World Circuit 黑胶唱片和CD

Review: A welcomed heavyweight vinyl reissue of 1994 GRAMMY award winning album from two of the 20th century's most inspirational, creative bluesmen from two wholly contrasting sides of the world: Ali Farka and Ry Cooder. Most of Talking Timbuktu kicks its feet in the dusty plains of Mali with traditional instrumentation and time signatures before dropping into occasional splashes of soul surging blues such as the fiddle-like picking of "Ai Du" and the foot-stamping yearns of "Amandrai". A timeless meeting of two amazing minds that will never happen again, this should be reissued every 20 years by law to ensure future generations are aware this happened.

Review: It would be fair to say that the Afro-Cuban All Stars are Cuba's most important contemporary musicians. Their leader, Juan de Marcos Gonzalez, has been a pioneering figure for decades and his work with the likes of the Buena Vista Social Club has officially solidified his position as the guiding voice of Afro-Latin music. World Circuit has decided to reissue the band's debut album from 1997, A Toda Cuba Le Gusta, and it's no surprise given just how iconic it remains to this day. If you're a fan of rhythmic jazz with a Caribbean twist then this is the right material for you. If you're a record collector whose into the spicier end of the jazz scale then this is unmissable. Whoever youre, you're bound to enjoy this marvelous collection of tracks.

Review: When members of mega-bands work with relatively obscurer artists, we're always intrigued. But a potential trapping factor is in thinking Jarak Qaribak, for example, is more of a Jonny Greenwood album than a Dudu Tassa one, when in fact the exact opposite is the case. Tassa, an Israeli singer-guitarist who fuses Middle Eastern stylings with contemporary rock, lends a challenging structural terrain to the Radiohead member's electric guitar licks, with the former's Arabic and Hebrew lyrics moving atmospherically against them. A star cast of fellow Israeli artists accompany the pair, as serene vocal beat-driven movements plod and swell away in an appealingly nu-proggy fashion.