Georgia Kelly
Birds Of Paradise

South African drummer Tumi Mogorosi expands his horizons on the new album 'Group Theory: Black Music', adding a 9-piece choir to his band. The result is an ominous polyrhythmic chanter, following and upending the trailblazing styles of Max Roach, Elvin Jones and Art Blakey. A relatively new drummer with a more vivacious hand than most, he ensures that 'The Fall' is a gothic dirge for kit, organ and voice, while 'Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child' slows things down to a shadowed, veiled slow jam - with Gabi Motuba featuring on a belting vocal feature on the B-side's alternate version.

Collection of 1980’s music for aerobics and fitness craze in Yugoslavia inspired by Jane Fonda. Composed by famed film music maestro Alfi Kabiljo, the winner of The Camille Lifetime Achievement Award 2022 by European Composer and Songwriter Alliance (ECSA). His trip to disco, funk and jazz, exclusively made for gym and aerobics classes by Sylvie Vartan’s dance pupil Vesna Mimica is presented here for the first time in the form of unreleased instrumental versions and dubs from the original studio master tapes. The phenomena of exercise and aerobics albums started officially in Yugoslavia in 1983, when Fonda’s book was heavily promoted and published in local edition. While other releases of the era used cheaply done covers of the disco chart hits, Alfi Kabiljo composed original and fresh new music for the series of cassettes published by Jugoton. The original instrumentals were considered lost, but Fox & His Friends Records label owners Leri Ahel and Zeljko Luketic found it decades later, restored it and decided to release it without instructional voice-over to showcase the sound of the studio band. The musical genius behind was Alfi Kabiljo, already a successful composer (also a conductor, arranger, piano player, lyrics and libretto writer and producer) in the variety of genres in Yugoslavia and all over the world. He has recorded in Barcelona, Vienna, London (Pinewood and Twickenham), Los Angeles (Hollywood), Ljubljana, Madrid, Paris, Tokyo and most of all in Zagreb. He has written the music for more than 30 feature films and over a hundred television episodes. Numerous popular songs and chansons have been recorded worldwide, he has taken part in and won prizes at popular music festivals at home and abroad, including Zagreb, Split and Opatija, then Rio de Janeiro, Tel Aviv, Malta, Seoul, Palma de Mallorca, Cairo, Athens, Caracas, Mexico City and much more. His lesser known passion is for applied and library music. The Vesna Mimica aerobics tapes were a bold and unusual step in his career: that kind of applied music was usually hidden in biographies of other composers. They probably considered it artistically irrelevant due to a predefined use, but Alfi Kabiljo never agreed on that, he treated all of his compositions with the same pride. This rare collection of disco-fitness tunes is published in limited edition vinyl gatefold LP; includes extensive liner notes, full color design and socialist era workout graphics. YU Aerobic (Original Workout Music from Yugoslavia 1981-1984) was cut by renowned vinyl experts at Pauler Acoustics and mastered by Antony Ryan at RedRedPaw Mastering.

Osees frontman John Dwyer branches out yet again, adding to his ever-growing braintree with 'Gong Splat', the new album of the same name. A post-punky, wahhing bit of noise, radio static and boxy drums, 'Gong Splat' was recorded during lockdown with bassist Greg Coates, keys mestro Wilder Zoby and heralding a percussionists Ryan Sawyer and Andres Renteria. The urgency of this track leaves us with no other choice than to go mad with animalistic frenzy (besides impulse-buying it, of course).

Chicago-born composer, producer and arranger Charles Stepney is known to some for his work with Earth, Wind & Fire, Deniece Williams, and Ramsey Lewis, or for his work with Chess Records in the 1960s, where he was an essential creative force behind seminal recordings by Rotary Connection, Minnie Riperton, Marlena Shaw, Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, Terry Callier, The Dells, The Emotions, and many many more. In the decades since his untimely death in 1976, the presence of his name in liner notes and on vinyl labels has become a seal of quality for record collectors, music historians, and aficionados, while his sound has been used by countless samplers in the hip-hop world including Kanye West, A Tribe Called Quest, The Fugees, MF Doom, and Madlib. But in comparison to the post-mortem renown of his sound, or the music he created and the artists he supported while he was alive, Stepney is a greatly under-appreciated figure... a genius relegated to the shadows.