Back catalogue: Funk Soul & Jazz

Review: Recorded at the storied Slugs' Saloon in Manhattan's Lower East Side, this unified collection captures the Charles Tolliver-led Music Inc quartet in blistering form. New York runs through the musiciits restlessness, density, sharp corners. Tolliver, a Brooklyn-born trumpeter with a militant edge and lyrical touch, fronts a group that helped define the forward-looking jazz of the early 70s. Beside him are Strata-East co-founder Stanley Cowell on piano, bassist Cecil McBee and drummer Jimmy Hopps, all embedded in the New York avant-garde at the time. On pieces like 'Felicite' and 'Wilpan's', they stretch out with blistering force, melting structure into raw, insistent groove. Even in quieter momentsi'Ruthie's Heart', or the shadowy 'Repetition'ithere's a tension that never quite releases, the sense that every note is carved in real time. This is the first time both volumes are presented as one continuous document, expanded with three previously unreleased tracks. It's a vital capture of a quartet thinking collectively, improvising with unrelenting intensity and total mutual trust. The sound, newly remastered, gives space to the grit and nuance of the live sessioniCowell's cascading runs, McBee's deep pull, Hopps' unpredictable propulsion. There's no studio polish here, just a direct line to the spirit of a time and place, when New York jazz burned fast, political and free.