The album opens with Charles Mingus sputtering a percussive motif with one hand while the other riffs out an arabesque fantasia. There’s a duality present here, a tension of opposites. A fixed pitch struggles with […]
Category: Jazz
Miles Davis w/ John Coltrane: “Walkin'” / Cafe Bohemia, 1958
Gems From The Jazz Vault :: Miles Davis, Wes Montgomery & Duke Ellington
Some recent, recommended archival releases of (mostly) unreleased material from some jazz giants. It’d take a whole lot more than four discs to sum up what Miles Davis was up to onstage from 1955-1975. But […]
The Gospel According To Nina Simone
She begins in mid-flow. Sitting down at the piano, effectively taking the reins from her band, the first thing she says into the microphone is ‘So…‘ One simple word, an aside to every single soul […]
Sun Ra :: Space Is The Place (40th Year Anniversary Edition)
Happy birthday, Sun Ra . Born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1914, the avant-jazz pioneer would be 101 years old today. Keeping with the cosmic, Harte Recordings has released a commemorative 40th Year Anniversary Edition of Sun Ra’s galactic-sploitation epic, […]
The Cosmically Spiritual Gospel of Shirley Ann Lee And Alice Coltrane
For those who followed Numero Group’s 2009 compilation Local Customs: Downriver Revival , it should come as no surprise that the reissue label’s 2012 Shirley Ann Lee release is brilliant, breathtaking and essential listening. Songs of Light — the “Shirley Ann […]
Sevens: Alice Coltrane – Transfiguration (Live, 1976)
( Sevens , a recurring feature on Aquarium Drunkard, pays tribute to the art of the individual song.) It’s been noted that 1976’s “Transfiguration” is a culmination, and a sort of completion of the body of […]
Jeremy Taylor :: A Reggae Interpretation Of Kind Of Blue
In 2009 Secret Stash Records dusted off this collection via a vinyl-only release. From the label: “In the spring of 1981 a group of reggae studio musicians from Jamaica gathered in New York City under the direction of […]