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A Revolution in Music The History of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (Book)
Established in the 1950s by musician and engineer Pierre Schaeffer, the Groupe de Recherches Musicales would become the nerve center for avant-garde artists experimenting with sound and acoustics, as well as the birthplace of a genre of music-making enabled by new recording technologies and sound pioneers: musique concrète. Évelyne Gayou—herself a researcher, composer, and producer at the GRM—tells the history of the storied institution through the people, works, technologies, and research devel…
Sounding the Indian Ocean Musical Circulations in the Afro-Asiatic Seascape (Book)
Sounding the Indian Ocean is the first volume to integrate the fields of ethnomusicology and Indian Ocean studies. Drawing on historical and ethnographic approaches, the book explores what music reveals about mobility, diaspora, colonialism, religious networks, media, and performance. Collectively, the chapters examine different ways the Indian Ocean might be “heard” outside of a reliance on colonial archives and elite textual traditions, integrating methods from music and sound studies into the…
In Search of a Concrete Music (Book)
Pierre Schaeffer’s In Search of a Concrete Music (À la recherche d’une musique concrète) has long been considered a classic text in electroacoustic music and sound recording. Now Schaeffer’s pioneering work—at once a journal of his experiments in sound composition and a treatise on the raison d’être of “concrete music”—is available for the first time in English translation. Schaeffer’s theories have had a profound influence on composers working with technology. However, they extend beyond the co…
Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra (Book)
This ground-breaking biography is as much about Sun Ra’s music as it is about his passionate, often wildly unorthodox views on the galaxy, black people and spiritual matters. With the various incarnations of his inimitable Arkestra, his repertoire ranged from boogie-woogie to swing to be-bop to fusion to New Age, and his influence extended throughout the jazz and rock worlds. While Sun Ra made a lifelong effort to obscure many of the facts of his early years, he did acknowledge that he was born …
Compter Les Dents
"It begins with a shoebox of mysterious provenance, full of recordings from the Vendée department on France’s western seaboard: songs of love and war, life and death, played out on land and sea. Songs passed down and sung by ordinary men and women, gracefully delivered with the poetic economy which unites the folk song of all peoples. Next it takes a group of contemporary musicians to make selections from this treasure trove and sing these old songs anew; to sing them for their beauty, of course…
Vol. 2
Tip! Despite the title of the album, it is the Tullio De Piscopo's third work, recorded in 1976. Comprising nine tracks in total across its two sides, “Vol. 2” falls somewhere between fusion and prog, straddling darker, brooding temperaments with joyous, funky lines. Predictably, as is nearly the case with music of this sort, the playing and artistry is top-notch, the band locked together with remarkable precision, but the journey that “Vol. 2” takes is far from expected. Interspersed throughout…
Il Casanova Di Federico Fellini
*In process of stocking* The original soundtrack for "Il Casanova di Federico Fellini” (1976) sees Nino Rota putting into music Federico Fellini"s opus on the legendary Venetian icon and “tombeur des femmes” Giacomo Casanova. Winner of an Oscar for Best Costumes in 1977, the film is one of Fellini's finest, a grotesque and hyperbolic take on the life of Casanova that is matched by Rota's compositions. "Il Casanova di Federico Fellini” possibly is one of Rota's most eerie and enigmatic scores, as…
Recordings 1980-84
Mike Vamp grew up in Frankfurt, played guitar in the early punk scene, then moved to West Berlin in 1980 and began experimenting with electronic music and synthesizers as the city's famous wall-era underground was at its most electrically charged. West Berlin in the early 1980s was defined by the painters of the Geniale Dilletanten movement and the music of Einstürzende Neubauten, Malaria!, Die Tödliche Doris, Sprung aus den Wolken, and Die Haut: a scene that celebrated difficulty and abrasion, …
Downwind
On Downwind, Pierre Moerlen's Gong trades cosmic whimsy for aerodynamic precision, fusing mallet‑drunk jazz‑rock, prog heft and a dash of pop clarity into a sleek late‑70s vessel where vibraphones, drums and guest guitar gods share the same thermal updraft.
Matching Mole
Esoteric Recordings are proud to announce the release of a Deluxe 2CD Expanded edition of Matching Mole’s self-titled debut album. Formed in 1971, Matching Mole featured former Soft Machine drummer Robert Wyatt, former Caravan keyboard player Dave Sinclair, guitarist Phil Miller, bassist Bill McCormick with guest keyboard player Dave MacRae. Recorded between December 1971 and February 1972, Matching Mole was a wonderful debut that included tracks such as ‘O Caroline’, ‘Signed Curtain’ and ‘Part …
Early Works
Bill Fontana investigates the physics of perception itself. Side A: tape collages where sound becomes both material and force. Side B: Wave Spiral for 5 Rin Gongs - a sidelong, 21-minute centerpiece where pure sine waves create interference patterns, frequency made sculptural. Sound spiraling through space, dissolving boundaries between observer and phenomenon.
C'Era Una Volta Il West
There are not enough superlatives to describe Ennio Morricone’s score to "Once Upon a Time in the West". It is considered the best movie soundtrack ever by many. Finally we have the complete score in 31 tracks. 4 of these have never been previously released, 3 have never been released by the Solisti and 3 have been upgraded. It includes a 24 page booklet with critical notes & listener’s guide.
Danger: Diabolik
On Danger: Diabolik, Ennio Morricone weaponises pop, jazz and electronics into a hyper‑stylised heist engine: fuzz guitars, wordless vocals and mod orchestration turning Mario Bava’s comic‑book caper into a delirious, late‑60s sonic hallucination.
You Are Here
Kevin Figes’ new sextet You Are Here release their debut CD which features Kevin’s new arrangements of five pieces by Keith Tippett, plus compositions by Elton Dean, Harry Miller, Dudu Pukwana and others. You Are Here is a loving tribute to friends, mentors and collaborators no longer with us. The album's 14 tracks are a worthy monument to some of the greatest composers in British modern jazz.
Chronology (Live 1968-69)
Unreleased work from alto genius Joe Harriott – two different slices of material from a very under-recorded point in his career! The first five tracks feature Joe in that back to basics mode he was hitting at the time – working in a unique group that features Kenny Wheeler on trumpet and flugelhorn, Pat Smythe on piano, Ron Mathewson on bass, and Bill Eyden on drums – all players who are very open to modern ideas, but who also keep things on more of a groove here – with only a bit of the freedom…
The Art Is In The Rhythm
"The music on this recording definitely has a mainly Jazz slant, so I thought it a good idea to dedicate it to other Jazz players (Charlie Parker and Eric Dolphy), that represent the best of that music and were an inspiration to us and many more players. I felt a recording that represented this very important project, and what we achieved together, was long overdue. So here we offer you some music we played in 1989. But still sounds, to me, as fresh as the day we first played it."
I felt a recor…
Blue Beginnings
** Strictly limited to 500 copies. Digipak with extensive liner notes by Simon Spillett ** The Don Rendell Ian Carr Quintet live in session in 1964 playing much of their debut album ‘Shades Of Blue’ including the title track composed by Neil Ardley. Beautifully packaged 180g vinyl. Flip-back sleeve. Strictly limited pressing run of 500 copies worldwide. Liner notes by Simon Spillett. Not nearly celebrated enough, Rendell & Carr were Britain's answer to Miles & Coltrane. With beautiful, introspec…
Homage To Caledonia
The Bobby Wellins Sextet on limited edition compact disc, in a 6 panel digisleeve, including a 16 page booklet with sleeve notes written by Spike Wells and Pete Woodman plus an array of photos and publicity from the time as well as new images. Compiled from recordings of the first two concerts of the autumn 1979 tour by Bobby’s regular quartet augmented by Lol Coxhill and Bryan Spring, the CD includes the only complete ‘small ensemble’ recording of the Culloden Moor Suite released to date, along…
The Buds of Time
This is the first ‘lost’ album Jazz In Britain has discovered. We’ve released albums that were only previously released on vinyl, or even cassette tape, ie never on CD, or albums produced from sessions by groups that never made a record, or we’ve included unreleased tracks that never made it only albums… but this is a real first for us. In 1979 Tony Coe and Bob Cornford composed pieces for an unusual, and unrepeated, combination of a six-piece jazz ensemble (two reeds, bass trombone, piano, perc…