Solis Lacus – Solis Lacus (A Special Radio ~ TV Record – No 15) [SDBANSELECTION06]

Sdban Records will reissue several installments of the legendary library series ‘A Special Radio ~ TV Record’ on vinyl. These were originally released on Belgian imprint ‘Selection Records’ between 1975 and 1981. N°15 in the series was the Belgian milestone jazz album ‘Solis Lacus’ released in 1975. Solis Lacus is the cult group around renowned Belgian pianist Michel Herr, a pioneer of electric jazz in the 70’s in Europe. Michel Herr rose to international prominence after winning the first prize at the jazz festival in Loosdrecht, The Netherlands, in 1971. He accompanied many European and American jazz stars on foreign tours and ran the group Jazztrack with saxophone player Wolfgang Engstfeld in Germany. At the same time, he set up his own band Solis Lacus, which consisted of Belgian musicians who had all made a name for themselves on the national jazz scene of the 1960s including Richard Rousselet and Bruno Castelluci both from Placebo. Inspired by the reigning jazz-rock sound of the day, Herr expanded his musical vocabulary and started to play electronic keyboards. Solis Lacus recorded its only album in the course of 1974 and 1975, before the members of the group headed in their own direction.

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Solis Lacus – Solis Lacus (A Special Radio ~ TV Record – No 15) [SDBANSELECTION06]

Azmari – Samā’ī [SDBANULP16]

Created in Brussels in 2015, Azmari is a weaving musical odyssey that expertly fuses ethiogroove, dub, psychfunk and eastern sounds. Azmari, literally “one who praises” in Amharic, is an Ethiopian singer-musician, comparable to the European bard or the West African griot often accompanied with a masenqo – one-stringed fiddle or krar – lyre, two traditional ethiopian instruments. The nine tracks that make up debut album ‘Sama’i’, released via Sdban UItra, is a deeply hypnotic experience where mesmerising rhythms and winding improvisations send the listener in to a higher state of consciousness. From the magical sax of album opener ‘Zegiyitwali’, to the dubby template of ‘Cosmic Masadani’ and joyous horns of ‘Kugler’, Azmari seamlessly blend African and oriental melodies with effortless precision, providing a fresh take on the ethiojazz sound. Elsewhere, the heavy, rhythmic sounds of ‘Tariq Al Sahara’ and the mystical and cosmological ‘Azalai’ continue our sacred journey full of raging saxes and wig-out percussion, while the free-spirited, trippy ‘Kadikoy’ coming in at nine minutes in duration, lends a trance-like quality to proceedings where psychedelic jazz meets afro-funk.

vinyl / CD

Azmari – Samā’ī [SDBANULP16]