Music from United States

Last copies...Over the last decade and a half, it’s been incredible to witness the ascending star of the composer Julius Eastman. A celebrated figure within the New York experimental music scene during the 1970s and '80s, over the years following his untimely death in 1990 he and his work drifted into sinful neglect. Largely thanks to a series of archival releases attending to his work - New World Records' “Unjust Malaise” and “The Zürich Concert”, Frozen Reeds' “Femenine”, and Week-End Records’…

Super Tip! Wolf Eyes w/ Spykes was recorded on Marshall St in Ann Arbor, Michigan on October 2nd, 2000. The group recorded this material live directly to 2-track reel to reel, giving it a raw and unrefined quality. The album credits Aaron Dilloway: electronics, tapes, and mix, John Olson: electronics and keys, and Nate Young: voice, keys, and secrets. Originally released in limited edition by Hanson Records for tour, this re-release is a glimpse into the foundation of what Wolf Eyes would become…

Blue Note Classic Vinyl Edition is all-analog, mastered by Kevin Gray from the original master tapes, and pressed on 180g vinyl at Optimal. Blue Note founders Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff had open ears and open minds, as they proved time and time again through the early-1960s as they documented some of the most adventurous players of the modern jazz scene like Andrew Hill, Eric Dolphy, and Tony Williams. But it wasn’t until they brought Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry to Blue Note in 1965 that t…

** 2023 Repress of this classic. 180 gram audiophile vinyl, gatefold sleeve **  Originally released in 1974, Big Fun presents music from three different phases of Miles Davis's early-seventies "electric" period. Sides one and four ("Great Expectations" and "Lonely Fire") were recorded three months after the Bitches Brew sessions and incorporate sitar, tambura, tabla, and other Indian instruments. "Ife" was recorded after the 1972 On the Corner sessions, and the framework is similar to tracks fro…

2023 Official reissue. Transfers from the analog tapes and remastered 180-gram vinyl in deluxe gatefold packaging. One of the most important records ever made, John Coltrane's A Love Supreme was his pinnacle studio outing, that at once compiled all of the innovations from his past, spoke to the current of deep spirituality that liberated him from addictions to drugs and alcohol, and glimpsed at the future innovations of his final two and a half years. Recorded over two days in December 1964, Tra…

New York City-based Pavone and Kasten Krause met by being placed together in the ensembles of other like-minded music experimentalists. It wasn't long before they realized their unique sonic preferences, aesthetics, and approaches to their instruments were similarly aligned and worth further investigation. Over the course of two seasons, they explored and experimented with sound worlds and structures, resulting in the four pieces that make up this album. Images of One is the first release from t…

Between the '60s and the '80s the production of pulp magazines in Italy was flourishing and incredibly varied: every month hundreds of paperbacks containing strange, adventurous or more often terrifying stories came out on the newsstands.Among the most popular italian pulp magazines was the horror series "I Racconti di Dracula" (Tales of Dracula) published by Baron Cantarella: each issue of "I Racconti di Dracula" contained a grim and disturbing story, inspired by Italian gothic and giallo cinem…

CD reissue of The Free Design's Sing For Very Important People, originally released in 1970.  The Free Design make childhood a bit more psychedelic with this 1970’s children’s album, featuring many of the group’s classic favorites, plus a number of new cuts! Excerpt from CD Liner Notes (by The Free Design’s Bruce Dedrick): Back in 1969, we were all big fans of PPM and when Mary Travers became a mother, they released the Peter, Paul and Mommy album. I think it was one of the seeds that resulted …

Davachi went back to the piano she had left behind as a student, recording at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. The first side is a three-part suite in which the piano draws in a Hammond organ and a countertenor voice.

Rare 1st edition from 1986. Nearly 400 pages, large size, paperbound, smythe-sewn. Texts, scores and ideas of 7 American composers using language in composition: John Cage (Mushrooms et Variationes), Robert Ashley (Improvement), Yoko Ono, Laurie Anderson, Charles Amirkhanian, Michael Peppe, and Kenneth Atchley. Published by Burning Books, 1986. Edited by Melody Sumner Carnahan, Kathleen Burch and Michael Sumner. Introductions by Charles Shere and Frances Butler.

Quicksand was written to be an opera libretto. But it was written in the form of a novel. . . . I am devoted to "mystery" stories. I read them one after another, mostly two or three times. Some of the best writers today are writing in this form. So, I thought that I would try to make an opera libretto from a mystery story, told verbatim. That is, the libretto and the novel would be the same: no scenes moved around or actions adapted to the proportions of a libretto, just tell the story the way i…

Rare 1st edition hard cover. The definitive text of Atalanta (Acts of God) is followed by an Afterword by Robert Ashley. An excerpt from the Afterword: "I had already decided who the three characters of Atalanta (Acts of God) would be: Max Ernst, a long-time artistic hero for me; Willard Reynolds, my uncle, a storyteller to whom I had listened for most of my life; and Bud Powell, a legendary jazz pianist. The "successful suitor" in the Atalanta myth now has three forms (reminding us of his succe…

Rare 1st edition hard cover. The definitive text of Perfect Lives is accompanied here by Robert Ashley's plot synopsis and his own candid account of the making of the opera. This is the first publication of the complete narrative of this major work of twentieth century arts and letters.  Edited by Melody Sumner Carnahan. 8 1/2 x 7 inches, 224 pages, clothbound, smythe-sewn. Published by Burning Books with Archer Fields Press, 1991. "Ashley calls the libretto part of a great oral tradition, and, …

Legendary composer/producer David Axelrod's album, Heavy Axe, is a jazz-rock opus that encapsulated the sound of the mid-70s.With help from iconic players Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Cannonball Adderley and George Duke, the album moves between lush funk sounds, full round low end, and majestic orchestral flourishes that made Axelrod's sonic realm a goldmine for sample-hungry hip-hop beatmakers from the '90s to today.180-gram LP remastered from the original tapes and packaged in a tip-on jacket.

In between being one of the most recorded studio drummers of all time (the Purdie Shuffle graced everything from Aretha Franklin to Steely Dan), Bernard Purdie squeezed in a few sessions of his own.Purdie Good! was recorded early in 1971 by legendary engineer and audio obsessive Rudy Van Gelder at his bespoke studio, and it masterfully balances three Purdie-penned originals with three covers of hits-du-jour, utmost among them a blazing romp through James Brown’s Cold Sweat.This 180-gram reissue …

Radha-Krsna Nama Sankirtana was the first of two albums Alice Coltrane released in 1977 (the other being Transcendence). Coltrane's music during this period grew out of an epiphany in which she would renounce secular life and don the orange robes of a swamini (spiritual teacher in the Hindu tradition). Musically, this meant leaving jazz behind (at least partially) and embracing the chants and rhythms of devotional music. The first half of Radha-Krsna is mostly filled with simple arrangements of …

The definitive collection of Laraaji's earliest works, Segue To Infinity compiles his 1978 debut Celestial Vibration and six additional side-long studio sessions from previously unknown acetates from the same period.

A never before issued recording of Horace Tapscott leading his legendary Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, 'Live at I.U.C.C. 11/26/78' documents the entirety of a nearly two-hour performance that rises as one of the most beautiful, striking, and historically important releases of the year. The first in a series of eleven volumes planned by the label for 2023, this 2CD set is limited to 250 copies only and is already sold-out at source. A joyous explosion of sound, seeded by social, political, and co…

** Much-needed 2023 Repress **By the late '70s, Alice Coltrane had largely gravitated away from jazz, incorporating Hindu chants and hymns into her music to reflect a newfound sense of creative omnipotence. However, in April 1978, she would return to her roots, performing at University of California, Los Angeles to make her first and only live album. Transfiguration, featuring drummer Roy Haynes and bassist Reggie Workman, showcases Alice's many compositional talents and fierce improvisatory abi…

**2023 Much-needed Repress** Transcendence was not only Alice Coltrane's last studio album for Warner Bros., it would also be her last studio work for nearly three decades. While Eternity and Radha-Krsna Nama Sankirtana followed the composer's muse through an exciting range of musical styles and influences, Transcendence is perhaps the most fully realized of the three LPs, synthesizing the best elements of each into a monumental whole. Side one consists of intimate compositions with Alice's poin…