Hyperjazz Records is the product of the ever-changing language that is modern music, of its frantic and unrestrained evolution. A crossroads between past and present, and where jazz attitude meets new sounds and aesthetics. HJ is the brainchild of Raffaele Costantino, known internationally for his meteoric rise under the moniker DJ Khalab, but known also for being a committed exponent of black and electronic music in his own country. Together with his friends and collaborators, and counting on a strong network both in Italy and abroad (Worldwide FM, BBC, NTS, Bandcamp), the DJ/producer/radio presenter (Musical Box, Rai Radio2) has given life to Hyperjazz, the result of two years of planning, reflection and research.
|
|
|
viewing 1 To 7 of 7 items
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
LP
|
|
HJ 011LP
|
On his new album Layers, Khalab acknowledges and celebrates the encounters that have shaped his ever-evolving musical vision. The record, out on his own Hyperjazz Records, represents the culmination of a creative journey that began with his Eunoto EP, evolved with the Afro-Futuristic soundscapes of 2018's highly acclaimed album Black Noise 2084 (OTCR 001CD), and has since developed further through a series of experiences and deep musical collaborations. Layers summons all the alchemy of Khalab's live performances, and embodies the transcendental power of music making as a collective art form. The album's nine tracks feature an impressive lineup of collaborators old and new, including UK drummer and producer Emanative, Burkinabe singer, guitarist, and m'bira player Gabin Dabiré, Italian producer Clap! Clap!, multi-wind instrumentalist Tamar Osborn, drummer and producer Tommaso Cappellato, British-Bahraini trumpeter Yazz Ahmed, Bristol's vocalist and producer Grove, multi-instrumentalist Tenderlonious, Italian jazz singer Alessia Obino, and British-born Nigerian spoken-word artist Joshua Idehen. Layers still revolves around the key components of Khalab's sound -- dark and trancey electronics and his research into Black music and all its evolutions -- but with a bigger emphasis on harmonic arrangements. Across the album, Khalab's productions twist and pulsate into mesmerizing motifs, as the interplay between different instruments coalesce into focused melodies and rich, complex textures. Khalab and his collaborators masterfully blend gloomy and radiant tones, eliciting feelings of both doom and hope. For Khalab, Layers represents the end point of a journey that began with the synthesis of ancestral rhythms and electronic experimentation on Black Noise 2084, and has taken him on a meandering route through a Mauritanian refugee camp, and deep into the catalogs of legendary Italian labels Soul Note and Black Saint (for the Hyperituals compilations, released on his own Hyperjazz label). Also featuring Lady Blue Eyes.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
2LP
|
|
HJ 009LP
|
A deep dive into the titles released by these legendary jazz labels refreshes the history and vital relevance of this music. A vast, incredibly stimulating yet little-known catalogue, Black Saint/Soul Note is an Italian "double" label based in Milan. Starting in the 1970s, by the 1980s it had established itself as one of the most important imprints for international jazz. Virtually all of the brightest names in creative jazz or the "avant-garde" of the era, left important artefacts: prominent Americans on the label included Anthony Braxton, Max Roach, Archie Shepp, Don Cherry, David Murray, Roscoe Mitchell, and Sun Ra. It also gathered innovative Europeans such as Enrico Rava, Misha Mengelberg, Giorgio Gaslini, to mention just a few. In two volumes -- the second of which is dedicated to tracks from the Black Saint catalog, while the first is focused on the Soul Note one -- the music chosen by Khalab renews in unexpected ways its connection with the present through his dystopian and Afrocentric sensibilities. In this second volume there are moments in which the rhythmic aspect is powerfully explicit (the relentless Maono project by Andrew Cyrille or the fierce tension of Don Pullen's quintet), others in which the kinetic aspect dialogues on different levels with African American cultural contexts (like Oliver Lake's nod to tap dance or the dystopian Latin-jazz of Muhal Richard Abrams), others in which the groove does not even need percussion ("Hattie Wall" by World Saxophone Quartet or the intimate dance of "Wait A Minute" from one of The Leaders' album). There is no shortage of instances where the sound links the present to Africa (the strings in the dialogue between Diedre Murray and Fred Hopkinsor the textures of Karl Berger, without forgetting the very delicate polychromy woven by John Carter in "Ode to the Flower Maiden"), or references the most ancestral rituals (from Jarman and Moye's "Mama Marimba" with Johnny Dyani to the conscious Archie Shepp of "Song for Mozambique / Poem: A Sea Of Faces"), not to mention Sun Ra's eternal ability to connect Mayan temples to the farthest sidereal space. Khalab's Black Saint/Soul Note universe (which also draws on some work from the 1990s, when, without losing its vision, the label was going through a less vital period) is a colorful one, dotted with rhythmic galaxies in constant motion. It's a true feast for the ears, and a bewitching siren for the most curious and seasoned diggers. Also featuring Joseph Jarman and Don Moye.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
HJ 994LP
|
Go Dugong is back on Hyperjazz Records. The new album Meridies is the result of his ongoing investigative work into traditional Apulian music from the south of Italy, inspired by his hometown, Taranto, and the phenomenon of the Tarantella -- started with TRNT (2019). On a quest to push the boundaries of traditional Apulian music, Go Dugong's research has allowed him to rethink and rework these musical traditions of his homeland, leading to the creation of a soundtrack for an imaginative and futuristic ensemble of peasants and farmers. In Meridies, Go Dugong has collaborated with several musicians in order to combine traditional Apulian music with sounds and influences belonging to other Italian and Mediterranean regions, reinterpreting a genre that for many years has lived trapped in its canons. For Hyperjazz Records, Meridies represents another fundamental step in the reinterpretation of the rhythmic and musical tradition of Southern Italy, filtered through electronic synthesis and contemporary languages. Rhythmic pizzica interweave with organs, old synthesizers, lysergic guitars, and makeshift objects such as old cardboard boxes and cookware used as side percussions to the traditional tambourine, all immersed in a psychedelic magma of deep trance and hypnosis for the purpose of "healing".
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
CD
|
|
HJ 003CD
|
Enter a world in which drummer and composer Tommaso Cappellato leads a new configuration of his Astral Travel ensemble, comprised of select improvisers from the contemporary creative music scene. Inspired by the poetry of Sun Ra inscribed within the pages of the book This Planet Is Doomed, the music and lyrics focus on the current consciousness of the planet, raising questions and issues of humanity's collective spiritual direction. The body of work contained in this album is the result of numerous live-in-studio improvisations, deconstructed in a meticulous post-production process by avant-garde electronic producer Rabih Beaini. Vocalists Dwight Trible and Camilla Battaglia sing and declaim the poems, which are enveloped in a spontaneous musical magma. Each piece is collectively created by Tommaso Cappellato on drums along with pianist Fabrizio Puglisi, reeds player Piero Bittolo Bon, who also contributes to the electronic soundscape, and double bassist Marco Privato. Astral Travel was created in memory of Cappellato's late mentor, pianist and arranger Harry Whitaker, composer of the '70s masterpiece Black Renaissance. The ensemble debuted in 2013 with the release of the album Cosm'ethic for UK label, Jazz Re:freshed. It was later re-issued on Japanese imprint P-Vine Records -- a success that earned Cappellato the JAJ Award from Shuya Okino, acknowledging him as the year's best new artist. A major highlight of the collective's journey thus far includes a performance in Berlin as part of a tribute to Arthur Blythe, staged by Jaw Family in conjunction with Gilles Peterson and the Steve Reid Foundation.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
HJ 003LP
|
LP version. Enter a world in which drummer and composer Tommaso Cappellato leads a new configuration of his Astral Travel ensemble, comprised of select improvisers from the contemporary creative music scene. Inspired by the poetry of Sun Ra inscribed within the pages of the book This Planet Is Doomed, the music and lyrics focus on the current consciousness of the planet, raising questions and issues of humanity's collective spiritual direction. The body of work contained in this album is the result of numerous live-in-studio improvisations, deconstructed in a meticulous post-production process by avant-garde electronic producer Rabih Beaini. Vocalists Dwight Trible and Camilla Battaglia sing and declaim the poems, which are enveloped in a spontaneous musical magma. Each piece is collectively created by Tommaso Cappellato on drums along with pianist Fabrizio Puglisi, reeds player Piero Bittolo Bon, who also contributes to the electronic soundscape, and double bassist Marco Privato. Astral Travel was created in memory of Cappellato's late mentor, pianist and arranger Harry Whitaker, composer of the '70s masterpiece Black Renaissance. The ensemble debuted in 2013 with the release of the album Cosm'ethic for UK label, Jazz Re:freshed. It was later re-issued on Japanese imprint P-Vine Records -- a success that earned Cappellato the JAJ Award from Shuya Okino, acknowledging him as the year's best new artist. A major highlight of the collective's journey thus far includes a performance in Berlin as part of a tribute to Arthur Blythe, staged by Jaw Family in conjunction with Gilles Peterson and the Steve Reid Foundation.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
12"
|
|
HJ 999EP
|
This is the second release for the label curated by DJ Khalab, it is mixed by Cristiano Crisci (aka Clap! Clap!). Tarantella is a popular, magical dance and music from South Italy, that in ancient times was related to the ritual of exorcising hysterical people who were allegedly bitten by tarantula spiders, scorpions, snakes. Delirious people, named "tarantolati" after the poisonous spider, underwent therapeutic rites and dances, that drew them into a trance, healing status. Go Dugong is the moniker of Giulio Fonseca, musician and producer born in Apulia, Italy.
|
|
|
Artist |
Title |
Format |
Label |
Catalog # |
|
|
LP
|
|
HJ 001LP
|
The Word Was Made Phresh is the name of Phresoul's album on Hyperjazz Records. Seven instrumental tracks, tight and essential, which bring into sharp focus the talent and versatility of one of recent years' most interesting groups in the jazz, hip-hop, and alternative-rock scenes. The new project by the trio, which is one third English and two thirds Italian, formed by Charlie Stacey (piano, Fender Rhodes, synthesizer), David Paulis (double-bass), and Enrico Truzzi (drums), dismantles jazz's traditional rules, absorbs influences and contemporary sounds, and portrays with lucid irony the contradictions and conflicts of our times. This record comes two years after their debut Metempsychosis (2016), and solidifies Phresoul's sound, where noise-rock improvisations coexist with neo-psychedelia, abstract hip-hop, and space-jazz. Just like in "Monitor Lizard", a syncopated piece which introduces you with immediacy to an energetic jazz interference, able to capture a single moment, moving as rapidly as a reptile, never in straight lines. The melancholy beats of "Institutional Violence" punctuate the piano's melody, which slowly transforms into synth and the futuristic slow-funk of "Sphere Alliance", anticipating the accelerated beginnings and pauses of "Lithium", an undoubtedly hip-hop jazz 3.0 track. The liquid atmospheres and irregular drumming of "Hipster Antichrist" brings to a close with amused hysteria this rhythmic ellipsis which looks at the West with melancholy and little confidence ("Trump-Pence"). The tension built by the continuous changes in rhythm is released in the torrential "Blended Family", in which Stacey's keys progressively conquer space between the noise-guitar and the powerful and irregular beats of drum'n'bass, for an epilogue to a fresh and original record that is inspired equally in its inception and its execution.
|
|
|
|