Back catalogue: Funk Soul & Jazz

Review: This is a second new and standalone 7" that is taken from Incense Music for Bed Room, a new compilation series from Incense Music that was curated by Toru Hashimoto and legendary Japanese downtempo and Balearic master Calm. On the A-side, we delve into Haruka Nakamura's beautiful tribute to Bill Evans' timeless piece 'Soiree'. On the flip, 'Valsa de Euridice' is a rendition of Vinicius de Moraes' classic from Etepalma, the inaugural 2006 album by Nobuyuki Nakajima. Renowned as a composer and pianist, Nakajima presents a captivating interpretation that captures the essence of the original piece. Together, these tracks offer a harmonious blend of homage and reinterpretation.

Review: Norwegian pianist and composer Eyolf Dale's The Space Between Two Notes is his seventh album on Edition Records. This album reimagines selections from his trio albums Being and The Wayfarers with some rich orchestral arrangements by the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, all conducted by Miho Hazama. Blending jazz and classical music in unique ways, Dale focuses on the nuanced spaces between notes and so creates a horizontal, interval-based musical exploration. His trio, including Audun Kleive on drums and Per Zanussi on bass, achieves a delicate balance while integrating with the orchestra to deliver a seamless, expressive sound that makes for a genre-blurring musical vision.

Review: Ben Kaczor and Niculin Barandun's debut album, Pointed Frequencies come on the tasteful German outlet Dial Records and explores the healing potential of sound through six immersive tracks. Their collaboration began in 2022 for an audiovisual show at Digital Art Festival Zurich and has developed masterfully since and as Kaczor studied sound therapy, Barandun became intrigued by its possibilities, and it is that which has inspired the album's direction. It incorporates therapeutic elements like binaural beats and solfeggio frequencies into a seamless blend of ambient and experimental music. Through free improvisation, the pair have cooked up some brilliantly contemplative pieces here.

Review: Definitely not to be confused with the 2005 Neo-noir US movie of the same name, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was a 1966 Eurospy comedy directed by Duccio Tessari. The plot, which contains several genre tropes, revolves around a retired espionage agent who receives a death sentence after being caught trying to steal L1 million dollars. At the last minute, he's offered a reprieve, if he can steal a secret formula before terrorist Mr X does. We won't divulge what happens next, but as spy movies tend to, there are plenty of curveballs and red herrings thrown at us. Bruno Nicolai, a powerhouse of Italian cinema during this time, whose tracks have found their way into Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill: Volume 2 and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, delivers an archetypal score for this cinematic canon, packed with tension building percussive movements, swooning and sweeping string and woodwind pop, and even the odd gentle slow dance.

Review: Joseph Shabason, Matthew Sage, and Nicholas Krgovich form a harmonious triangle, both musically and geographically. Hailing from Toronto, Colorado, and Vancouver respectively, they converged at Sage's barn studio nestled at the foot of the Rockies to explore their shared talent for finding beauty in life's mundane moments. Shabason, known for blending late 80s adult-contemporary and smooth jazz aesthetics into ethereal soundscapes, joins forces with Sage, who combines instrumental prowess with synthesis and field recordings to evoke the natural world's whimsy and profundity. Completing the trio is Krgovich, whose observational poetics add a relatable touch to their calm expressionism. Their collaborative album, warmly Shabason, Krgovich, Sage extends the wry and melancholic micro-miracles established in their previous works.