Cult Polish jazz group EABS have produced this tribute to the great Sun Ra, reimagining seven of his compositions across this deeply spiritual and funky LP.

On his milestone tenth studio album, In the Spirit of Ntu, the visionary South African pianist, composer, improviser, and healer Nduduzo Makhathini condenses the thematic, sonic, and conceptual notions explored over his catalog into a layered yet accessible 10-track album. In addition to Makhathini's influences such as John Coltrane, Bheki Mseleku, McCoy Tyner and Abdullah Ibrahim, In The Spirit of Ntu pulls his most foundational cultural Influences into a space where the sounds of the South African landscape are placed at the center of the nation's evolving jazz songbook. In the Spirit of Ntu is Makhathini’s second album to be released on Blue Note Records in partnership with Universal Music Group Africa, and the very first release on the newly formed imprint Blue Note Africa.

Matthew Halsall has already blessed us with one beautifully conceived EP this year, now with Changing Earth he has shared another perfectly crafted four track mini-album or EP. Where the music on The Temple Within came from the energy around the band’s monthly sessions at Yes in Manchester, Changing Earth is a more meditative, spiritual offering.

On their debut album, the Lahore band blends the free-form improvisation of Hindustani classical and jazz with sample-heavy production creating a musical dialogue about faith, spirituality, and the self.

Michael Cosmic s Peace In The World & Phill Musra Group's Creator Spaces, featuring unreleased music by The Phill Musra Group and Michael Cosmic. Free improvisation, first touched on by messengers like John Coltrane, Sun Ra and Albert Ayler, gives us an exuberant maelstrom that rejoices in life while it shoves back at complex, unforgiving social-political environments. The 70's Boston underground brought twin brothers Phill Musra and Michael Cosmic together with Turkish-born drummer Hüseyin Ertunç; as a trio, and with other Boston jazzers (John Jamyll Jones of Worlds Experience Orchestra, the 2nd Now-Again Reserve Edition entry), the twins each privately issued an album. Potent mixes of spirituality, expressionist fire and electrified newness. Mastered from the original tapes.

When Matthew Halsall released Salute to the Sun in November 2020, his first new album in five years, he shared the first fruits from an especially fertile period of writing and recording, which also gave birth to the music released here as The Temple Within.

Group Theory: Black Music is a stunning new statement from South African drummer and composer Tumi Mogorosi. Standing in the lineage of South African greats such as Louis Moholo-Moholo, Makaya Ntshoko and Ayanda Sikade, Mogorosi is one of the foremost drummers working anywhere in the world, with a flexible, powerful style that brings a distinctive South African inflection to the polyrhythmic tradition of Elvin Jones, Max Roach and Art Blakey. Since his international debut on Jazzman Records in 2014 with Project ELO, Mogorosi has been in the vanguard of the South African creative music scene’s burgeoning outernational dimension, taking the drummer’s chair in both Shabaka Hutchings’ Shabaka and The Ancestors formation and with avant-garde noiseniks The Wretched.

In the early 1970s, as many jazz musicians looked directly to Africa for rhythms and inspiration, a group of students from Antioch College pushed even further, creating music that was so overtly African, you would have thought it was coming direct from Kenya or Senegal, not a small liberal arts college in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Acclaimed saxophonist, philosopher, bandleader, and musician Shabaka Hutchings, now professionally known as Shabaka across all solo musical efforts, announces his first major label solo body of work, Afrikan Culture, through Impulse!, out on May 20. Entirely written by Shabaka, the eight-track digital only EP showcases him on various wind instruments and focuses on the aural meditative space.

Hailing from Tennessee and now residing in New York, Zoh Amba is a 21 year-old tenor saxophonist who performs with a deep sense of spirituality and emotional power. Growing up in the mountains she practiced and played in the forest before continuing her studies in San Francisco and Boston. For her first CD she has chosen a fabulous quartet featuring her close friend, rising NYC star Micah Thomas on piano, and the formidable rhythm section of Thomas Morgan and Joey Baron. Hypnotic phrases, beautiful folk-like melodies and a soulful tone takes this powerful and moving music toward the feeling tones of a sacred ritual.

After some years spent roaming the Valley of the Ultrablacks and exploring the Mountain of Forever, (where they narrowly avoided the lethal traps of The Voice of Besbunu), Binker and Moses are back with a new offering.

Their third album in as many years, Binker Golding and Moses Boyd are trailblazers in arguably the most exciting jazz explosion London has ever witnessed. 10 new tracks featuring a giant wealth of talent alongside Binker and Moses themselves, (including UK free jazz legend Evan Parker and one half of Yussef Kamaal), this album captures a moments 45 minutes when spontaneity and composition combine to magical effect. It's a companion piece to 'Journey' but with a different energy - as North London is to South London, as West is to East.

Composer, clarinetist, singer & spiritual jazz soothsayer Angel Bat Dawid descended on Chicago's jazz & improvised music scene just a few years ago. In very short time, the potency, prowess, spirit & charisma of her cosmic musical proselytizing has taken her from relatively unknown improviser to borderline ubiquitous performer in Chicago's avant-garde. On any given night you can find Angel adding aura to ensembles led by Ben LaMar Gay, or Damon Locks, or Jaimie Branch, or Matthew Lux, or even, on a Summer night in 2018, onstage doing a woodwind duo with Roscoe Mitchell. For her recorded debut on International Anthem, The Oracle, we've chosen to release a batch of tracks that Angel created entirely alone – performing, overdubbing & mixing all instruments & voices by her self – recorded using only her cell phone in various locations, from London UK to Cape Town RSA, but primarily from her residency in the attic of the historic Radcliffe Hunter mansion in Bronzeville, Southside, Chicago.

Esoteric, Modal and Progressive Jazz inspired by Islam 1957 - 1988. Songs ancient and divine - the seventh volume of our acclaimed Spiritual Jazz series examines the influence and impact of Islam on four decades of jazz innovation.

Composer, trumpeter, producer, DJ and founder of Gondwana Records, Matthew Halsall has always worn many hats. But at the heart of everything that he does Halsall is first and foremost an artist and a musician. A trumpeter whose unflashy, soulful playing radiates a thoughtful beauty and a composer and band-leader who has created his own rich sound world. A sound that draws on the heritage of British jazz, the spiritual jazz of Alice Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, as well as world music and electronica influences, and even modern art and architecture, to create something uniquely his own. A music that is rooted in Northern England but draws on global inspirations.