Various Artists
BEST006

Forward Kwenda was born in the Buhera area of Manicaland, Zimbabwe. This area is known for its fierce resistance to colonial rulers and respect for Shona tradition. Forward Kwenda has always played Mbira, for the spirits, the ancestors, the land of Zimbabwe and the world around it. An undisputed master of this eminently spiritual instrument, he has developed a complex and unique melodic technique that has led him to perform and teach in the United States, Europe and Japan.The EP Chawapiwa is the result of a collaboration with two of his students: Yann Dubois and Shiho Manabe.The B-Side of this 12” is a remix and a loving tribute to Zimbabwe by Dj Oil, a french producer and dj, and a true veteran of the underground music and party scene in his native Marseille, Lionel Corsini, aka DJ Oil released his well-received solo debut as recently as 2012 (Black Notes for French label Discograph) but is probably better known as one part of The Troublemakers, who had the (probably unique?) distinction of being signed to both the legendary ‘90s house label Guidance and the most famous of all jazz labels, Blue Note. The cover artwork is taken from Georgina Maxim's work: "Letters I wasn't supposed to read". Presented as textile sculptures like a diary made from second-hand clothes, the pieces bear the history and memory of the ghost corps that once wore them. Georgina Maxim lives and works in Zimbabwe where she founded the artistic collective, Village Unhu.The visual adaptation and screen-printing was done by Vivien Le Jeune Durhin from PPP studio, Paris. This is a screenprinted limited edition release of 100 copies.

Quiet landscapes and deep perspectives.British composer Albert Alan Owen’s first widely available new work in many decades. Chorales is a meandering yet wonderful piano solo album recorded during the summer of 2020.The album, through a series of beautifully simple piano pieces, features 20 ethereal compositions that are simply allowed to hang there in the air. Deeply emotional and spiritual, Albert Alan Owen’s Chorales ushers minimalism into the intimacy of aprofoundly elevating listening experience. Captivating.Limited Edition - 300 copies.

Cat Kin Cool is to cross, in a raft made of drum sticks and olive tree branches, with a slight scent of cryptomeria, from the European to the American continent, and back, in the chilly waters of the Atlantic, we dive deep into a portal leading us to Saturn, where memories become an ode to the faces that draw the rurality and childhood, and the ones that draw the heat of Latin America and the rhythms of the earth, humans that become masters in the difficult path to finding ourselves.Cat Kin Cool is the acceptance of the magic flower of creativity of infancy with the wise perspective of spiritual milage.

1979. The suburbs of Paris. Five friends, whose origins stem from the West Indies and North Africa, came together to form Trenchtown Meditation, a “creole-speaking” French reggae band.Heavily inspired by the seminal sound of Bob Marley, Trenchtown Meditation was one of the pioneering bands of the burgeoning French reggae scene. It was also at this time that France saw the explosion of pirate radio stations; like many other bands of the era, Trenchtown Meditation would play live sets on-air in these small radio shacks in between gigs on the various scenes of Paris and its vicinity. The band also got their 15 seconds of fame in 1983 when they appeared on the French TV show “Aujourd’hui La Vie- ‘Spécial Exotisme’”. It was during this busy period that the band recorded an 8 tracks reggae album (which to this day remains unreleased). But in spite of their record and strong desire to make a living from music, the daily grind caught up with the band; in 1984 the guitar player quit the band. Subsequently, the four members decided to rename the band Cap’tain Créole with the aim – while remaining true to its reggae roots – of exploring new musical horizons, driven by the will to go beyond all that they’d done up to that moment.The group had access to a professional recording studio and quickly decided to cut a new project. With the help of 3 new members – among them a sax player and a trumpet player, both coming from the jazz scene, who helped define the new sound of Cap’tain Créole – they recorded their unique outing called Ni Bel Jounin. It’s a single composed of 2 titles Fré Moin / Ni Bel Jounin, both sung in créole, which was clearly unusual for the time. Both tracks are at the crossroads of many universes: Afro, Rock, Funk, Reggae and the result is quite unique! The band also used with great impact some subtle electronic elements. “Fré Moin” catches you instantly while “Ni Bel Jounin” strikes the listener with its beauty. The spiritual vibe that oozes from the record is an obvious marker of their reggae roots.Privately pressed and self-distributed in small quantities at the time, BeauMonde is proud to make the one and only record of Cap’tain Créole available again.

Gianluca Petrella is one of the most internationally renowned Italian musician, composer and producer, winner of the Down Beat Critics Poll in the “Rising Stars” category for two years in a row. Cosmic Renaissance is a music collective led by Gianluca with Mirco Rubegni (trumpet), Riccardo Di Vinci (electric bass, double bass), Simone Padovani (percussion) and Federico Scettri (drums, samplers), with Soweto Kinch (vocals and tenor sax) as special guest among others. Cosmic Renaissance’s aim is to write and play music that actually starts from jazz and reaches new heights and music genres, in the name of unity, discovery, connection, understanding and other beautiful things that make us human. Try to imagine all this into music, and you’ll have an idea of how “Universal Language” really sounds!UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE (2022)Mermaids really do exist, and I discovered this a few days ago. I came across the fantastic story of the Ama, literally the women of the sea. They live in Toba Bay, Japan, and have a long-established custom that has been passed on from one generation to another for more than two thousand years. Not so few. What do they do? They jump into the sea half-naked to fish for seaweed, octopus and, above all, for pearls. They are the real pearl fisherwomen. They reach a depth of just under 30m, with only the strength of their lungs. They are as beautiful as the sun. When they ascend, due to a strange play of sounds and noises coming from their hyperventilating lungs, they emit a kind of whistle that sounds like the cry of dolphins. Or more precisely, the song of mermaids. They go down into the deep sea and search for pearls. When out of the water, they train all their lives and help each other passing on practices and secrets, confiding in one another to stay united. And they are cohesive, never envious of one another, just a great sense of belonging.With his new work Gianluca seems to have drawn from this ancient hunt, made up of memories and traces. He submerged and searched in the remotest memories and ancestral sounds of skins, streets, eras and styles. With his appreciation he has connected black ghettos, slums, townships, ‘the bronx’ of all over the world and explored them with the curious sounds of contemporaneity. Gianluca also has a very cohesive community of musicians around him, he is proud of this, and with them he finds his element, his peace. ‘Anyone who doesn’t get along with musicians has an unresolved problem,’ he tells me. And that’s why he makes a point of letting it be known that each of the five well-known members of his Cosmic Band and the many valuable guests who populate this new record, contributed decisively to the creation of these crazy tracks. In what way? By using the words of their instruments, generating a language that serves precisely to connect past and present, useful for finding the thread of dialogue. A continuous back-and-forth between generations.To speak of the best in the field is an idle exercise: all have striven in the realisation of the composition, all deserve full praise, none excluded. Ovations for all.If you think you are only listening to jazz, you are sadly mistaken. There are exotic ghosts, promises of evasion. There is a celebration of the human condition. There is a life in here. A plunge into the heart of music and its many languages. A record about confrontation on words, about memory, about being true to oneself. But it is also a work on how complicated it is to come to terms with what we call identity, and Gianluca rewrites this identity in his own way. A work made of whispers, murmurs, in which music and language try to invent a new encounter. That takes us down into the abyss of the sea and up to the sky.Federico Scoppio

**** DIZONORD DEADSTOCK ****Dizonord team discovered DJ Moppy’s Detroit’s label Animal Right Records back in 2016 on a Detroit Threads’ shelf. ARR-005 was previously released in 2020 in the US but no copies were available eleswhere. Now that you’re familiar with the label it’s no surprise that Detroit’s n°1 DJ Andrés gave a little help to promote the label.We invite you to feel our love with this 4 Track EP. ARR-005 2 Original tracks crafted by Moppy & Lailah Reich.. Two remixes from Dez Andrès & Beyond Luck (Radius ETC & Moppy).