Gap Mangione - Diana In The Autumn Wind

Twelve years in the making. Be With Records spent over a decade pursuing the rights to this legendary 1968 recording, and the result is the first ever vinyl reissue of one of the most coveted and influential albums in the jazz, funk, soul, and hip-hop underground. Produced with the full and extensive participation of Gap Mangione himself, this is a release that was genuinely worth every moment of the wait.

The album's sample pedigree alone is staggering. Diana In The Autumn Wind has been the source material for J Dilla, Madlib, A Tribe Called Quest, Large Professor, Ghostface Killah, Kendrick Lamar, and Talib Kweli, making it arguably the single most sought-after album among serious sample collectors. But to approach it purely as a sample-spotters curio would be to sell it dramatically short. This is a stunning record in its own right, bursting with killer funky-jazz grooves, warm electric piano, and a rhythm section that has to be heard to be believed.

Those musicians were not yet known quantities in 1968. Tony Levin, just 21 years old, provides the harmonic backbone on both acoustic and electric bass. Steve Gadd, 23, handles the drums with the instinctive mastery that would go on to make him one of the most celebrated and in-demand drummers of his generation. Together with Gap's beautiful piano, organ, and electric piano work, the trio crackle with a vitality and forward momentum that sounds completely alive more than fifty years later. Gap's brother Chuck Mangione, already a formidable arranger and composer, brought his own extraordinary gifts to the orchestration, weaving rock, big band jazz, solo improvisation, and classical music into a cohesive and remarkably modern whole. As Gap himself recalls, "with this group I was able to explore and add new and exciting elements from rock, Brazilian and then-current pop music."

Remastered with care by Be With regular Simon Francis under Gap Mangione's direct supervision, and cut at Abbey Road Studios by Cicely Balston, this deluxe edition is wrapped in a luxury tip-on sleeve faithful to the original release and accompanied by a sumptuously designed two-page insert featuring Gap's own account of the album's history alongside rare photographs. Pressed to the highest possible standard at Record Industry in Holland.

An extraordinarily rare album, finally home on vinyl where it belongs.