The Listening Guide

🎶 The listening guide: five albums, released during the past twelve months, chosen around a weekly theme 🎶

This week, we pick five fantastic releases in which the vibraphone plays a central role. From Brandon Mitchell’s swinging debut album with his quintet, to vocalist Ágnes Bazsinka’s genre-defying eight-part work ‘Things Look Different from Here’ featuring Szymon Bora, to Lansiné Kouyaté and David Neerman’s inventive blend of balafon and vibes — there’s a wonderful breadth of sounds to soak up!⁠⠀

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Brandon Mitchell – Black Guardian⁠

Ágnes Bazsinka – Things Look Different from Here

Swan Trio (Jo Ambros, Harald Kündgen, Oliver Potratz) – Swan Trio⁠

Kouyate Neerman - Kangaba⁠

Sasha Berliner – Azalea⁠

Support each release on #Bandcamp!

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Album of the Week

Our NQJazz album of the week is Martin Wind’s new trio album, ‘White Noise’. It finds the bassist and composer playing with Ack Van Rooyen on flugelhorn and Philip Catherine on guitar – both musicians who have been ‘major inspirations’ for Wind along his musical journey. The eight-tune album features pieces composed by Wind and Van Rooyen, Cole Porter’s ‘Everything I Love’ and Kenny Wheeler’s ‘Canter’⁠

Support the project via the Laika Records shop⁠ below:

Listen

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Classic Album

Kenny Dorham – Afro-Cuban⁠

On the 96th anniversary of his birth, we celebrate the Kenny Dorham classic, ‘Afro-Cuban’. Initially released in 1955 and expanded to LP-length in 1957, it has been hailed as ‘one of the earliest well-informed, conceived and arranged mergers of jazz and Afro- Cuban musical idioms’ by reviewer Javier Aq Ortiz, and features the playing of such luminaries as Hank Mobley, Art Blakey, Oscar Pettiford, and Carlos "Patato" Valdes.

Listen