DJ Deep does it again – and takes us on a magical journey across decades and cities – bringing back some lost house music gems from Chicago, Detroit, and New York – most of which are from the late 80s and early 90s independent years of the scene! There's a nicely simple sound to most of the tracks here – a style that takes house music back to the core elements of its roots without getting trapped in cliche or overplayed tracks – just simple beats, keys, and maybe a dash of vocals – plus usually a core element that develops as the track rolls on, changing slightly through the minimalist progression of the tune. 2CD set features a both mixed and unmixed disc – with titles that include "The Numbers" by Rodney Baker, "Bring U Up" by Romanthony, "Drum Drum" by Jovonn, "Let Your Body Talk" by Ace & The Sandman, "I'll Never Let You Go" by William S, "I'm So Deep" by Vincent Floyd, "Pump That Body (deep house mix)" by Mr Lee, "Motivation Song" by G Strings, "Whispers" by Ron Allen, "Rain Forest" by Lowkey, and "Feel The Fire/Urban Culture" by Naomi Danielle. CD

Features tracks from Lovie Austin & Her Serenaders, Ida Cox, Alberty Wynn Gutbucket Five, New Orleans Wanderers, Ma Rainey, Memphis Minnie, Mary Lou Williams, Ina Ray Hutton And Her Melodears and much more! LP, Vinyl record album

59 tracks in all! CD

The famous French rocker Claude Francois made his debut in 1962 – and this cool set brings together his initial 7" EP release with some other very groovy work from the time! Claude steps out on his own tunes "Belles Belles Belles", "Moi Je Pense Encore A Toi", "Venus En Blue Jeans", and "Hey Potatoes" – and also contributes tunes to a set of four releases by Koko. But maybe the coolest part of the set – and the biggest – is a full album's worth of material from the band of Olivier Despax, mostly instrumentals with Madison grooves and other hip styles – nice organ and plenty of guitar, then vocals from Claude right at the end. Despax titles include "Lolo's Madison", "The Madison", "A Little Bit Of Shout (part 1 & 2)", "Mashed Potatoes", and "Paris Madison". The set then ends with two tracks from the more folksy Danyel Gerard – and a cool Franco/Arabian take on "La Nabout Twist" by Koko. CD

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A long-overdue look at the early work of Fats Sadi – a really great player on the European scene during the postwar years, and one who's best known for his 60s material on MPS/Saba, including recordings with the Clarke Boland Big Band! Here, though, Sadi's working in earlier years, and already sounding pretty darn great – a real modernist on his instrument, and working with a great array of really wonderful players – including a fair bit of material with the great Bobby Jaspar on flute and tenor, in groups led by both Fats and Bobby on a set of different recordings! The package also features work from Jimmy Deuchar on trumpet, Rene Thomas and Jimmy Gourley on guitar, Maurice Vander on piano, Nat Peck on trombone, and Francy Boland on piano and arrangements – especially great work on one seven track batch of material in the set. As with the other historical collections like this from Fresh Sounds, the package is overflowing with notes and images – and pulls together 23 tracks from releases that include the 10" albums New Sound Of Belgium No 4, Fats Sadi's Combo, Bobby Jaspar New Jazz Vol 2, and Bobby Jaspar Quartet – and the 7" EP releases Sadi Quartet and Sadi's Vibes. Titles include "Hittin The Road", "Hegor", "Gigi's Pad", "Ridin In", "Early Wake", "Big Balcony", "Sadisme", "Ad Libitum", "Laguna Leap", "Jeux De Quartes", "Doxology", "Le Jamf", and "Karin". CD

More a retrospective of Celi Bee's best disco work than a true greatest hits collection – but plenty darn great nonetheless, given her flair for a catchy, kitschy club tune! Celi's definitely one of the campiest talents of her generation – but she's also plenty darn comfortable in that role too, and brings a sense of poise and presence to these tunes that really makes them work. She's clearly not one of the most soulful divas in the disco, but she's also clearly very much at home on the dancefloor – and shows a great talent here for rising above the crowds with her freewheeling interpretations of the tunes! CD features a whopping 14 tracks in all – maybe all the titles Celi ever recorded during her big years – and selections include "Superman", "Fly Me On The Wings Of Love", "One Love", "Macho", "Closer Closer", "Comin Up Strong", "Alternating Currents", "Blow My Mind", "For The Love Of My Man", and "Half A Love". CD

Pressure Sounds does it again, with another fine collection of mighty, mighty dub! A much needed Blackbeard retrospective collecting 16 hard to get cuts from British dubmeister Dennis Bovell, rare dubs and instrumentals, plus a couple of outstanding vocal tracks from the man at the epicenter of the British reggae scene. Focusing on Bovell's early work, this collection brings some of his heaviest productions out for the first time since their original release in the mid-seventies, all propelled by his chubby bass playing and rounded out by his deft touch on the console. 16 tracks in all: "The Grunwick Affair", "Harmoniser Dub", "Dominion Dub", "Rowing (12" version)", "Zombie Zones", "Zion Dub", "Higher Ranking", "Ranking High", "Scientific", "Shi-cago", "None Jah Jah Children (Melodica version)", "Uganda Crisis", "Ah Fi Wi Dis", "Entebbe", "Blood Ah Go Run" and "Dub'er". As always, a wonderful package, with new liner notes and photos! LP, Vinyl record album

Sax-heavy New Orleans R&B instrumentals from Herb Hardesty – the tenor player and secret weapon in Fats Domino's band – one of those incredible players whose name isn't as well known as the sound of his instrument! His sax sounds really great out front and in the lead – tightly grooving late 50s and early 60s rhythm & blues. This first ever CD retrospective of Herb's relatively few recordings as a leader features sessions recorded in New Orleans in '58, NYC in '59 and Cincinnati in '61 – with stellar players that include Hank Jones, Jimmy Davis, Walter Nelson, Clarence Ford and Roy Montrell. 12 of the tracks from a never-released Mercury LP – and the set has 20 tracks in all! Includes "Sassy", "Goldie", "Herb's Mood", "Nat", "Adam And Eva", "Coach Train", "69's Mother's Place, "The Chicken Twist", "Perdido Street" and more – plus 2 tunes with vocals by group guitarist Walter "Papoose" Nelson – "It Must Be Wonderful" and "Why Did We Have To Part". CD

A career-spanning retrospective of the photographic side of Chris Marker – an artist who's probably better-known for his work in film, such as the seminal La Jetee – a movie that is really just a set of photographs too! The title gives away part of the approach here – as a good number of the images in the book have the photographic subject staring back at the camera – yet these are also mixed with other images from around the globe, over the space of decades – presented here in beautiful black and white images that are as striking as the one on the cover. The book also features a bit of writing by Marker on his work, and some essays from others as well – in a hardcover edition, 157 pages, with black and white images throughout. Book

While we're not big on career retrospective best of's, especially artists like Marley, whose been collected over & over, this is actually a respectable set, and the deluxe edition includes a full CD of bonus tracks, all remixes from the 80s. Don't worry though, we know there's clubby remixes of some of his material out there, but there's none of that here. The remixes were handled by folks like Errol Brown, ET Thorngren & Groucho Smykle, and are all tastefully put together, plus there's a number of tunes included that weren't part of the original set. The original CD includes tons of classics, like "Get Up Stand Up", "Exodus", "Stir IT Up", "Easy Skanking" & 'Redemption Song" and the remixes include "One Love/People Get Ready", "Coming In From The Cold", "Buffalo Soldier" & "Lively Up Yourself". 29 tracks in all. CD

A career spanning retrospective – tracks include "September In The Rain", "Mambo Inn", "Love For Sale", "Alone Together", two versions of "Lullaby Of Birdland", "Body and Soul", and "Blue Monk". 25 tracks total. CD

While we're not big on career retrospective best of's, especially artists like Marley, whose been collected over & over, this is actually a respectable set, and the vinyl's pretty darn hard to get ahold of anymore. Includes 14 classics, like "Get Up Stand Up", "Exodus", "Stir It Up", "Is This Love", "No Woman No Cry", "Could You Be Loved", "Three Little Birds", "Buffalo Soldier", "One Love/People Get Ready", "I Shot The Sheriff", 'Waiting In Vain", "Satisfy My Soul" and "Redemption Song". CD

While we're not big on career retrospective best of's, especially artists like Marley, whose been collected over & over, this is actually a respectable set, and the vinyl's pretty darn hard to get ahold of anymore. Includes tons of classics, like "Get Up Stand Up", "Exodus", "Stir It Up", "Easy Skanking", "Is This Love", "No Woman No Cry", "Could You Be Loved", "Three Little Birds", "Buffalo Soldier", "One Love/People Get Ready", "I Shot The Sheriff", 'Waiting In Vain", "Satisfy My Soul" and "Redemption Song". CD

A career retrospective, with selections by Spencer Davis Group, Powerhouse, Traffic, and Blind Faith. LP, Vinyl record album

A 2 LP retrospective of some of the more spiritual exploratory sides 'Trane was cutting in the mid to late '60's for Impulse. A number of cuts feature the classic quartet with Jimmy Garrison, McCoy Tyner & Elvin Jones, but a few feature some of the later lineups with Pharoah Sanders, Reggie Worman & Alice Coltrane. Tracks arte "Dear Lord", "Chasin the Trane", "Up 'Gainst the Wall", "Crescent", "Nature Boy", "Welcome", "Cosmos", "Dedicated to You", "Expression" & "Living Space". LP, Vinyl record album

A beautiful package – as beautiful as the music of Jobim, and one of the true fitting tributes to his genius! The set is a retrospective of the work of Antonio Carlos Jobim – and it features tracks that stretch back to his early recordings for Verve, CTI, and Philips (from both the US and Brazil), work he did with other artists (including Astrud Gilberto, Stan Getz, and Elis Regina), and even recent work recorded slightly before his death. The booklet is every bit as beautiful as the music – an origami-like affair, with paper and plastic folding out to reveal some great notes and biographical information on Jobim, offering one of the coolest packages you've ever seen to hold the set's 3 CDs! Titles include "Wave", "Waters Of March", "Agua De Beber", "Bonita", "Photograph", "Dreamer", and so much more – and there's a total of 55 songs packaged with the 60 page booklet! CD

An incredible 3CD set from Atomic – the increasingly amazing group of Scandinavian scene firebrands Fredrik Ljungkvist on reeds, Mangus Broo on trumpet, Havard Wiik on piano, Ingegbrigt Haker Flaten on bass and Paal Nilssen-Love on drums & percussion – who separately, and as a unit, must be acknowledged as some of the best modern free jazz players on the planet! If you thought that the title Retrograde might indicate a 3CD retrospective, think again. The set features 2 CDs of material captured over 2 days in July of 2007 – and a bonus third disc with the group doing their inimitable thing live at Tula's Jazz Club in Seattle! The studio work is as masterful as ever, always finding a killer groove and impeccable rhythmic dynamics – ratcheting up the intensity without the blunt force trauma that others in the free jazz underground bring on, balanced by spare moments and strains of the 60s heroes of avant garde jazz lurking in the shadows. Really wonderful stuff from players we love and respect more with each successive project! Titles include "Db Gestalt", "Retrograde", "Invisible Cities", "Correspondence", "Sweet Ebony", "King Kolax", "Invisible Cities II", "Papa", "Don Don", "Swedish Oklahoma" and more. The live disc has us kicking ourselves for not catching one of the group's Chicago shows, and the titles include "Crux", "Db Gestalt", "Painbody", "ABC 101b" and more. CD

A huge amount of work from the French duo of David Jisse and Dominique Marge – two singers who come together here in surprisingly hip ways – very much their own mode of the time, and quite different than some of the more commercial French pop of the period! A few years before, and these guys might have been a folk duo – but instead, they seem to take the bohemian inspiration of that generation and blend it with a whole host of hip styles – bits of jazz at some points, Brazilian elements at others, groovier soul sometimes, and maybe even a bit of the more experimental styles you'd hear from the team of Areski & Brigitte Fontaine! This 2CD set presents the complete work of the duo – a massive 48 tracks that are a huge musical discovery – work that includes material from a variety of singles and albums, and even one obscure recording done with Luc Ferrari. Titles include "Nemo", "Juliette", "Tu Vas Je Vais", "Et Se Reveiller", "Petit Hommage Au Jazz", "Retrospective", "Sirop D'Orgeat", "Piegon Vole", "Mimi Tant Pis", "Cache Cache", "Mamie Nina", "Babar", "Oh Les Enfants", "Tu M'Fais Rever", and "Ces Mots Qui Te Touchent". CD

Really tremendous work from Mandrill – an instant funky classic, and a set that has the group furthering the sublime sound they crafted on their seminal Composite Truth! The record has all these wonderful twists and turns – not just the usual 70s funky styles, but inflections from a globe's worth of influences – all filtered down and used here in fresh new ways to really keep the sound interesting – with a tightness that's never slick, and which instead has this really visionary approach that may well top some of Mandrill's higher-charting contemporaries! Instrumentation has plenty of jazz inflections, which really keeps things interesting – and the percussion has so many different styles going on, it's hard to keep track! Titles include the massive sample cut "Fat City Strut" – plus "Never Die", "Two Sisters Of Mystery", "She Ain't Lookin Too Tough", "Interlude", "Mango Meat", "Afrikus Retrospectus", and "Aspiration Flame". LP, Vinyl record album

Less of a "best of" than some of the other titles in this series – but some fantastic rare work by this excellent tenor sax player! This 20 track set features 12 numbers from a fantastic album that Pixinguinha cut in 1968 with Clementina De Jesus and Joao Da Bahiana, a great little record that was sort of a traditionalist session with a bit of a modern feel. The other 8 tracks have "?" as the copyright date, but they sound to us like they were recorded slightly afterwards, as Pixinquinha's tenor is set in some driving modern samba arrangements – occasionally with a bit of organ. The inclusion of this rare material makes Pixinquinha's set one of the best in this "roots of samba" series – and it's also a wonderful complement to the 2CD retrospective of his work on BMG. Titles include "Samba Do Urubu", "Yao", "Cabide De Molambo", "A Tua Sina", "Batuque Na Cozinha", "Carinhoso", "Estacio, Mangueira", and "Samba Funebre". CD

A three disc retrospective, plus a live DVD with a 2 hour performance from Offenbach, Germany featuring the late Jaco Pastorius! CD

A brilliant encapsulation of the modern psych, freak folk, tripped out indie pop, and all around uncategorizable grooves of the Twisted Nerve label – a 10th anniversary celebration – doubling as both a label retrospective and a fantastic, riveting mix set by DJ Andy Votel! This approach works incredibly well, with Votel crafting a heady, exciting interconnective groove out of some fairly diverse material, and also includes some rare remixes Includes bits that sound like they were plucked from some spacey late 60s/early 70s style pharmaceutical fever dream, to more blissed out and dreamy avant pop moments, to some acoustic centered freak folk and electronics peppered experimentalism – in an excellent continuous mix by Votel. The CD has 13 tracks that each blend a couple or more Twisted Nerve tracks from over the years, a blend of more than 30 tracks in all, including "Say Your Prayers" and more by DOT, "Riding With Gabriel Greenburgh" by Badly Drawn Boy, "Sad Tail" by The Liftmen, "Fire In My Head" by Voice In The Seven Woods", "Pretty Pretty" by Mum & Dad, "Hag Door Mountain" by Samandtheplants, "Gone" by Sirconical, "Rusty Human" by Jukes, "CPU Song" by Little Miss Trinitron and much more! CD

Obscure small group work from Duke Ellington – trio sides recorded in 1953! Titles include "Janet", "B Sharp Blues", "Night Time", "Dancers In Love", "Kinda Dukish", and "Retrospection". LP, Vinyl record album

The second half of this legendary retrospective on the work and music of the great Bill Fay – a set that's different than the first volume in that it showcases later recordings that Fay was doing at home – really great material that ended up heralding a great later chapter in his career! If anything, there's even more depth and darkness to these tunes than the early work – a continued creative spirit that most of the world had not heard until this release! Titles include "Time To Wake Up Now", "My Eyes Open", "Solace Flies In", "All Must Have A Dream", "War Machine", "Keep Turning The Pages", "Fill This World With Peace", "Still Some Light", "All At Once", "Be At Peace With Yourself", and "I Thought I Heard Someone". LP, Vinyl record album

One of THE key records in the Konitz school – an early Prestige 10" LP that features Lee's quintet on side one, and Lee & Lennie Tristano playing together in Tristano's quintet on side two! On side one, Konitz plays alto and is joined by Warne Marsh on tenor, Sal Mosca on piano, Arnold Fishkin on bass and Denzil Best on drums – gliding along magically on tracks that include "Marshmallow", "Sound - Lee", "Fishin' Around", and "Tautology". Side two features Tristano on piano, Konitz on alto, Billy Bauer on guitar, Arnold Fishkin on bass, and Shelly Manne on drums – performing the classic "Subconscious – Lee", plus "Judy", "Retrospection", and "Progresssion". LP, Vinyl record album

A bit jazz, a bit R&B, and swingin all the way through – the great Nellie Lutcher was one of the better singers of her generation, and it's a darn shame that she's not as well remembered as some of her other postwar musical contemporaries. This set was cut for Capitol during the early 50s, sort of a collection of singles based around her hit "He's A Real Gone Guy"; a nice little retrospective of Nellie's career that finally gives her her due. Titles include "Hurry On Down", "Come & Get It, Honey", "Do You, Or Don't You Love Me", "Fine Brown Frame", and "The Lady's In Love With You". LP, Vinyl record album