Sweet breezy work from pianist Horst Jankowski – best known for his easy hits of the 60s, but a heck of a great jazz player as well! This rare MPS session has Horst grooving it up nicely in small combo format – working with guitar, bass, and drums to craft some tunes that are a perfect example of the freely swinging rhythms of MPS at its best, a real departure from American albums of the same style! The whole album's got a bright sunny finish that we really love, and it includes the great groover "Speech Craft", written by the group's guitarist Hans Wenzel – plus the tracks "Black Flower", "Zeroccasion", "Out N Ground", and "Lady Eva" – all pretty darn nice! LP, Vinyl record album

A great collection of groundbreaking early work from Michal Urbaniak – early European recordings that are very different than his American records from later years! First up is Paratyphus B – some of Michal Urbaniak's heaviest work of the 70s – an album of relatively free and exploratory fusion, recorded in Stuttgart with a group of Polish contemporaries who include Urszula Dudziak on voice and percussion, and Adam Makowicz on electric piano! Urbaniak plays soprano sax, tenor, and flute next to his more familiar electric violin – and many of the tracks are spacey explorations in sound, with some sort of rhythm, but really more a focus on the jamming of the keys, violin, and Dudziak's incredible voice. Titles include "Valium", "Irena", "Sound Pieces", "Winter Piece", and "Paratyphus B". Inactin is one of the greatest albums that Polish jazzman Michal Urbaniak ever cut – and a sparkling session of funky fusion recorded in Germany, at the studios of Horst Jankowski! The album feels like one of the great MPS electric albums from the 70s – and it's got loads of cool Fender Rhodes and clavinet playing, spacey electric violin, and some tight choppy soprano work. Urszula Dudziak lays down some incredibly spooky vocals on the best tracks – riffing away in an otherworldly way that matches the funk on the album. Includes the nice breakbeat tracks "Inactin" and "Ekim", plus the cuts "Lato", "Fall", and "Groovy Desert". 3CD set features 2CDs worth of rare bonus live material – a concert recorded in Bremen in 1972, with very long tracks that include "Introduction/Valium", "Sound Pieces", "Irena", and "Groovy Desert/Silence/Lato". CD

An early set from this leader who also gave us the excellent Color In Jazz album on MPS! The set features solos from Bernd Rabe on alto sax, Horst Jankowski on piano, Gerald Weinkopf and Fritz Dautel on tenor, Georg Ernszt on trumpet, and Peter Witte on bass! LP, Vinyl record album