Gabor Szabo
Bacchanal

What an unbelievable record. From the wild cover to the iconic breakbeats, Roots from Ian Carr’s Nucleus is one of the dopest albums we know. This is seriously thick, funky-prog jazz-rock heaven. Originally released on Vertigo in 1973, other than a couple of versions at the time for other territories, Roots was never re-pressed since so it’s gone on to become another one of those impossible to find records. Maybe it was a little too out there for the time, but it’s aged very, very well indeed and this Be With re-issue, re-mastered from the original analogue tapes, shows off just why this deserves to be back in press. Genius trumpeter and visionary composer Ian Carr was one of the most respected British musicians of his era. He was a true pioneer and saw the potential in fusing the worlds of jazz with rock, just as Miles Davis and The Tony Williams Lifetime did in the US. In late 1969, following the demise of the Rendell-Carr quintet, and tiring of British jazz, Carr assembled the legendary Nucleus. Regarding music as a continuous process, Nucleus refused to “recognise rigid boundaries” and worked on delivering what they saw as a “total musical experience”. We can get behind that. Under bandleader Carr, Nucleus existed as a fluid line-up of inventive, skilled musicians. This constant evolution and revolution was all part of the continuous musical exploration and discovery that took jazz to new levels. Working together with producer Fritz Fryer and engineer Roger Wake, the seven compositions by Carr, Brian Smith and Dave MacRae that make up Roots flirt with perfection, and Nucleus at that time made up of the cream of 1970s UK jazz.

Four years after Nuova Napoli, Nu Genea are back with Bar Mediterraneo, a new album and journey, which projects the sounds of the Neapolitan duo formed by Massimo Di Lena and Lucio Aquilina even further. Nu Genea's Bar Mediterraneo is an idea of a shared place where people meet and fuse together; a space that leaves its doors open to travellers and their lives, always exposed to the whims of fate. Some of this can be experienced through the multitude of sounds that come together in the tracks, layers of different acoustic instruments, voices and synthesizers merging in a unique musical blend. Opening up to the voices of many different people, separated by languages but united by the sea and the music, Nu Genea's hometown, Napoli, becomes a true place of encounter. You can hear this all along. In "Gelbi", a gorgeously deep and propulsive Ney flute plunges into murky waters of the melancholic Tunisian dialect sung by Marzouk Mejiri. In "Marechia'", unbridled happiness and sun ooze from the delicate vocals of Célia Kameni and create an acrobatic bridge between French and Neapolitan language. In "Straniero", your soul is arrested from the moment the slow spell-binding mandolin ignites the hypnotic patterns recorded by the legendary Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen. In "Bar Mediterraneo", the title track, bittersweet guitar’s riffs, analog waves and choirs are overwhelming the song giving you what you would like to hear on a boat trip along the Amalfi Coast. Nu Genea couldn't afford to overlook their firmly anchored roots into the Neapolitan culture and its dialect with "Tienaté", where the power of neapolitan language (interpreted by Fabiana Martone) supports those quarter-tone strings and the uncessant folk-disco groove that spreads to the entire song. In "Praja Magia", repetitive mandolin riffs lead the song, giving space to a choral yet tight vocal line that speaks of Varcaturo, a village close to Napoli. In "Rire", a volley of poetic, deceptively laidback, lyrical fury interpreted by Sicilian Marco Castello intimately combines with a highly musical, multi-textured instrumental backbone and the swoon of a chanson in its heart. In "La Crisi'', the lyrics of a Raffaele Viviani’s poem from 1930 have been adapted to a laidback jazz-funk groove in full NG style. In "Vesuvio", revaluing the evocative verses and powerful mantra of Vesuvio, Nu Genea re-adapted to the dancefloor a folk song by the working-class band E’ Zezi from Pomigliano D'Arco, combining the voices of a school choir with Jupiter-6 arpeggios and bold percussions. Bar Mediterraneo is the place where people constantly return to transform curiosity into participation, tradition into sharing, unfamiliar into familiar. When travellers come through its “doors”, carrying their treasures of words and emotions, they aren’t strangers any more. They take part in a shared experience, enriching themselves and others by leading to unexpected musical journeys.

The streets of Warsaw in the first half of 2020 smelled of rain, disinfectant and electrical tension, caused by storms that broke out repeatedly. The black door of the elevator leading to the newly opening Jassmine club was reflected in the puddles. The faces of people passing by were covered with masks, and in street noise, one could hear the soft pulse of bass coming from somewhere below the ground... Two floors below, four musicians known from the EABS group met for the first time since the global pandemic began.Based on the collective improvisation, they recorded their new material for three days. Despite their previous success, the team did not try to recreate proven patents from ‘Erozje’, but rather treated them as a starting point. We can still hear the influence of the golden era’s hip-hop, but this time the inspiration goes deeper to the connotations with club music (house, juke), and everything, as usual, is based on jazz music. Anthony Mills' unexpected cameo in his rap incarnation as Toni Sauna completes the album entitled ‘Kwiatostan’.It cannot be ignored that the entire globe at the beginning of the 21st century stinks of smog, tear gas used to break up protests, and the sour sweat of politicians. The earth is eroding not only due to water, wind, sun or gravity, but mainly as a result of human activity. The Błoto quartet communicated these problems on their first album. It turned out that we operate in a world in which the cover of ‘Erosion' quickly turned out to be prophetic. Inflorescence grows on the ruins of a world devastated by erosion - a new system of branching shoots ending with flowers. In 2020, most of the petals, pistils and stamens are surprisingly pale as they are constantly suppressed by the system in which they thrive, preventing flowers their lush colours and right to diversity. Just like police states that keep an eye on society. ‘System’ is a keyword around which Błoto’s second album revolves.Błoto’s new album - ‘Kwiatostan’ will be released on September 11, 2020, on Astigmatic Records in collaboration with the Jassmine club in Warsaw. The album will be available on a unique vinyl, limited to 600 copies, and on all streaming platforms. creditsreleased September 11, 2020