Continuum 1

ARBOU-Freedom [DARK NATURE CONCEPT]

après la pluie

03 - I CAN SHOW YOU HIGH

Written & Produced by Tommasi

for The SOS Compilation on Stones Throw Records

River

Preorder vinyl (12/15/17) & digital formats (11/3/17): jitwam.lnk.to/cc17

https://soundcloud.com/jitwam

At Cosmic Compositions, we’ve long felt there was a similarity between the avant-garde/free jazz scene of the 50s/60s and the modern beat generation. Both movements aimed to deconstruct, expand and rewire the conventions of their genres of origin, and were never afraid to experiment or work outside the commercial framework of the time. With our Avant Garde Series, we connected the dots between the two, paying homage to Empire State Musicians like Pharoah Sanders, Alice Coltrane, and Sun-Ra along the way. 

In more recent years, we’ve sensed kindred spirit between jazz-infected beat music, and the new generation of lo-fi funk, psychedelia, noise, and folk musicians operating around the globe. While we’ve been feeling our way towards this liminal zone with projects from the likes of Mr. Armish, Affsid Kidjhagiffy, Aporia, and our Way Out compilation, jitwam’s new album ज़ितम सिहँ might be the most beautiful expression of it we’ve released yet. 

Born in Assam, Gauhati, in Northeast India, but currently based in New York’s storied borough of Brooklyn, jitwam spent his formative years in New Zealand and Australia, before living in monasteries in Thailand, orphanages in South Africa, and washed out apartments in London. Of everywhere and nowhere, his music draws influence from a litany of iconoclasts including, but not limited to RD Burman, Moondog, The Velvet Underground, Yayoi Kusama, Jay Electronica, Jay Dilla, Moodymann, Leon Thomas, Madlib and Asha Bhosle. 

Across the album he utilises knowledge acquired through years spent digging through dusty crates, and talents honed as a multi-instrumentalist, producer, and vocalist. A series of stumbling, jazz/soul-rooted beat sculptures, each buried beneath a haze of fuzzy psychedelia, broken microphone blues, and articulated through a freestyled process he describes as “first thought, best thought”, ज़ितम सिहँ solidifies jitwam's spot as a major emerging talent. 

Recalling the fourth world dreamscapes explored by oddball songwriters like Connan Mockasin, Clarence Clarity, Jai Paul, Silicon, and Unknown Mortal Orchestra, it represents a time of transition and remembrance for jitwam, while still fulfilling the core qualities he looks for in song. In his words, “Music is a refuge. A shelter from the storm. A place you can go to close your eyes.” 

Since he first shared his music with IZWID Records boss Kutmah at a Brainfeeder afterparty in London, jitwam has released through Leaving Records, Cosmic Compositions, and The Jazz Diaries (the label he co-runs with Casey Van Reyk and Nigel Mphisa). He’s also written with Inkswel (BBE) and Paul White (R&S), featured on Moodymann’s K7! DJ Kicks compilation and been championed by Gilles Peterson, Alexander Nut, Andrew Jervis (Bandcamp), and Funkineven. Mixed and mastered by Matthew David at Stones Throw studios in Los Angeles, ज़ितम सिहँ will be available on vinyl and digital formats through Cosmic Compositions / hhv.de.

Text : Martyn Pepperell

ज़ितम सिहँ

Vinyl/Download/Stream

jitwam. - I Ain't Scared Of No Devil Feat. Dj Godfrey Ho

Music for Saxofone & Bass Guitar full-length album on ltd cassette and world wide digital June 15th

Music for Saxofone & Bass Guitar

Sam Gendel & Sam Wilkes - BOA

Music for Saxofone & Bass Guitar album out June 15th on cassette and world wide digital via Leaving Records

Sam Gendel & Sam Wilkes - THEEM AND VARIATIONS

Celebrating its 25th anniversary, Far Out Recordings proudly presents two albums of previously unheard Azymuth demo recordings from 1973-75

Since their debut album release in 1975, Azymuth have risen to rank alongside the world’s greatest jazz, funk and fusion artists. As young men in Rio de Janeiro, they stood out for both their exceptional talent as musicians, and their wild rock ‘n’ roll antics in the predominantly middle-class worlds of bossa nova and jazz. Their signature ‘Samba Doido’ (crazy samba) sound ruptured the tried and tested musical structures of the day, resulting in what can only be described as an electric, psychedelic, samba jazz-funk hybrid.
But before they became Azymuth, Jose Roberto Bertrami (keyboards), Ivan ‘Mamão’ Conti (drums), Alex Malheiros (bass) and Ariovaldo Contesini (percussion) played backing band to just about every major artist in Brazil.

Bertrami was also contracted as an arranger and songwriter at some the biggest labels of the era: Polydor, Philips, Som Livre, and EMI being just a few. Azymuth’s name can be found on record sleeves by the likes of Jorge Ben, Elis Regina, Marcos Valle, Ana Mazzotti and countless others. But at the dawn of the seventies, fascinated by developments in improvisational music - from jazz in the US, to progressive rock in the UK and of course samba, bossa and tropicália on home turf - the energetic young group were inspired and ready to move forward.Any spare moment in which they weren’t in sessions and writing music for other artists, they would be carving out their own sound.

These previously unheard recordings took place between 1973-75 at Bertrami’s home studio in the Laranjeiras district of Rio de Janeiro. At the time of recording, there was nothing in Brazil, less the world that sounded anything like them, so perhaps it’s unsurprising that when Bertrami presented his demos to the record companies he had been working for, he was turned away, and told in effect that the music was ‘wrong’.

One of the demos ‘Manhã’ would be picked up by Som Livre and Azymuth released their seminal debut album in 1975. Throughout the late seventies and eighties, the group released a series of now classic albums for Milestone Records, before taking an indefinite hiatus to pursue their individual careers.
When English producers Joe Davis and Roc Hunter arrived in Brazil in 1994 to record the first Azymuth album in over a decade, Bertrami dug out the demos which had sat virtually untouched for over twenty years. Joe recalls how he was “blown away by the freedom and intensity of the music, as well as the genius of the ideas musically.” Beginning a long and fruitful relationship, ‘Prefacio’ would be the first track Azymuth recorded for Far Out Recordings and was released on the Carnival album (1996).

Along with ‘Manhã’ and ‘Prefacio’, only a handful of these demos were ever professionally recorded and released, making this the first opportunity to hear many of these early Azymuth compositions in their raw, original form.

On every track the frenetic energy in the studio is palpable, giving the recordings a beautifully personal feel and a sense of the phenomenally creative vision Bertrami, Malheiros and Conti were realising at the time. Fifty years on, Azymuth’s earliest recorded music retains an ineffable, futuristic quality, standing amongst their most captivating and moving work.