Don Cherry
Hear & Now

Oh! Friends of good nature!A thousand welcomes of great warmth from Ka Safar! And that, at a truthfully splendorous time, for hither, by crying throws comes the birthing of our own very first long playing reference, named ‘Ancient Tribal Hearts’. And beyond even that, as echoed by the Brace Heads upon the Great Iberian Deer, through her smouldering grace and benevolence, arrives our bounty, to you, dear listener!Ancient Tribal Hearts: An age in the making - such as the great pyramid’s themselves! From the seminal morning of the first Ka Safarian sunrise, to the falling of this past Hunter's Moon, a lowly tuneful scribe burned oil those many nights at his great tablet made of precious and magical metals, forging hieroglyphic pathways where the Ka Safarians would gather, and from thence, make their unanimous and untold journeys onward, outward, inward, allward…The transit to Pangea is set!Oh! Blessed friends!Pray, let us now step aboard this wondrous ship!Ka is the Spirit and Safar is the Journey.

What an unbelievable record. From the wild cover to the iconic breakbeats, Roots from Ian Carr’s Nucleus is one of the dopest albums we know. This is seriously thick, funky-prog jazz-rock heaven. Originally released on Vertigo in 1973, other than a couple of versions at the time for other territories, Roots was never re-pressed since so it’s gone on to become another one of those impossible to find records. Maybe it was a little too out there for the time, but it’s aged very, very well indeed and this Be With re-issue, re-mastered from the original analogue tapes, shows off just why this deserves to be back in press. Genius trumpeter and visionary composer Ian Carr was one of the most respected British musicians of his era. He was a true pioneer and saw the potential in fusing the worlds of jazz with rock, just as Miles Davis and The Tony Williams Lifetime did in the US. In late 1969, following the demise of the Rendell-Carr quintet, and tiring of British jazz, Carr assembled the legendary Nucleus. Regarding music as a continuous process, Nucleus refused to “recognise rigid boundaries” and worked on delivering what they saw as a “total musical experience”. We can get behind that. Under bandleader Carr, Nucleus existed as a fluid line-up of inventive, skilled musicians. This constant evolution and revolution was all part of the continuous musical exploration and discovery that took jazz to new levels. Working together with producer Fritz Fryer and engineer Roger Wake, the seven compositions by Carr, Brian Smith and Dave MacRae that make up Roots flirt with perfection, and Nucleus at that time made up of the cream of 1970s UK jazz.

Salah Ragab - Cairo Jazz Band “One of the most unique and dramatic albums in all of global jazz music.” Francis Gooding, The Wire Strut present the definitive edition of the 1973 Egyptian jazz classic, 'Egypt Strut' by Salah Ragab and Cairo Jazz Band for the June Record Store Day Drop, 2021. Inspired by a concert in Cairo by Randy Weston in 1967 encouraging Pan African unity, drummer Ragab, Eduard “Edu” Vizvari, a Czech jazz musician, and Hartmut Geerken of Goethe Institut vowed to create Egypt's first jazz big band. Following the Arab-Israeli war, Ragab became a Major in the Egyptian army and had unparalleled access to the military's 3000 musicians spanning Upper and Lower Egypt, along with a wide range of instruments. Part of the barracks were christened the Jazz House and, following a crash course in jazz history by Geerken, the Cairo Jazz Band was born, playing their first concert at Ewart Memorial Hall at the American University in 1969. Further inspired by Sun Ra & His Arkestra's first visit to Egypt in 1971, Ragab recorded an album for the Egyptian Ministry Of Culture a year later, entitled ‘Egyptian Jazz’, later released as 'Egypt Strut', a perfect fusion of jazz with Arabic modes with tracks referencing Islamic festivals, Egyptian landmarks and friends and family dear to Ragab. The Wire’s Francis Gooding summarises the album as “esoteric African American Egyptianism and radically spiritualised modal jazz taken up by Ragab as the tool for a form of mystical Egyptian nationalism – a triumphalist military jazz, angled in Ra-like fashion towards the Gods of the New Kingdom.” This expanded version of the album features eight extra tracks recorded during associated sessions. It is released in its original Prism Music Unit artwork for the first time and is packaged with the original house bag designs, an original mini-booklet describing the tracks and an 8pp over sized booklet featuring rare photos and extensive new liner notes by Francis Gooding.