Anders Jormin’s new Swedish-Japanese project returns the highly distinctive voice of Lena Willemark to ECM – it’s her first appearance on the label in more than a decade - and introduces koto player Karin Nakagawa. In this trio music the Japanese classical tradition and the stark, archaic sounds of the koto, allied to Jormin’s powerful and subtle bass playing, form a unique context for Lena’s sung poems, delivered in her native Älvdals-dialect. Traditions and non-idiomatic improvising are cross-referenced and new paths opened up in these compositions.

Using voice, drum, whistle, chimes, shakers, rattle, tambourine, and didgeridoo, Airto and company make music that comes from all regions and belongs to none. These are songs for ritual and healing, based on many cultures. The mood is ethereal, yet because of the predominance of percussion, also powerful. New age music with punch.

Shamans is the seventh album released by Azeri jazz artist Aziza Mustafa Zadeh. It was released in 2002. In the liner notes, Aziza left a comment about each song. The artwork also contains a number of paintings by Aziza. Around 2.000.000 copies of this album were sold worldwide.

Born in Istanbul in 1939, Okay Temiz was influenced early by his mother, Naciye, who was classically schooled in music. Playing professionally since 1955, Temiz studied at the Ankara Conservatory and at the Tophane Art Institute to learn to build his own unique instruments. After meeting Maffy Falay and Don Cherry, he settled in Sweden; with Cherry and bassist Johnny Dyani he toured the U.S. and Europe (Live in Ankara, Sonet 1971). The group Xaba, with Dyani and trumpeter Mongezi Feza, was founded in 1972 (Rejoice, Cadillac 1972; Music for Xaba, Sonet 1972; Music for Xaba 2, Sonet 1979).

On Sentir, the globetrotting, Cuban-born pianist Omar Sosa is joined not by a full band, but rather by a host of percussionists and vocalists. Sosa remains focused on communicating a kind of ecstatic, multicultural religiosity – most of these tracks are dominated by fervent chanting in one of several languages, underscored by rolling percussion grooves. Sosa's piano is the only Western instrument on the scene, a fact that somehow gives it added power. Like his previous album, Prietos, this one also has a hip-hop element, with Terence Nicholson (aka Sub-Z) contributing rap poetry on five of the tracks.

Acoustic pianist Omar Sosa has done his share of ensemble work, and he has often demonstrated that he is an insightful, thoughtful arranger. But the Cuban improviser takes a break from ensemble work on Ayaguna, which focuses on a July 25, 2002, concert in Yokohama, Japan. This time, Sosa forms an intimate duo with Venezuelan drummer Gustavo Ovalles, who plays a variety of Latin percussion – not only the Afro-Cuban percussion one would expect to hear on a Sosa album, but also various Venezuelan percussion instruments that are used in traditional joropo music. The two musicians enjoy a strong rapport throughout this Latin jazz/post-bop CD, which tends to have a very spiritual quality. In fact, some of the material is mindful of Santeria, a Caribbean faith that contains elements of Catholicism as well as the West African Yoruba religion.

Deep Forest is the first studio album by the musical group Deep Forest, consisting of French duo Eric Mouquet and Michel Sanchez. The album mixes New Age electronics with UNESCO field recordings of music from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Solomon Islands, Burundi, Tibesti, and the Sahel. Deep Forest was nominated for the Grammy Award as Best World Music Album in 1994. For Sanchez and Mouquet, the most important purpose of the album was to express their own fascination with the Efe people, and open the world's ears to the exquisite sound of a quickly vanishing culture. As Mouquet noted, "It's not very often you can hear a Pygmy singing on the radio."

Kitaro is an amazingly talented individual. He has been one of the world's premier electronic composers and performers for decades. During that time, he has created some of the most memorable music in the new age community. His output has been both prolific and consistent. It is difficult to review his albums because they only compare to each other. Tenku is a brilliantly lyrical yet entirely instrumental CD. Kitaro speaks volumes with his synthesizers. These romantic interludes are full of gentle melodies and lush synth washes. The atmospheres are vibrant and bold. They are connected by wispy drones. There are no dark overtones or edges; this is upbeat, pastoral ambience. There are few similar artists, but fans of Vangelis, Suzanne Ciani, Constance Demby, and Dean Evenson are likely to enjoy Kitaro's music as well.

By the time he was twenty, Joseph Tawadros had already received a significant music fellowship and an ARIA nomination for his first album. He's gone on to become one of the most respected Oud players in the world, performing a concert of his original music at the BBC Proms and being awarded the Order of Australia medal along the way. For the last few two years he's been stuck in London during the pandemic, finishing off an album that he began in New York, but in the Drawing Room he's looking forward with a tour and mystery new project on the way.

This is the third album by Osamu Kitajima, one of Japan's most prolific artists from the ethno rock, world music and progressive department. You can certainly not divide all the mentioned stylistic aspects from each other for they were all incorporated in a homogenious sound and complex arrangements. It is the same with his other albums like „Benzaiten“ and or his fourth „Masterless Samurai“; traditional Japanese music meets Western jazzrock and progressive sounds to form a new style unheard by most people in Western countries at the time. Osamu Kitajima easily plays with elements of reggae and funk, fusion jazz and colorful pop while staying true to his Japanese roots with bits and pieces of traditional melodies and the use of old Asiatic instruments…

ATA Records are proud to announce the new album I Too Am A Stranger from The Sorcerers, following previous album successes The Sorcerers and In Search of The Lost City of The Monkey God, which garnered high praise from Mulatu Astatke Who's this? The Sorcerers? It's cool! This is great. Give me the CD man!" and recent Radio 6-listed 7" single Exit Athens, of which Giles Peterson said, "Great Stuff as always".

The 20 years referred to in the title of this 2CD collection is only the length of the Bombay-born percussionist's solo career. Gurtu was already beginning to play Indian classical tabla at the age of six, eventually opening his jazz-fusion phase by gigging with Oregon and Don Cherry. This set's subtitle blurb reads 'the serial collaborator in full flight with…', then proceeds to list a highly impressive gathering of guest artists, hailing from both jazz and global music zones. There's always the danger, particularly with drumming leaders, to be subsumed and sidelined by your singers, guitarists and horn players, but Trilok always invites his collaborators into his own universe, retaining a strong sense of Indian classical tradition. Often this will be pleasingly filtered via a fusion with jazz, funk, soul, hip hop, African, Latin, Far Eastern or Western classical musics, but Gurtu usually tends to emerge unscathed and undiluted.