Taking influences from Ethiopiques ethiojazz as well as the soundtracks to the European horror films of the 60s and 70s, The Sorcerers seamlessly blend these disparate elements into one cohesive package. Based in ATA Records' home of Leeds, The Sorcerers are made up of the cream of the city's jazz and world scene. Forming the backbone of the ATA Records house band they incorporate bass clarinets, flutes, and vibraphone alongside bass, guitar organ and drums, providing Ellingtonian textures on top of a solid rhythmic foundation.

In 2001 Bettina Mischke and Roland Grosch started their project Jazzamor. Influenced by the Bossa Nova and Latin Jazz of the 60s they developed their own style with Bettina’s voice making it unmistakeable. The arrangements are playful yet minimalistic with great care for detail. Electronic sounds blend with double bass and latino percussions. Melancholic piano aires invoke a blue mood with Bettina’s alluring soft voice giving it all a distinct color. In the beginning Jazzamor was a pure studio project but with their first life concert they began playing all over Europe and in Asia. Maybe the Jazzamor song "Travel…" was like a mission statement for their music. Where ever - in a cafe in Brazil, in a bar in Mosque or in a lounge in Singapore - their songs are on a journey around the world.

In 2001 Bettina Mischke and Roland Grosch started their project Jazzamor. Influenced by the Bossa Nova and Latin Jazz of the 60s they developed their own style with Bettina’s voice making it unmistakeable. The arrangements are playful yet minimalistic with great care for detail. Electronic sounds blend with double bass and latino percussions. Melancholic piano aires invoke a blue mood with Bettina’s alluring soft voice giving it all a distinct color. In the beginning Jazzamor was a pure studio project but with their first life concert they began playing all over Europe and in Asia. Maybe the Jazzamor song "Travel…" was like a mission statement for their music. Where ever - in a cafe in Brazil, in a bar in Mosque or in a lounge in Singapore - their songs are on a journey around the world.

Ever since their beginnings Jaga have been a band who have searched for something different - without any interest in the latest trends, with no concern for who is on the cover of which magazine, this ten piece collective from Norway have focused their efforts on evolving a unique sound which can collectively express their musical ideas.
After months spent on writing new material, the band ripped it all up, went into an isolated studio out in the Norwegian woods and recorded the demo now known as the Spydeberg Session. Put down in one take in one day, it was a breakthrough moment for the group. A sound that was closer to their live sound than ever before…

Johnny Conquest are Simon Taylor, Michael Horsham and Martin Green and behind them they have some of the most diverse creative history going. As part of the globally known Tomato multi media group who have completed projects as diverse as videos for Underworld and Merz, advertisements for the BBC and Red Cross and exhibited and published their graphic art and film work all over the world.
They're debut album ("Uptown for The Americas") and the preceding four 7" releases are laid-back tracks that use acoustic styling and timeless melodies to create highly evocative and emotional music that drips with the American tradition of blues, country soul and folk with an edgy London attitude. Described as "relentlessly instrumental" this album sits well with Mercury Rev, Turin Brakes and music that tips it's hat in the direction of Americana.

The fourth volume in Verve's Verve Remixed series was a long time in coming considering how quickly the label spit out the first three. Nonetheless, it is a welcome addition to that shelf if remixes are your personal thang. This set concentrates, once more, on vocalists, and the array is rather startling on the surface, though it's sequenced beautifully. As with any of these packages some cuts work better than others, but there are some true highlights here. Marlena Shaw's reading of Ashford & Simpson's "California Soul" is given a killer treatment by Diplo and Mad Decent, keeping the entire thing rooted in its source material and stretching it with judiciously added bits of early funk, Ramsey Lewis-style soul-jazz, and hip-hop…

Only six months after the third volume of Verve Remixed was released, Verve issued this, a box combining the three volumes of the series with an additional disc of extra remixes. Though variously rooted in hip-hop, rave and dance clubs sensibilities, the art of mixology has evolved into a potent staple of contemporary pop music. That mainstreaming reached a new zenith with the release of the first installment of Verve Remixed in 2002 and continued to expand via two subsequent collections of eclectic Jazz/R&B-rooted remixes that found a growing, enthusiasitc audience at public radio and other adult-oriented radio outlets. This set compiles those three savory, largely Downtempo anthologies of Jazz-DJ Fusion, from the reworked takes on classic vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn and Billie Holiday that dominated the first set to the follow-up editions' more expansive palette…

For the true follow-up to 2002's Every Day - since 2003's Man with a Movie Camera soundtrack had actually been recorded four years earlier - J. Swinscoe & co.'s Cinematic Orchestra produced another soundtrack, this one virtually invisible. Not long after Every Day's release, Swinscoe began writing music for another Cinematic LP, but in another direction from where he'd gone previously. This was a series of quiet, contemplative instrumentals, with Rhodes keyboards and reedy clarinets, simply begging for a narrative (call them orchestrations for cinema). With scripts for each supplied by a friend - each track got its own story, together comprising different scenes from a single life - and a series of unpeopled photographs supplied by Maya Hayuk, Cinematic Orchestra had the narrative they needed for their invisible soundtrack…

As a venue, the Royal Albert Hall in London is the stuff of legend. It is so elegant it inspires greatness in performers no matter the discipline, as well as rapt and supportive attentiveness in audiences. Some of its past performers have included Frank Sinatra, a double bill by the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and Bob Dylan, to name a few. It therefore goes without saying that the weight on Cinematic Orchestra mastermind Jason Swinscoe to pull off something grand for a recording and video document of this CO performance was considerable. In order to accomplish this feat, he swelled the ranks of his group to over 40 members, including the entire 24-piece Heritage Orchestra! Vocalists Heidi Vogel, Lou Rhodes, and Grey Reverend are all present to reprise their roles from various selections on studio recordings…

With Every Day, Cinematic Orchestra move beyond the electro-jazz fusion of their debut to make a record more natural, more paced, and, surprisingly, better than the justly hyped Motion. J Swinscoe is more the arranger/conductor here than the producer, but of course, there's little need for samples or effects with such an accomplished band sharing the burden. For the opener "All That You Give," Swinscoe and Co., plus harp player Rhodri Davies, spend a few minutes delicately paving the way for a deeply felt vocal by soul hero Fontella Bass. "Burn Out" is a lush, meditative track with a pleasantly ambling solo from Phil France on electric piano, a few appropriately cinematic-sounding horns, an age-old vocal sample, and occasional creaking static phasing through…

Whether to categorize Motion as a jazz or electronica album is an intriguing conundrum, because it truly turns out to be a combination of both musical forms, and it is an unequivocally brilliant combination, at that. British arranger/programmer J. Swinscoe - who virtually is the Cinematic Orchestra - gathered samples of drum grooves, basslines, and melodies from various recordings and artists that have inspired and influenced him (spaghetti-western composer Ennio Morricone and Roy Budd's spy film scores, '60s and '70s jazz and soundtrack scores from musicians such as Elvin Jones, Eric Dolphy, Andre Previn, David Rose, and John Morris). He then presented the samples that he had collected to a group of musicians, the core of which consisted of Tom Chant (soprano sax, electric and acoustic piano), Jamie Coleman (trumpet, flugelhorn), Phil France (bass), and T. Daniel Howard (drums), to learn and then improvise…

After the highly acclaimed "Kiss Of Kali" Mop Mop are back with "Ritual Of The Savage", the third studio album, written, arranged and produced by Andrea Benini. "Ritual Of The Savage" contains twelve tracks of pure hypnotic Jazz, spiritual flavours, exotic Funk and Soul music influenced by Latin and African beats.
Collaborations in the album include the amazing UK vocalist Miss Baby Sol (backing vocaling for the likes of Amy Winehouse, Joss Stone, Paloma Faith, Nate James), veteran Jazz crooner Alan Farrington, Down Beat critics poll winner Gianluca Petrella on trombone, the Italian vibraphone Star Pasquale Mirra, the Voodoo sound of Guglielmo Pagnozzi on clarinette and alto sax, percussionist Danilo Mineo and Andrea Benini's co-writer and arranger Alex Trebo on piano and keyboards…

Femme Fatale is the very suitable title of Wolf Myer Orchestra's debut album. Passion, emotion and lifes other big themes are the threds, leading through this new recording. Demandig an active listener as with previous soloprojects (Seven and Storm, Rough Cuts) Parov Stelar cooperates on "Femme Fatale" with Wolf Myer and his Orchestra. Over 30 guest - artists helped to create a fresh and vivid album that is always aware of its jazzy roots but definitively goes beyond any genres thight boundaries. Hip Hop meets Soul, Funk, Pop und Jazz in a perfect blend of analog and digital. Leading the listener into a world full of intimate thoughts and capacious moments, "Femme Fatale" rejects all daily struggle and rush.

Jaga Jazzist’s least jazz-rooted, most prog album to date, One-Armed Bandit is not associable with Tortoise and 2000s-era Stereolab merely for the assistance of John McEntire, who mixed it and is credited with analog synth processing. Echoing, at various points, both bands at their most rocking, Baroque, and searching, One-Armed Bandit dazzles early on. Throughout the 13 minutes that make up the title track and the following “Bananfleur Overalt,” the listener is pulled through a suspenseful succession of passages, like a score to a Mediterranean tropical cyclone, that work in tight-riffing bass clarinet, zipping vibraphone, buzzing guitar, sighing pedal steel, dancing harpsichord, and even some distant skronk-sax over galloping and tapping rhythms that switch time signatures with an oddly elegant twitchiness…

Finally, some years later, a new chapter of Break n’Bossa has come out, one of the most appreciated collection which became in the past a certain kind of "trade-mark" from Schema Records.
The purpose of this release is to highlight a variety of music that came out in the last few years, which fully fit in the style of Schema projects. We are talking about a double CD which contains both unreleased pieces and remixes suitable for both listening (especially on the first CD) and dancing (particularly on the second). The first CD showcases new material from the likes of Mario Biondi, Gerardo Frisina, The Dining Rooms, The Invisible Session, Luis Ferri…