26/12/2025
The first quarter of the first century of this millennium is soon over & done with. Before making a deep dive into top releases of the last 25 years, here’s a selection of this year’s best finds (this & the next post), best reissues & new albums (posts to follow - lots of of course).
1. In October, we lost the drummers’ drummer Jack DeJohnette. Compost is an oddity in his vast catalogue, an early jazz-rock group with a line-up of luminaires and DeJohnette more on clavinet than drums. Their albums are eclectic and uneven affairs, but contain killer tracks - on this release from 1973, the title track ’Life is Round’ with Jeanne Lee on vocals, and hippie lounge tune ’Moonsong’. Thanks !
2. Over 30+ years, several generations of top musicians (David Murray, Kamasi Washington…) found their voice in Horace Tapscott’s Afro-American jazz community called Pan-African People’s Arkestra. The Call is a snapshot of the group at the height of their powers, recorded in their home base, the United Church Of Christ in LA where they played every last Sunday of the month for several years.
3. I have loved Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden since it was release in 1988, but my copy has been a battered reissue, and this record has so much space that a noisy copy is unlistenable. CD works of course, but I did not hesitate when I finally found a NM UK first press for a decent price in my old neighbourhood record shop, in Edinburgh.
4. In 2014, I had a year-long consultancy gig in Krakow. PolJazz releases were still pretty easily available and reasonably priced back then, and I got together a nice small collection of essentials (Komeda, Novi Singers, Stanko, Namyslovski, Seifert…). But I never found this Andrze Trzakowski’s Quintet’s masterpiece from 1965. Had I known how good it is, I would have hunted it down earlier. Thanks !
5. At his best, Hannibal is a match to Don Cherry. Angels of Atlanta, dedicated to 20 African-American school children murdered by a serial killer, is his tour de force. Passionate spiritual jazz with fiery solos, crowned by emotional vocals by the Harlem Boys’ Choir and Hannibal’s sister Pat Patterson.
