MPS JazzWorks
This is, of course, not a new release – but a thorough dig through the endless archives of blankTON unearthed some copies of this rare jewel of a compilation! Released as an accompanying compilation to the MPS Jazz ReWorks-album (featuring remixes by Matthew Herbert, Stereo MCs, DJ DSL, King Britt and more) in 2004, this album featured the original versions of the tracks. It has long been deleted and includes a lot of very rare and never-before-released-on-CD-tracks from the reperoire of the legendary MPS-label that never saw any style-boundaries to their perception of jazz. Artists on MPS always enjoyed absolut creative freedom – you want to make a free jazz album, followed by a pop-single? Sure, go ahead. Fuel your impro-sessions with some funk, rock or world music? Why not? In the heyday of the anything-goes-mentality of the 1970ies, MPS released groundbreaking records from superb artist like Albert Mangelsdorff, Oscar Peterson, George Duke, Dave Pike, Hans Koller and many more, most of them still influential today.
And why this post? The freshly found copies all go to those lucky guys and girls having a subscription to the fabolous blankTON.abo – sorry everyone else …
Read more about the – unfortunately defunct – label here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPS_Records
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musik_Produktion_Schwarzwald (german)
http://www.arte.tv/de/mps/997458,CmC=648468.html (german)
sincerely yours,
mikka