Music from Germany

Tip! *250 copies limited edition* The "Films Made of Antimatter" series is a new experiment from the Fifteen Minutes of Anonymity label, based on the concept of soundtracks for films that have not yet been made. It's an idea that is already familiar to a great number of sonic artists, as many of us have deliberately set out to create a "cinema for the ear" which would, in effect, cause us to imagine film-like narratives within our mind's eyes. This project aims to take things a step further: com…

Munich, Studio 70, 24 June 1972. Four players who would otherwise never have been in the same room: Karl Berger on vibraphone and marimba, the Japanese pianist Masahiko Sato (the trio Trinity for Enja dates from the same period), the Austrian bassist Adelhard Roidinger, and Allen Blairman, the Pittsburgh drummer who had played with Albert Ayler and was then Mal Waldron's regular in Germany. Berger had been in Don Cherry's Paris band, had recorded for ESP and Milestone, and in 1972 was founding t…

One day at the MPS studio in Villingen, 21 January 1969. Dave Pike on vibes, Volker Kriegel on guitar and sitar, Hans Rettenbacher and Peter Baumeister, produced by Joachim-Ernst Berendt. The Dave Pike Set's debut, with the sitar piece Mathar and Kriegel's rework of Zappa's Mother People.

Berlin Jazz Days, 6 November 1976. Albert Mangelsdorff's trombone, alone at the front, with Jaco Pastorius on electric bass and Alphonse Mouzon on drums, a year after Pastorius's debut. Five long pieces, recorded live, released by MPS in 1977. The trombone multiphonics against a fusion rhythm section.

Walldorf Studio, near Frankfurt, 1 and 2 May 1975. Albert Mangelsdorff on trombone, Palle Danielsson on bass, Elvin Jones on drums. Seven pieces, thirty-nine minutes, released by MPS the same year. Mangelsdorff had recorded with Jones once before, on the 1968 duet album Albert Mangelsdorff and His Friends. The Wide Point is the first of his trombone-bass-drums trio records, the format that would produce Trilogue with Pastorius and Mouzon the following year and the Montreux album in 1980. The ban…

Gunter Hampel's first record, 1965, on SABA: a quintet with Manfred Schoof on trumpet, Alexander von Schlippenbach on piano and Buschi Niebergall on bass, a year before Globe Unity. Down Beat gave it five stars. Hampel on vibes and flute, Dolphy and Ayler in the room, nobody screaming.

Donaueschingen, October 1979. Karl Berger brought the orchestra of his Creative Music Studio from Woodstock to the German contemporary music festival, and Südwestfunk and MPS recorded it. The roster reads like the CMS guest book: Don Cherry on trumpet and bamboo flute, Lee Konitz on alto, Oliver Lake on alto, soprano and flute, George Lewis on trombone, Leroy Jenkins on violin, Trilok Gurtu on tabla and congas, Peter Apfelbaum on drums and baritone, Ingrid Sertso singing, Berger on vibes and pia…

Hamburg, 1969. A drummer recently arrived from Westphalia, known around the Jazzhouse on Brandstwiete as a capable timekeeper who could swing in 4/4 and play rock beats, which is why Klaus Doldinger had hired him for Passport. His name was Udo Lindenberg. Free Jazz Goes Underground, released by MPS in 1970 under the name Free Orbit, is the first studio album of the band he led, and he sings on it, in English, alongside a second vocalist. MPS's own note on the reissue admits you need careful list…

Wolfgang Dauner's 1967 SABA septet: Jean-Luc Ponty on violin, Gerd Dudek on tenor and clarinet, Eberhard Weber on cello, Jürgen Karg on bass, and two drummers, Mani Neumeier and Fred Braceful. Mingus-like themes that dissolve into free playing, Neumeier on tabla for the Spanish disguise. Out of print for forty years.

Two years after Free Action, a different record. The Oimels, MPS 1969, is the Wolfgang Dauner Quintet playing pop: Dauner on piano, organ and voice, Eberhard Weber on bass, cello and voice, Siegfried Schwab on guitar and sitar, Pierre Cavalli on guitar, and Roland Wittich on drums and voice, who also did the cover art with Dauner. The programme mixes Dauner originals with a Gershwin tune, a traditional, and a Lennon-McCartney song. A RateYourMusic listener puts it plainly: a different kind of ja…

December 1966, a month after the premiere at the Berlin Philharmonie: Alexander von Schlippenbach's Globe Unity, fourteen players, Brötzmann, Schoof, Hampel, Mangelsdorff, Dudek, Breuker, Kowald, Niebergall, Liebezeit, Neumeier. Two pieces, Globe Unity and Sun. European free jazz declaring itself.

The latest instalment in Whitefield's Temple Jazz series brings you an enhanced collective improvisation inspired by the meditative styles of Pharaoh Sanders, Alice Coltrane and Sun Ra. An aural approach to soothe ones soul in overly hectic environments.

Unknown versions and unpublished tracks from Column One's early years, remastered by Robert Schalinski, in an oversized cardboard sleeve with 8 postcards and liner notes by Till Kniola. Limited to 500 copies.

Early Column One: the remastered Dream Box Experience LP (1994), alternative versions from the This Is My Dream 7" and an unpublished track, in an oversized sleeve with 6 postcards and liner notes by Till Kniola. Limited to 500.

Solo percussion by Sven-Åke Johansson, recorded at his SÅJ Studio in Berlin in March 2010: fifteen short pieces named after Swedish surnames, rolls, cymbals and a towel flicking on the drum skin.

Percussionists Burkhard Beins and Sven-Åke Johansson with harpist Rhodri Davies, recorded at Sowieso in Berlin in 2013 and 2015: acoustic sounds that come close to electronics, plus a harp solo by Davies.

Alexander von Schlippenbach on piano and Sven-Åke Johansson on voice, accordion and drums, live at Onkel Pö in Hamburg in March 1978: a free improvised take on the German Lied, recorded by NDR.

Berlin trio improvisation recorded in June 2015 by Liz Allbee on trumpet and seashell, Annette Krebs on electric guitar and electronics and Sven-Åke Johansson on percussion, with notes by Thomas Millroth.

On its latest album „Music For Air“, the Berlin-based interdisciplinary duo GAMUT INC explores new possibilities of the computer-controlled pipe organ — from hypervirtuoso excess to nuanced automation and rhythms beyond the fixed grid. Composed and recorded during a two-week residency in Toulouse, the pieces move between harmony and noise, conjuring a euphorically intoxicating maelstrom of overlapping, accelerating sound.

Ex-Birth Control synthesist Zeus B. Held goes solo and electronic. 'Attack Time' pulses with early-'80s synth-pop drive and studio sheen: melodic, propulsive and slyly futuristic. A producer's-ear gem from the German new wave.