Gilles Peterson pays tribute to crucial German Jazz label MPS

MIMS Newsfeed — April 15, 2016

via MPS: Gilles Peterson has a special love affair with MPS. To be exact, it goes back more than three decades to the London of the 1980’s when Gilles stood at the beginning of an exceptional career as DJ, Radio personality, and producer.

At that time he was already interested in unusual and unique jazz recordings, and so he inevitably came across the record label from Germany’s Black Forest (Schwarzwald), whose catalogue encompassed a large, totally distinct repertoire that had never been released anywhere else. Naturally, there was a long list of amazing interpretations of jazz classics from acknowledged jazz masters, but early on Gilles had developed the talent to dig deeper into the depths of the archives in order to ferret out the special features of the catalogue – occasionally discovering a obscurity – and bring them to the light of day.

He seemed to be able to effortlessly show a completely new connection between classic jazz recordings through the way they were chosen, assorted, and sequenced. Thus, every single title was imbued with a new energy, freshness, and, above all, timelessness, always with an eye on whether the chosen recordings would possibly be compatible with the needs of clubs. This present MPS compilation is an especially good example of Gilles Peterson’s amazing talent. It delivers only a small, yet carefully chosen section out of the depths of the MPS archives.