The documentary’s title Last Date is lifted from an album of posthumous live recordings from a Netherlands radio session in the summer of 1964 (the Dutch trio from the session feature prominently in the film). Just a few weeks later, Eric Dolphy tragically passed after slipping into a diabetic coma during a performance in Berlin.
Category: Jazz
Pangaea Deluxe: Live Miles in Japan, 1975 (Mixtape)
Drifting from spiraling psychedelia into frightening soundscapes and ecstatic funk, the Miles Davis septet built a universe unto itself across its 1975 tour of Japan. This tour-spanning mix gathers some of the choicest cuts and most experimental moments from the unissued tapes.
Total Blue :: S/T
The Los Angeles-based trio of Nicky Benedek, Alex Talan, and Anthony Calonico have been making music together in various configurations for well over a decade. Their newest project, the outstanding Total Blue, takes the ingredients of smooth jazz and world fusion–fretless bass, muted horns, piles of synthesizers, global rhythms–and vaporizes them into a shimmering mist. The result is one of the most alluring things to come out of LA’s adventurous post-jazz scene.
Jakob Bro :: Taking Turns
Recorded in 2014 but somehow only released late last year, this multi-generational session delivers ensemble playing and collective improvisation at an extraordinarily high level. Danish guitarist Jakob Bro is joined on Taking Turns by a murderer’s row of talents — Lee Konitz (alto/soprano sax), Andrew Cyrille (drums), Bill Frisell (guitar), Jason Moran (piano) and Thomas Morgan (double bass) — for seven marvelously moody pieces.
Agharta Deluxe: Live Miles in Japan, 1975
The Miles Davis septet’s 1975 tour of Japan produced the bandleader’s final definitive statements of his electric era with the Agharta and Pangaea double live LPs. Until a Bootleg Series entry celebrates the tour with a much-deserved box set, unofficial tapes of the 3-week run remain our deepest look into this expanded universe. Here’s a primer on the best of the lot. The shows that burned the hottest and those that explored the furthest reaches of terrain to which no artist has returned.
Lamentations: Twenty-Two Songs about John Coltrane
In the nearly six decades since his untimely passing, musicians from all over the world have never stopped honoring John Coltrane. And not just artists in the jazz tradition, those in rock, funk, prog and soul as well. We put together a compilation of twenty-two of our favorite tributes to the visionary saxophonist. In the extraordinary variety of ways musicians have chosen to honor him, you can see an outline of the magnitude of his impact on modern music.
Sun Ra & His Arkestra :: Kingdom of Discipline
There’s always so much Sun Ra music to experience. But even among all the riches, Dead Currencies’ Ra comp Kingdom of Discipline is a special piece: released in an edition of 75, it speaks to Ra as an independent media pioneer as much as a jazz composer.
Keith Jarrett :: Live In Norway, 1972 (Molde Jazz Festival)
August 2, 1972. Keith Jarrett performing solo in Molde, Norway the at the eleventh annual Molde Jazz Festival. Clocking in at 46 minutes, the concert is comprised of one continuous improvisation that Jarrett dubbed “Molde-72”. This recording was later paired with Jarrett’s return performance at the festival the following summer as the 2-CD collection, Keith Jarrett – Molde Jazz Festival 1972 & 1973 — a 2021 Japanese import.
Sun Ra :: Lights On A Satellite: Live At The Left Bank
In late July of 1978, the Sun Ra Arkestra rolled into Baltimore’s Famous Ballroom in a concert put on by Left Bank Jazz Society. A long running institution, the Left Bank normally hired acoustic bop musicians like Sonny Stitt, Freddie Hubbard, and Joe Henderson. So bringing on Sun Ra was something of a risky move: not only was he electric, he was a bit of an outside musician too. Would the bluebloods of Baltimore enjoy it?
Miles Davis :: Rated X
“Rated X” lacks the monumental sound collage quality of its taped compatriots. The quick (for this era of Miles) seven-minute tune leans into a minimal chaos, almost as if In a Silent Way was recorded in the depths of hell. What begins in disarray slowly becomes the most cohesive thing you’ve ever heard.
Miles Davis: Four More from Brazil, 1974
50 years ago this month, the Miles Davis octet traveled to Brazil for three-night stands in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo – a stretch of gigs featuring the same personnel that recorded the Dark Magus live set at Carnegie Hall earlier that spring. While Dark Magus documented guitarist Dominique Gaumont’s incendiary first night with the band, the tapes from Brazil capture Miles’ well-oiled three-guitar lineup in full flight; Gaumont layering waves of feedback between flights of Hendrix-inspired indulgence, Pete Cosey supplying gobs of heavily modulated riffs and theatrics, and rhythm ace Reggie Lucas abandoning the steady throb of the wah-wah to solo at will.
Two Nights In Chicago: Sun Ra At The Showcase 1976-77
This two-LP set is taken from a show on Feb. 21, 1976 and two in November 1977. The lineage of these records is a little muddled: parts of the 1977 shows were released on The Soul Vibrations of Man and Taking A Chance on Chances, two limited-edition records with questionable fidelity. Additionally, according to Sun Ra archivist Michael Anderson, the tapes were a mess: “it’s a puzzle,” he says in the liner notes. But thankfully the puzzle has been put together for release by Zev Feldman’s Jazz Detective label.
Light Pollution: The Roots of Ambient Jazz
As Aquarium Drunkard recently reported, ambient appears to be the shape of jazz to come. The newest new thing is cross-pollinating with electronics and minimalism, new age and drone. But even these currents have a history. We dove deep into our favorite space jazz of yesteryear, and put together a mixtape for your astral travelling pleasure.
Alice Coltrane :: The Carnegie Hall Concert
Had The Carnegie Hall Concert been released in 1971 when it was originally commissioned and recorded by Impulse as a double live LP, it would undoubtedly rank among the all-time holy grails of live jazz, no, live music, period. But nothing happens before it’s time, and we are unbelievably fortunate to be graced with the revelation of Coltrane’s performance in the here and now. Left in the vault for decades and only partially bootlegged, The Carnegie Hall Concert documents Alice Coltrane cresting a creative peak which marked the end of a cycle of suffering and a rebirth for her spirit and music. This is more than a live recording, it’s a transfiguration through sound.
Michael Naura Quartett :: Call
Hailed at his death in 2017 as the jazzpapst, the pope of German jazz, pianist Michael Naura once fronted the most popular post-bop jazz combo in early 60s Germany. After a serious illness brought his performing career to a halt, he took over editorial management of the state radio NDR’s jazz programming in 1971. There Naura had a front-row seat to the birth of fusion. Soon after, he returned to the studio at the head of a newly assembled electric jazz quartet. Their first release, Call, is a moody, shimmering wash of jeweled tones that sounded like nothing else in European jazz.