180-gram vinyl

Remastering by Ray Staff at Air Mastering

Pressed at Pallas in Germany

A favorite record from the legendary Nimbus label — a special home to spiritual jazz on the West Coast at the end of the '70s. Adele Sebastian's Desert Fairy Princess is an absolutely sublime mystical jazz masterpiece that will transcend you to places you never thought existed. A must-have. The mastering by Ray Staff and the pressing on 180-gram pure Pallas vinyl have made this title SOUND BETTER THAN THE ORIGINAL PRESSING! Not my words, but those of the masterer and label owner. Do not miss this incredible title!

Adele Sebastian was an Afro American jazz flutist and singer, active from the early '70s (when she was still a teenager) until her untimely death at the age of 27 in 1983 from a kidney failure. In fact she had been depending on monthly dialysis to stay alive for years.

Sebastian may have only ever cut this one album as a leader, but she's a hell of a flute player with a very deep, spiritual vibe — these sublime lines that soar and stretch out over modal rhythms — played by a totally hip group that includes Rickey Kelley on vibes, Roberto Miranda on bass, and Billy Higgins on drums and a bit of gembreh — a string instrument that brings a nicely exotic vibe to the record, which was first issued in 1981. The group is rounded out by Bobby West on piano and Daoude Woods on percussion — and the songs have this open flow that's wonderful — never too far out, but always searching — as the group soar through a version of McCoy Tyner's "Man From Tanganyika," plus the tracks "Desert Fairy Princess," "Belize," "Prayer For The People," and "Day Dreamer." The mostly acoustic instrumentation brings a very natural and therefore rather retrospective sound considering the year the album was recorded.

Adele and her band pull it off right from the start as if it had been 1966 and it was time for a revolution to shake the dust from the old time jazz. In a perfect way she mixes classic American vocal jazz elements with playful and more free passages, Latin music and tribal African sounds in the lengthy and quite rhythm oriented "Man From Tanganyika" and makes the title track start with a mystical "Allahu akbar" chant while it turns more and more into a dark and gloomy song with something like a psychedelic edge reminiscent of Pharoah Sanders on his early works. Wild rhythms from drums, percussions with tons of bells and chimes weave a thick groove carpet and conjure a magical atmosphere. Those jazz aficionados who love the mid '60's John Coltrane, his sidekick Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane will go crazy for this album.