The Freedom Principle

12/22/2025

12/22/2025

Al Foster - (2025) Live at Smoke - Smoke Sessions Records
Recorded during Al Foster’s final birthday celebration at Smoke Jazz Club, Live at Smoke captures the master drummer in peak form alongside Chris Potter, Brad Mehldau, and Joe Martin. The set draws from Foster’s long musical lineage—Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter—without leaning on nostalgia. Instead, the quartet plays with ease and authority, letting time stretch and contract naturally. Foster’s drumming is characteristically conversational: elastic, grounded, and always forward-moving, shaping the music without crowding it.
Potter’s tenor brings muscle and clarity, Mehldau favors subtle reharmonisation over display, and Martin anchors the group with quiet assurance. Standards and originals sit comfortably side by side, with no sense of hierarchy—just focused, lived-in jazz. Knowing this was Foster’s last recorded performance lends weight, but the music itself never asks for sentiment. It stands as a document of continuity: seasoned musicians listening closely, trusting the form, and letting the night unfold on its own terms.

Provided to YouTube by The Orchard EnterprisesAmsterdam Blues (Live at Smoke) · Al Foster · Chris PotterLive at Smoke℗ 2025 Smoke Sessions RecordsReleased on...

12/22/2025

Bill Ware and the Club Bird All Stars - (2025) Martian Sunset – Sunnyside Records
On Martian Sunset, vibraphonist Bill Ware pares back a prolific compositional streak in favour of clarity, groove, and trust in ensemble interplay. Recorded with a lean quintet—vibes, guitar, piano, bass, and drums—the album leans on blues-based frameworks that leave space for motion and response rather than dense architecture. The result feels grounded and flexible, with Ware’s writing acting as a set of open pathways rather than fixed routes, allowing the band to move easily between post-bop swing, loose funk, and moments of outward-leaning abstraction.
Guitarist Rez Abbasi’s fluid, rhythmically alert presence is central, often conversing directly with Ware’s vibraphone lines as the rhythm section keeps things buoyant and alert. Tracks unfold patiently, favouring momentum over flash, with the title piece and longer forms like “In a Spiral” showing how the group balances structure and release. Martian Sunset isn’t a reinvention so much as a recalibration: music that values feel, interaction, and forward motion, captured with the ease of a band listening closely to one another.

Bill Ware - Composer, vibraphoneRez Abbasi - guitarMatt King - pianoJay Anderson - bassTaru Alexander - drumsRichard Levy and Dana Ware, Executive ProducersR...

12/22/2025

The Either/Orchestra - (2025) Ethiopiques 32; Nalbandian LEthiopien The Ethiopian - Buda Musique
This volume does something simple and valuable: it puts the feel of pre–“Swinging Addis” Addis Ababa back in the room. The focus is the work of Nerses Nalbandian—an Armenian-born composer/arranger who became central to Ethiopia’s modern big-band language—and the vehicle is the Either/Orchestra, captured live and in studio while reviving his charts with Ethiopian guest musicians.
Musically, it’s big-band swing with a distinctly Ethiopian accent: bright brass voicings, dancing horn riffs, and that buoyant, forward-leaning pulse that can read as rumba/mambo one moment and stately theatre-orchestra the next. The performances feel worked on (tight sections, clear ensemble priorities) without sanding off the grit—so the record lands less like a history lesson and more like a living repertoire book being played by people who enjoy the turns in the road. If you want one quick entry point, “Amhara Rumba” tells you a lot about the album’s personality: celebratory, rhythmic, and detailed without being fussy.

Provided to YouTube by Buda musiqueAMHARA RUMBA · Either OrchestraEthiopiques 32: Nalbandian L'Ethiopien The Ethiopian℗ Buda musiqueReleased on: 2025-12-05Pr...

12/22/2025

GA-20 - (2025) Orphans - Colemine Distribution Services
Orphans gathers eight blues and blues-adjacent recordings that have lived on the margins of GA-20’s discography—songs tested on the road, released as standalone singles, or simply kept in the band’s back pocket until now. Stripped of bass and driven by dual guitars and drums, the trio stays firmly rooted in mid-century electric blues language, drawing on material associated with Billy Boy Arnold, Lazy Lester, Elmore James, Little Walter, Ike Turner, and others. The performances are concise and purposeful, favouring direct attack over polish, and leaning into the raw economy that defines GA-20’s sound.
Rather than reframing these songs, GA-20 commit to them. Tempos stay tight, vocals are plainspoken, and guitar lines are pushed forward with urgency rather than ornament. Even familiar material is treated as functional blues—music meant to move, not linger. The instrumental reading of “Hold On, I’m Coming” offers a brief textural shift, but the emphasis throughout remains on momentum and feel. Orphans doesn’t attempt reinvention; it documents a working band honouring its influences through repetition, restraint, and groove, serving as a compact statement while GA-20 prepare their next chapter.

GA-20 (USA) performing Elmore James' "Stranger Blues' " at the Moulin Blues Festival 2025 in Ospel, the Netherlands. Every year the first weekend of May - ww...

12/22/2025

Green Mamba - (2025) Azelina (Zambia) - Nabuzoka Music
Green Mamba - (2025) Twakulumba Taata (Zambia) - Nabuzoka Music
Across Azelina and Twakulumba Taata, Zambia’s Green Mamba present a consistent, grounded vision that draws from gospel, funk, and Southern Province popular traditions. Both releases are built on steady, danceable grooves, interlocking guitars and keyboards, and call-and-response vocals that emphasize collective participation over individual display. The music moves with ease and purpose, devotional in tone but firmly rooted in everyday social rhythm rather than overt spectacle.
Twaku­lumba Taata leans more explicitly toward spiritual affirmation, its praise-inflected songs carried by uncluttered arrangements and a strong sense of communal flow. Azelina complements this with a similarly direct approach, reinforcing Green Mamba’s preference for balance, sincerity, and rhythmic clarity. Released by Nabuzoka Music—a label dedicated to recording and preserving traditional Zambian music from the Tonga communities of the Southern Province—these albums feel modest in scale but confident in intent, offering music that functions equally well as cultural expression, spiritual grounding, and shared listening.

Provided to YouTube by DistroKidAzelina · Green MambaAzelina℗ Nabuzoka MusicReleased on: 2019-04-09Auto-generated by YouTube.

12/22/2025

Hamouna Isewlan - (2025) Təlle Talyadt (Mali) - Remote Records, Studio Mali
On Təlle Talyadt (Love Exists), Tuareg singer–guitarist Hamouna Isewlan transforms exile, memory, and desert tradition into a deeply personal song cycle. Rooted in the poetic structures of Iswat and the communal rhythms of Tindé, his music bridges ancestral forms with the electrified language of modern desert blues. The album’s ten tracks carry the cadence of caravan travel — rolling guitars, hand-worn percussion, and call-and-response phrases shaped as much by Saharan winds as by the wedding stages of Bamako where Hamouna first learned to hold an audience for hours. Love, separation, and moral reckoning form the emotional core of the record, sung in Tamasheq and Arabic with a tenderness that softens even the starkest themes.
Supported by master musicians from Studio Tamba, Hamouna channels influences ranging from Tinariwen and Ali Farka Touré to Mark Knopfler and R.E.M., yet the result feels unmistakably his own — melodic, unforced, and carried by a storyteller’s instinct. Təlle Talyadt is ultimately an album about resilience: a nomad’s meditation on devotion, betrayal, longing, and the hope that endures despite displacement. Each song arrives like a small dispatch from desert life, shaped by memory but reaching outward with generosity and clarity. In a contemporary Saharan scene full of powerful voices, Hamouna Isewlan emerges here as one of its most heartfelt and lyrically attuned.

Provided to YouTube by Remote Records / Studio MaliTəlle Talyadt · Hamouna IsewlanTəlle Talyadt℗ Remote Records / Studio MaliReleased on: 2025-11-28Producer:...

12/22/2025

Jimi Tenor Band - (2025) Selenites Selenites! (Finland) - Bureau B
Recorded between Hamburg and Finland, Selenites Selenites! brings together Jimi Tenor and a close-knit band working across soul, Afrobeat, spiritual jazz, and funk. The eight tracks were developed through collective rehearsal rather than studio assembly, giving the album a relaxed, lived-in feel. Horn lines, layered keyboards, and steady rhythm sections form the core of the sound, with arrangements that favour groove and repetition over extended solo display.
While Tenor’s work has often moved between experimental and pop-adjacent contexts, this album leans toward clarity and warmth. Ghanaian singer Florence Adooni’s vocals appear on the track “Shine All Night”.

16mm film meets digi stop animation by Jimi Tenor"Selenites, Selenites!" by Jimi Tenor Band. Taken from the upcoming album "Selenites, Selenites!" (out on No...

12/22/2025

Joshua Sithole - (1975, 2025) Joshua Sithole's Africa (South Africa) - Voom Voom Records
Long overlooked in the wider catalog of South African jazz and groove traditions, Joshua Sithole’s Africa re-emerges as a revelation. Sithole’s hybrid language — part kwela, part township jazz, part spiritual funk — unfolds with an ease that belies its complexity. His guitar playing is crisp but unhurried, always dancing around the beat, while his flute lines glide above the rhythm section with a lyrical, whistle-borne clarity rooted in the street traditions of his youth. Bassist Spencer Mbadu and drummer Windsor Nqabeni lock into buoyant, circular patterns that give the album its distinctive lift: grooves that feel communal, melodic, and full of forward motion. Whether in the jubilant sway of “Sigodukeni” or the atmospheric funk of “Soul Ship,” the music radiates warmth and ingenuity without ever losing its vernacular touch.
What this reissue makes strikingly clear is just how holistic Sithole’s artistry was — not only as an instrumentalist, but as an arranger and bandleader. Horn lines appear and disappear with subtle precision, harmonies open like windows, and melodies feel both crafted and conversational, as though improvised in the company of friends. Nothing here is overstated: the album thrives on interplay, restraint, and a kind of spiritual buoyancy that runs through South African jazz at its most heartfelt. Joshua Sithole’s Africa is more than a historical document; it is a vibrant, fully realized musical statement that stands effortlessly alongside the country’s most beloved recordings. Voom Voom’s reissue simply restores its rightful place in the continuum — a timeless, deeply enjoyable album that rewards both close listening and pure movement.

Bubbling Minds favorite!

12/22/2025

Les Nkenda - (2025) Les Nkenda - Wayonwayon
Originally released in 1982 by the Cercle Biblique Évangélique of Pointe-Noire, Les Nkenda resurfaces as a rare document of Congolese spiritual music that comfortably crosses stylistic boundaries. Rooted in gospel but shaped by funk, folk, and Afro-Latin rhythmic ideas, the album reflects a period when devotional music often absorbed contemporary dance forms without losing its communal purpose. Multilingual vocals, layered percussion, and unpolished arrangements give the record a grounded, lived-in quality, closely tied to the social and spiritual life of its time and place.
What distinguishes Les Nkenda is its balance between collective devotion and open-ended groove. The songs move fluidly, sometimes meditative, sometimes rhythm-forward, with an emphasis on repetition, call-and-response, and shared momentum rather than individual display. Now carefully remastered and reissued on vinyl for the first time, the album stands less as a collector’s curiosity than as a clear example of how gospel practice in early-1980s Congo intersected naturally with funk and regional popular styles, creating music that feels both purposeful and quietly expansive.

Le Dj parisien Rodrigue viens de sortir sur son tout nouveau label "Wayon wayon" une réedition d'un disque rare afro-soul du groupe de gospel congolais "Les ...

12/22/2025

Marcus Gad, Zion I Kings - (2025) Dub of Serenity - Galactic Soul Music
Dub of Serenity strips Marcus Gad’s Rhythm of Serenity back to its skeletal essence and lets it breathe in echo, space, and low-end gravity. Guided by Zion I Kings, the album leans fully into classic dub logic: voices dissolve into texture, basslines become anchors, and rhythm pulses with a patient, almost ritual calm. The mood is inward-looking and unhurried, favouring atmosphere over statement, meditation over momentum.
Rather than reinventing the source material, this set deepens it. Reverb blooms, delays trail off into silence, and the mixes reward close listening as much as sound-system immersion. The closing Green Lion Crew remix gently shifts perspective without breaking the spell. Dub of Serenity is less about songs than sensation — a cohesive, contemplative dub journey that values space, vibration, and flow above all else.

Provided to YouTube by SEEDRebel Form of Dub · Marcus Gad · Zion I KingsDub of Serenity℗ Lustre Kings ProductionReleased on: 2025-11-14Composer: Andrew BainC...

12/22/2025

Soothsayers - (2025) Fly Higher – SR
With Fly Higher, Soothsayers return to the core elements that have defined their work for three decades: horn-led Afrobeat structures, dub-informed low-end, and collective vocal writing shaped by community rather than spotlight. The album moves fluidly between Afrobeat, roots reggae, soul, and jazz-inflected instrumentals, favouring steady mid-tempo grooves and ensemble interplay over virtuoso display. The production remains warm and unforced, with bass and percussion carrying much of the narrative weight while horns and layered vocals provide lift and contour.
Lyrically and musically, Fly Higher is concerned with persistence, solidarity, and forward motion, themes echoed in its repeated use of group vocals and collaborative arrangements. Tracks alternate between vocal statements and instrumental passages that allow space for rhythmic development without drifting into abstraction. Contributions from long-standing collaborators and the Youthsayers project are folded naturally into the sound, reinforcing the sense of continuity rather than expansion. The result is a cohesive album that doesn’t seek reinvention, but instead refines a language Soothsayers have been patiently developing over time.

Meaning infinite in Bengali, Ashim - from Soothsayers 2025 album 'Fly Higher' performed live at Hoxa HQ studios - London .Idris Rahman - Tenor Sax Robin H...