critical acclaim, I'm The One found itself amongst good company. Both Lou Reed and David Bowie had recently signed to the label—Bowie in particular was enamored with Annette—and artists ranging from ex-husband and jazz great Paul Bley, along with notable Brazilian percussionists Airto Moreira and Dom Um Romao, guested on the album itself. Writing and arranging I'm The One’s nine passionate tracks—bar a unique cover of Elvis Presley’s 'Love Me Tender'—the disc grooves easily from free jazz freak-outs and rough and rugged blues-funk to gently pulsing synthesized bliss." - Light In The Attic

VA - LateNightTales by Belle and Sebastian (Volume 2)

B&S's first contribution has now sadly fallen out of print; what better time, then, for these Scots to submit a whole new set of cross-genre finds? Another solid entry in this mix series.

"Their scene-straggling 2006 LateNightTales included pure pop, '60s psych, '70s rock, West Coast harmonies, beat groups, folk balladeering, punk, indie, girl groups, and bossanova; this new selection only delves deeper into their shared influences and inspirations, along with a subtle nod to digging for rare sampled beats, not perhaps a trait usually associated with B&S. Worldwise psychedelic breaks thread the mix together, with two tracks from Broadcast bookending a first half that includes late-'60s dreamers The Wonder Who? and Joe Pass, father of Ethio-jazz Mulatu Astatke, harpist Dorothy Ashby and the 21st-century beats of Gold Panda." - LateNightTales

VA - Mod Jazz Forever

This latest installment of the Mod Jazz series offers the same irresistible mixture of sounds which made the previous volumes so delightful. Hammond organ stompers, bluesy vocal numbers and soulful grooves abound on this compilation that works as well in the living room as on the dance floor.

"The Ace/Kent label's ongoing, if sporadic, Mod Jazz series is a fine example of how to construct an intelligent and highly enjoyable batch of anthologies spotlighting rather obscure tracks in a genre that doesn't get a great deal of attention from history books. Showcasing jazz from the 1960s with a good measure of soul (and sometimes some rock, pop, and funk influence), this is the kind of jazz that's usually more accessible than most to non-jazz specialists, though it doesn't mean jazzheads of a certain taste can't find it to their liking too." - Allmusic

"The Mod Jazz crew are back in town, and we have scoured the world to provide you with the perfect blend of jazz, with a touch of the blues, a shake of soul and a pinch of latin. As usual, we pay only lip service to genre divides, and bring you lots of great jazz vocals, often with an R&B twist." - Ace Records

VA - Big Band Present: Italo Funk Experience

Another excellent entry in Nascente's Experience series. Bene!

"Italian Funk Experience features lost soundtrack gems from cult soundtrack composers such as Piero Piccioni & Piero Umiliani, modal-jazz classics from Lee Konitz & Giovanni Tommaso, twisted Italian funk from the likes of Tony Esposito and super-rare pieces from the cult Italian library music label Rotary, many composed by Italian jazz-legend Amedeo Tommasi.

Big Bang is the production name of Simone Serritella, head honcho of the Italo-jazz re-release label Arision, and under his production name Big Bang, a celebrated jazz-dance producer and favourite of Gilles Peterson." - Demon Music Group

VA - Midnight At The Barrelhouse: The Johnny Otis Story, Volume 1 (1945-57)

We can't stop playing this in the shop—with the wide variety of '40s/'50s styles covered (from R&B to jump blues to fuller, big-band arrangements) and such standout tracks as "The Turkey Hop", "Oopy-Doo" and "Hound Dog", customers' ears pretty much always perk up, and we're invariably asked what we've thrown on. A real grabs-you-from-the-get-go crowdpleaser from an orchestral revue that clearly put on one heck of a show.

"Although universally recognized as an important figure in mid-20th century rhythm & blues, Johnny Otis did not make the most consistent records, whether he was the featured artist/singer or involved in more of a production capacity. This first volume of a two-part career overview compiles some of the more significant entries in his discography (a massive one if you count his productions)." - Allmusic

"The spectacular career of Johnny Otis was a microcosm of the entire Los Angeles postwar R&B and subsequent rock ‘n’ roll scene. He wore every hat imaginable during those rollicking years: bandleader, musician (drummer, vibist, and pianist), dynamic singer, prolific songwriter, hitmaking producer, label owner (Dig Records), deejay, and TV host, excelling at all[...] Ace’s 25-song overview of Otis’ dauntingly voluminous early catalog does a splendid job of examining the first dozen years of Johnny’s recording career, its songlist spanning no less than eight labels." - Blues Revue

ALICE CLARK - The Studio Recordings 1968-1972

First things first: cue track two, “Don’t You Care”, a vocal and instrumental tour-de-force that became an anthem of the early-'90s London club-jazz scene, when it was rescued from oblivion by rare-groove crate diggers. The same cannot be said about the mysterious Alice Clark, who recorded the track for her only album and then disappeared into total obscurity. Nobody really knows very much about her beyond fuzzy recollections from her sessions. What we do know is that she lent her powerful vocals to the Mainstream label, better known for jazz releases but looking in 1972 to tap into the soul market (also check out A Loud Minority: Deep Spiritual Jazz from Mainstream Records 1970-1973,  which came out last month).

Clark’s self-titled album, found here along with a couple of sides she had previously recorded with Warner, gets an extra boost from the Mainstream players, especially from exceptionally propulsive drums and horns, and arrangements from Ernie Wilkins. The thrill I get listening to “Don’t You Care” (penned by Bobby Hebb of “Sunny” fame) has made it my most-listened-to track of the year so far. What makes this album such a unique thrill—much tighter and jazzier than typical soul, from a singer too Lyn Collins-raw for jazz—is what made it so unmarketable when it came out. It's a shame; she should have been bigger than this. 

(As a postscript, if I had known in January that this would be released domestically, I still would have bought the expensive Japanese import after sampling a few tracks. You just can’t pass up a discovery of such urgent greatness as this. This will surely be in my year-end list—highest recommendation!)