Jazz a Confronto
Horo Records was created by italian jazz producer Aldo Sinesio on 1972 and released vinyl albums until 1979 broken into three series: HLL, HZ, HDP with the most important being Jazz a Confronto which featured amongst the many great Italian jazz musicians, names like Teddy Wilson, Stafford James, Johnny Griffin, Mal Waldron, Don Pullen, Steve Grossman and Kenny Clarke. Sound impressive? You bet. The series offers modern jazz at a time when America was drifting away to other pastures, forcing some great people to migrate to Italy to express themselves. Did I mention Archie Shepp?
As far back as February 2009 there were writings on the blogs about these CD releases but things have been somewhat quiet. Rumour has it Paulo Scotti has a compilation in the making, following his marvelous ‘Le Cave Jazz’ offering, but we are not sure if it will see a release on the Deja Vu label or the Atomic Records label.
The first batch of releases were noted around April on Organissiomo forum as: Sun Ra “New Steps”; Archie Shepp “Mariamar”; Archie Shepp “Lybia”; Sam Rivers/Don Pullen “Black Africa! Villalago”; Lee Konitz/Martial Solal “Duplicity” and Johnny Griffin “Jazz a Confronto”. Been finding even these new releaes rather difficult to track down - try Crazy Jazz for the Archie Shepp, but it seems there are delays with some, if not all, of the others as our usual paths are coming up blank.
So, while the iron is hot, you make sure you keep a watchful eye out on your usual record outlets as these little slippery buggers might come and go when your attention is elsewhere. Alternatively, the other rumour that these are bootlegs could also be true and an even better reason for the delay. Who knows? All we at UK Vibe can say is - we can’t track down a website for Atomic Records to verify.
For those who still feel the need to own the vinyl, sites like Amarcord, Groove Collector, and Bop Shop will still be able to help you along the way.
In summary: this is a label not to be overlooked, so if you don’t have a few of them on the shelves, make sure you do sometime soon before that compilation sends the prices through the roof!