Wendell Harrison
Dreams Of A Love Supreme

The Jazz cats over at Impulse! Records have officially proposed Pino Palladino for the title of 'world's best session bassist'... yeah, you read that right. After a four-decade career supporting many landmark neo-soul acts like Erykah Badu and D'Angelo, this album sees Pino link up with the equally prolific bassist Blake Mills for a masterpiece duet. Blending funk, jazz, West African and Cuban music, the duo enlist the recognisable sound of L.A sax alien Sam Gendel and the INCREDIBLE drummer Chris Dave to fill out the session. An essential modern Jazz release!

Hedzoleh Soundz were one of the first and most original 'Afro' bands from 1970s Ghana, mixing traditional African music and western rock. In late 1973 Fela Kuti introduced them to South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela. Unfortunately, this record was recorded right before the meeting and was overshadowed by their joint afro-jazz classic LP 'Masekela - Introducing Hedzoleh'. The self-titled LP 'Hedzoleh' has since vanished from the public domain despite the success of the band's collaboration with Hugh Masekela... until now! Gorgeous Ghanian afro-jazz for any and all joyful occasions.

Meanjin's own keyboard-king David Versace makes his dazzling debut on La Sape Records, a seven-tracker full of hustling percussion, Latin jazz, low-slung grooves and piano-led ambience. Versace has been self-releasing a heap of wicked jazzy, largely dance-friendly tracks since late 2019 as well as playing in Meanjin nu-jazz dance outfit First Beige - who just performed at the mega We Out Here festival in the UK! Get on board the Versace train before it departs and leaves us all in his cosmic dust... <3

Vega Trails is a new unit from double-bassist Milo Fitzpatrick, (Portico Quartet), and features saxophonist Jordan Smart (Mammal Hands) in a richly powerful duet. The project which takes its name from Carl Sagan's science fiction novel 'Contact' (a book about signals of new life detected from the Vega system) and was born out of a desire to bring the elements of bass and melody to the foreground in their most stripped-back and rawest form. Influences from Swedish fiddle to Indian Classical are woven into a minimized tapestry of ambient instrumental sounds. Verbed-out folk jazz with an existential tip. Another sublime release from the always reliable Gondwana Records.