Buy Now...

'Kaleidoscope Of Rainbows' (1976) completed a trilogy of albums and was composed between 1973 and 1975 as a seven-part work for jazz orchestra and performed by an augmented version of Ian Carr's band Nucleus.

This Dusk Fire recording was 24 Bit 96 k/Hz digitally-remastered by Miles Showell at Metropolis Mastering, London, December 2004, using original master tapes.

More

Buy Now...

STEVE ASHLEY turned 60 in style in March 2006 with a special celebration concert in Cheltenham.

The show featured a host of folk-rockers including Fairport Convention's Chris Leslie, Simon Nicol and Dave Pegg with an orchestra conducted by Nick Drake arranger, Robert Kirby.

The concert CD charts a lifetime's journey in song by one of England's finest singer-songwriters and includes performances by Ragged Robin, The Steve Ashley Band (including members of Decameron) and - with Dave Menday - the first public appearance by act Tinderbox for nearly 40 years.

The show took place on Sunday March 12th 2006 at Cheltenham's Bacon Theatre.

Available October 2006

More

Buy Now...

One of the most gifted British jazzmen of his age, and one of the most audacious musical pioneers of all time, Mike Taylor died tragically young in late January 1969.

Mike Taylor Remembered is the most fulsome tribute of all. Recorded over two days in June 1973, at Denis Preston's Lansdowne Studios in London, it collects a trove of Taylor compositions, performed by a veritable who's who of modern British jazz, with around twenty musicians contributing differing orchestration for each of the ten album's 10 pieces.

Jon Hiseman and Barbara Thompson knew Mike intimately and worked on much of this music with him; Ian Carr, who originally introduced Mike Taylor to Denis Preston, recorded two albums by Mike Taylor; Neil Ardley, as leader of the New Jazz Orchestra directed performances of his orchestral music; Henry Lowther and Dave Gelly featured Mike's music with their own bands; and Norma Winstone was one of the few singers able to sing his extraordinary songs.

Released now, for the first time, Mike Taylor Remembered. (Dusk Fire; DUSKCD103) presents the full set list, re-mastered from Neil Ardley's original tapes, and includes a generous 20-page booklet with extensive booklet notes on Taylor and the album's recording by Dave Gelly complemented by previously-unseen photography.

Released August 27, 2007

More

Buy Now...

A diverse roster of recording artists - spanning half a century between the oldest and youngest - have contributed contemporary interpretations of traditional English songs to a new album released as a companion piece to The Folk Handbook: Working With Songs From The English Tradition, published in the UK and US this summer by Backbeat Books.

"Old Wine/New Skins", released via Proper Music Distribution on Buckingham Industrial Park Records' Dusk Fire imprint, compiles 17 songs from the book in performances all but one of which have been recorded in recent years; many have been recorded specially for this album and thus are unavailable elsewhere.

Contributors, including English, Scots, Americans and other nationalities, count Lisa Knapp, Tom Paxton, James Yorkston, Robin & Bina Williamson and The Devil's Interval amongst others - renowned or about to be.

From time to time interest in traditional music extends beyond the boundaries that usually contain it. What all the performers here have in common is that they have been drawn to traditional music during one or other of those periodic surges of interest.

Interpretations vary delightfully in tone and genre, from the straight-playing of James Raynard's "The Outlandish Knight" and Barry Dransfield's "John Barleycorn", to a sad, country-tinged "What Is The Life Of A Man?" by Michael Weston King, a folk-rock take of "the Broomfield Wager" by Jacqui McShee's Pentangle, a nu-folk "Come Write Me Down" by Serafina Steer, and a chilling, folk-psych rendering of "The Unquiet Grave" by Circulus.

The 78 minute-long album, which also features a rare performance by 1960s cult actor/singer Noel Harrison, is book-ended evocatively acappella by rising star Lucy Wainwright Roche's "Barbara Allen" and the first lady of folk, Shirley Collins' concluding salute in "Adieu To Old England."

Released October 8, 2007

More

About the songs and artists
 

Buy Now...

Riding high on the success of its Valentyne Suite (Vertigo 1969) release, jazz rock act Colosseum embarked in the summer of 1970 on a major UK tour.

To best showcase the album's full force, the band took Neil Ardley's New Jazz Orchestra (NJO) on the road with them. It was a decision based on mutual synergy: the NJO had already played on one track on Valentyne Suite, Butty‘s Blues, and Colosseum members Jon Hiseman, Tony Reeves, Dave Greenslade and Dick Heckstall-Smith had all played previously with Ardley's big band.

Released on Dusk Fire Records this July (2008), Camden '70 (DUSKCD105) bears testament to the potency of this gathering of modern British jazz talent of the day in a debut record of a mid-tour concert at the Jeanetta Cochrane Theatre during London's Camden Jazz Festival.

Colosseum and the NJO by now had played Croydon's Fairfield Hall, Birmingham Town Hall, Lanchester Polytechnic and London's Queen Elizabeth Hall and were going on to play Portsmouth and Brighton.

"It would have been pointless trying to ignore the Colosseum connection, even if we'd wanted to so Dave Greenslade and Clem Clempson stayed on board for this show, too,” reflects NJO member and now Observer jazz critic and writer, Dave Gelly in the album's extensive booklet notes.


More