the Seatbelts 'Cowboy Bebop' (1998)

Barmy genius OST to what is universally regarded as the best anime of all time and an awe-inspiring, big band jazz eclecto-workout. The Seatbelts were assembled by composer Yoko Kanno to perform and tour this much-loved soundtrack, which is a sublime retrospective of various pre-'65 jazz trends and much more besides. From the big city blues of 'Cosmos' and the Blade Runner-in-Africa synths of 'Space Lion'; to the ostentatious spectaculars 'Tank!' and 'Rush' - there is something for every palette... especially if you dig Charles Mingus. And be sure to hear each song out, they are prone to switching genre mid-jam. Has a big band ever been put through it's paces so much as the Seatbelts?
The ever-critical users of RYM have given it a 4.16 average out of 5 (that's in the top flight of popular votes), putting 'Cowboy Bebop' in eighth place for top albums of 1998. Behind...urgh... Neutral Milk Hotel? I never said they were a tasteful bunch...
As testified by many strangers to the anime show (watch it), the album is an easygoing and accesible standalone classic; but fans of show will also revel in the déjà vu and memories of the show - indubitably to be butchered and flogged for $$ in 2011 of course!

It's all a dream...

Various Artists 'Sushi 3003' (1996) & Sushi 4004 (1998)

Subtitled 'A Spectacular Collection of Japanese Clubpop' and 'the Return of Spectacular Japanese Clubpop' respectively.

These are the original shibuya-kei introductory compilations unleashed on an unsuspecting world (at least the portion that had never heard Pizzicato Five) through German label Bungalow. In keeping with the spirit of some recent posts, shibuya-kei happens to be a Japanese brand of international pop, a melting pot of many ingredients with the defining featuress being:
An electronica/hip-hop influence, a 60's hipster aesthetic (song titles like 'Bond Street'), twee indie-popness (thanks to the Monochrome Set and Would-Be-Goods in particular) and a heavy dose of the difficult-to-categorise Serge Gainsbourg... French pop, lounge jazz and bossa nova. It's tough to narrow down, but the end result is eclectic enough to keep you guessing from track to track before the glorious masterplan becomes apparent.

Shibuya-kei simply means 'Shibuya style', Shibuya being the trendy district of Tokyo in which the music first gained popularity in the mid-late 90s. Since then shibuya-kei has covertly infiltrated games, anime and Western movies, gained a few fans along the way (Pizzicato Five and Cornelius are only 'stars' you might recognize on here), and eventually dissipated as a coherent club-oriented genre. Its legacy endures in Nippon since being absorbed into modern J-pop, and elsewhere with the likes of the Yoo-Kayz Momus.

Hardly any of these artists embraced this tag at the time anyway, making shibuya-kei seem all the more like a fortunate accident. Also, Soft Machine fans will not believe their ears when they hear the Kahimi Karie's 'Good Morning World' on 3003. Ees craytsee.
My personal favourite of the two is 4004, the first two tracks of which are in the first upload becausetherewasn'tanyrooooom... Incidentally, Cornelius was previously in the lubly Madchester-influenced band Flipper's Guitar (see post before last), so as usual everything is connected.

Very cool 'Legacy of Shibuya-kei' articles (links are in post @ top of page)
Shibuya-kei on Last.fm

John Coltrane - A Love Supreme (1965)

Whilst it's immensely difficult not to regurgitate a puddle of wiki accolades about 'A Love Soup-Ream' being 'generally regarded' as this and that; it's NOT immensely difficult to tell you that this is the best (well, one of the top three interchangeable) jazz, if-not-just-album albums of all time. This is what ALL jazz should have sounded like by 1965. Coltrane by this point had dropped hard-bop like a bad smell, a regime where the improvisation was restricted to the chord changes within a tune.
ALS is, according to a certain source, modal jazz. I am a layman but even I can tell this is so, with my lugholes. Modal jazz was like the next step to the misleadingly-named free jazz (aka musical masturbation) that Coltrane would spend the last few years of his life exploring. Since this form is often not completely 'free', let's just call it avant-garde jazz. Anyway, ALS only skirts this territory, and is a culmination of the new freedom that improvising within modes allowed. This requires great skill on the part of the soloists, since you have to know your scales and be really quite ingenious to come up with something as timeless as the Coltrane Quartet did here. Coltrane had been testing this methodology since at least 'Giant Steps' (a fringes be-bop classic that I'll upload), but on here you will notice a marked difference to those oldies. Recording this album, one of the greatest saxophonists of all time still had his audience foremost in mind, and that's why Coltrane spares us an outdated form of improvisation without disappearing completely up his own arse.

John is the bandleader of course, and in case you hadn't worked it out, plays tenor saxophone. The rest of the quartet for this beast of a session runs as follows:
Jimmy Garrison - double bass
Evlin Jones - drums
McCoy Tyner - piano

This is a no-frills 320kbps upload, remastered but minus the tiresome five discs of 'bonus' material ('ooh an alternate take! WOW').
If I can practically hum the entire four-part suite of this album from memory, then it's well within the realms of possiblity that other people will enjoy it.

Only known performance of 'A Love Supreme'. Hardly any footage survived, and it was apparently more dissonant that the LP rendition.