One of the most original and innovative Krautrock bands, Embryo fused traditional ethnic music with their own jazzy space rock style. Over their 30-year existence, during which Christian Burchard has been the only consistent member, the group has traveled the world, playing with hundreds of different musicians and releasing over 20 records.
This 1979 live album brings together recordings from an Asian and Indian tour featuring the Embryo sextet with saxophonist Edgar Hofmann, guitarist Jay Zier, bassist Uwe Mullrich, Friedemann Josch on flutes, Michael Wehemeyer on harmonium, and Burchard on marimbas, along with special guest and Embryo alumnus Charlie Mariano on soprano saxophone…

Featuring some of the finest avant-garde jazz players from Germany and beyond, the United Jazz + Rock Ensemble began life as a loose studio aggregation assembled for a youth-oriented German television show in 1975. Hoping for a contemporary balance between rock and jazz, producer Werner Schretzmeier called upon pianist Wolfgang Dauner, the former leader of Et Cetera, an avant-garde jazz group Schretzmeier had managed until their breakup in 1972. Initially recruiting musicians from his home base of Stuttgart (then a hotbed of avant-garde jazz), Dauner put together a rotating cast of musicians that were at first dubbed the Eleven and a Half Ensemble (after the program's airtime); this group featured guitarist Volker Kriegel (who shared writing and arranging duties with Dauner), drummer Jon Hiseman, trumpeter Ack Van Rooyen, and trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff…

Galliard were in on the ground floor of the British progressive rock movement, releasing their debut album, Strange Pleasure, in 1969 and mixing jazz, rock, folk, and psychedelic influences. The following year, New Dawn pretty much picked up where its predecessor left off, with one key exception. The band had initially featured two wind players, Dave Caswell and John Smith; though Smith was absent from New Dawn, a whole brace of additional horn players had been brought in to augment the sound. This was during the period when the likes of Chicago and Blood, Sweat & Tears (and their British equivalents) were starting out, and brass-rock was all the rage.

Galliard is a sextet formed in the summer of 68, and developed a psychedelic type of brass rock, fronted by twin wind players Caswell and Smith and singer Geoff Brown. They recorded two albums on the Deram Nova label (the subsidiary prog label of Decca records) around the turn of the 70's decade, when brass rock was the rage. Their first album Strange Pleasure By Galliard, released in 69, was quite eclectic, ranging from Medieval to Flamenco/Spanish music. For their second album New Dawn, wind player John Smith was gone, but the group adjoined a mega brass section of four player, plus keyboardist Morton.

Chick Corea's Elektric Band II found bassist John Patitucci, drummer Dave Weckl and guitarist Frank Gambale going out on their own and being replaced by Jimmy Earl, Gary Novak and Mike Miller. Saxophonist Eric Marienthal was the only sideman from the first Elektric Band to stick with Corea. Although the new members are not as distinctive as their predecessors, the high-quality material played on this release (which includes Jimmy Heath's "CTA," "Blue Miles" and a variety of Corea originals) is very jazz-oriented and occasionally there are straightahead sections. This set is recommended even to listeners who have not yet acquired a taste for fusion.

Rhino continues with their admirable excavation of the Atlantic vaults with this, their second round of some of the label's '60s jazz highlights. In the spotlight are such instrumental heavyweights as Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Eddie Harris, Charles Mingus, Hank Crawford, and Yusef Lateef, and on the vocal end there's fine work by Betty Carter and Mose Allison. Yes, this album might have a tough time competing with similar collections from the Blue Note and Impulse! imprints. But then again, those labels would be hard-pressed to come up with a selection as varied as this: From the truly idiosyncratic Ellington musings of Kirk ("Creole Love Call") to a taste of Aquarius age jazz by Charles Lloyd ("Dreamweaver: Meditation/Dervish Dance"), this 14-track disc truly runs the '60s jazz gamut.

This features an array of exceptional musicians who perform a broad series of jazz-related musical textures. The album stretches from solo piano and string quartet to 13-piece, three drummer ensembles, with special guests including Chris Potter and the Amika String Quartet, amongst others.

Naurora is undoubtedly Dewa Budjana's most ambitious work yet. Progressive, fresh, engaging, technically brilliant. Budjana’s tunes consistently clasp his listeners in a drape of gorgeous melodies, showpiece guitar parts and astounding ensemble passages that have a spacious air. Naurora, has is an exhilarating mix of styles, it delivers a succession of memorable motifs. It melds East Asian music with progressive jazz fusion and some occasional elements of rock, but most of all it delivers an idiosyncratic sound that is instantaneously identifiable as Dewa Budjana’s own.

Born in Budapest, the drummer and bandleader of German descent László (Leslie) Mandoki belonged to the 1970s' student opposition in communist Hungary. Far beyond the system-conform mainstream, his Jazz-Rock formation "JAM" symbolized the longing for a free world. In 1975, he was forced to leave the country because of governmental repression. Accompanied by his two closest friends, László Bencker and Gábor Csupó, their flight was followed by a long odyssey. On his quest for freedom, he found more than that: a new home - in Germany.

In 1991, Ian Anderson, Jack Bruce, and Al Di Meola became founding members of Leslie Mandoki’s band project ManDoki Soulmates, and for almost three decades, Leslie Mandoki has continued to unite a “who is who” of the icons of Anglo-American and European rock and jazz- rock in the Mandoki Soulmates band.

Easily the weirdest record the Tony Williams Lifetime ever released, 1971's Ego is an experimental blend of post-hard bop jazz and the spacier end of psychedelic rock. Larry Young's wafting organ parts and Ted Dunbar's rockist guitar (as opposed to the more traditional jazz bent of the guy he replaced, John McLaughin) combine to make parts of the album sound like Atom Heart Mother-era Pink Floyd, particularly on "There Comes a Time" and "Lonesome Wells (Gwendy Trio)." Unfortunately, both of those tracks are bogged down by Williams' own earnest and not terribly inspired verses. The best tracks are those that dispense with the lyrical claptrap - the liner notes are also a terribly dated hoot - and get down to the creation of some roiling atmospheres and powerful group improvisation…

The guitarist, a Toronto native, played with Prince as part of 3RDEYEGIRL and the New Power Generation. She was also working with him in a fusion jazz collective that he set aside to concentrate on his solo piano performances before his death in April 2016. And Prince would have served as producer on Diamonds & Dynamite, an eight-track set that takes Grantis back to the improvisational fusion roots she was exploring before joining the Prince universe.