New releases last four weeks: Funk Soul & Jazz

Review: The Swiss saxophonist delivers a mesmerising journey through modal jazz on his latest album. Drawing deep inspiration from John Coltrane, Torrent blends intricate harmonies with raw, unfiltered improvisation, crafting a collection that is both a tribute and an exploration of new sonic terrain. The album opens with 'Danse Tropical, a reflective and richly textured piece where Torrent's saxophone weaves through intricate scales, searching yet controlled. The steady rhythm section acts as an anchor, allowing the melodies to expand and evolve organically. In contrast, 'Quannassa' injects a restless intensity, shifting through complex harmonic movements while the quartet navigates its dynamic ebb and flow with effortless cohesion. The title track, 'Buleria', is perhaps the album's centerpieceian eight-minute odyssey that fuses modal jazz with flamenco's hypnotic rhythms. Torrent's improvisation feels deeply intuitive, soaring over a meditative backdrop that evokes the vast, open landscapes of Iberia. The interplay between the quartetipiano, bass and drumsiis both fluid and instinctive, fostering an environment where the saxophone can push beyond conventional boundaries. While deeply rooted in Coltrane's legacy, Buleria is far from a mere homage. Torrent and his ensemble use the foundations of modal jazz as a springboard for personal expression, creating a sound that is both reverent and adventurous. Each track unfolds like a conversationisometimes gentle, sometimes incendiary, but always searching for something beyond the ordinary.

Review: The Iron Curtain, a politically charged term of the 20th century, symbolised the divide between East and West. Winston Churchill famously referenced this metaphor, describing how an "Iron Curtain" descended upon Europe, obscuring the actions behind it. This two-parter record from Jazzman does the impossible, lifting the curtain through sound alone, representing jazz's ablation of political and cultural barriers, as it flourished in Soviet states and exposed the contradictory histories of Soviet jazz, from the 1960s to the 80s. Despite Cold War tensions and MADs, the Soviets didn't hold their breath for a second, embracing the jazz modernisms of hard bop, modal, Latin jazz and Eastern folk-jazz. The resilience of jazz artists during an era of geopolitical conflict thus offers a sprightly affirmation of spirituality and formal reinvention, in the face of adversity.

Review: A new compilation from Spiritual Jazz shows the genre's predisposition to thrive despite heavy political oppression, with underworld eminents euphonating their radical music despite a hard immuring behind the Iron Curtain, which represented the gash between East and West during the Cold War. Contemporary jazz and European folk collide on the first of a two-parter record here, reflecting muted but reassuring sonic utterances sounding against oppression, a somewhat unspeakable sentiment whipping across the Eastern Bloc of the 50s and 60s. Vagif Mustafa Zade, an Azerbaijani pianist, and the Manfred Ludwig Sextett, from the same era, are only two such featured artists; they helped push the embrace hard bop and modal, and the boundaries of what was permissible under the regime.

Review: The Iron Curtain stood as one of the defining metaphors of 20th-century division: a shroud drawn between East and West, described by Winston Churchill as obscuring all knowledge of life on the other side. But while the world fixated on ideological rifts and military standoffs, a parallel story unfolded in the Soviet Union and its satellite states: the quiet, defiant blossoming of jazz. This second of a two-part Jazzman compilation mini-series lifts that curtain, tracing the emergence of bold, genre-spanning jazz from the early 60s to the 80s. These recordings reflect the arm-in-arm influences of hard bop, modal, cool and Latin jazz, refracted through the lens of European folk traditions and hard-distilled through filters of restriction, secrecy, and sometimes outright prohibition. Pressure makes diamonds, and jazz, ever adaptable, flourished in spite of it all: the secret spirituals of an easily overlooked era.