Transversales Disques France Schallplatten & CDs

Review: Earnest, atmospheric, romantic-gothic guitar pieces from Alain Goraguer, whose Rare Soundtracks & Lost Tapes hears a collection never heard before on vinyl. Goraguer is best known as a collaborator and ghostwriter of Serge Gainsbourg, as well as the scoring composer for the surrealist sci-fi animation film Fantastic Planet. At around the same time of the making of these two indelible compositions, Goraguer also wrote two similar, but less publicly-oriented scores, both of which appear on this record in a back-to-back fashion. An array of breathy flutes, eerie backing synth counterpoints, and shaky percussions all combine to cloud the glasses on this beautifully bittersweet album-length hypnosis.

Review: Keys maestro Ahmad Jamal was something of a lost bebopper, giving penance to a genre that was otherwise mired in noodling and relentless velocity. Placing artistic integrity over the spotlight was a trait he maintained over the course of an entire career, earning him a reputation as something of a jazz angel. This repress of an early live show in Paris - backed by Frank Gant on drums and Jamil Nasser on double bass - effortlessly brings a trans-Atlantic mood across the pond from New York to France, with Jamal sternly prodding both the white-and-black ivories, and our moods.

Review: The original soundtrack composed and performed by Jean Michel Jarre for the 1973 French movie 'Les Granges Brulees' (The Burned Barns), directed by Jean Chapot, hears a reissue. The soundtrack was originally released in 1973 by Eden Roc and features experimental electronic music influenced by Jarre's work at the G.R.M (Groupe de Recherches Musicales). Now re-released by Transversales Disques, its various concrete meanderings and mysterious polyrhythmic resonances continue to beguile.

Review: Gifted multi-instrumentalist Rahsaan Roland Kirk at the height of his powers, backed by his Vibration Society, including long-term cohorts pianist Ron Burton, powerhouse percussionist Joe Habao Texidor, Dick Griffin on trombone, drummer Jerome Cooper and Vernon Martin on double bass. Five impeccable pieces are laid out and played out by the circular-breathing prodigy here, from the opening serenades of 'Sweet Fire' to the funking upstart seduction, 'My Cherie Amour'. A closing slave song satire, 'Volunteer Slavery', hears the stritch player go ham on a rapidly tempo-upping soul build, his singular sax seeming to dance and resound in every corner and cranny of the stereo field.

Review: Here's something to set the pulse racing of any serious jazz enthusiast: a recently rediscovered recording of a live performance made by the Pharoah Sanders Quartet at the Grand Auditorium at Studio 104, Paris, in 1975. The tenor saxophonist is undoubtedly the star of the show throughout, though the fluidity of the double bass playing, the loose-limbed drumming and the rush-inducing breeziness of the piano parts - especially on "Love Is Here" parts one and two, which reminded us of another Sanders classic "You've Got To Have Freedom" - are all equally as ear-catching. Musically, it's as inspired as you'd expect, nestling somewhere between the great maestro's greatest "astral jazz" recordings and more traditional forms of jazz.