Music from United States

The operating name of New Yorker Al Margolis, If, Bwana were a constant presence in the cassette days. This new record, Bird Brain Bath (Klanggalerie 7") is a wonderfully creaky slab of experimental noise high jinks. One side is entitled "Bird Brain", the other "Bird Bath". Each piece is eight minutes long and if they are played simultaneously they create the record's title tune. Using bird song, blasts from a virtual air rifle, keyboards and dweezly effects of all sorts, Margolis creates two fu…

Limited edition of 500 copies. Recorded direct-to-tape in Devon Turnbull's Listening Room at 180 Studios, London. Pressed on 180-gram heavyweight black vinyl with colour sleeve featuring exclusive session photography. Engineered by Jamie Harley.  On January 30, 2025, saxophonist Isaiah Collier and drummer Tim Regis walked into Devon Turnbull's Hi-Fi Listening Room at 180 Studios in London - the same OJAS space that has become a pilgrimage site for anyone serious about how music should actually s…

*Listed as one of the four most influential Jazz albums that happened to be released in 1959 (Dave Brubeck -Time Out & Charles Mingus -Ah Um among them), so much has been said and written about Miles Davis'Kind Of Blue, it's virtually impossible to summarize all the necessary info to the length of this page. We could simply list some facts (best sold Jazz album ever worldwide). We could try to explain why it's the best Jazz album ever made, but the music itself will do that to you. As Bill Evans…

Huuuge Tip! In the pantheon of classic free jazz, Noah Howard's The Black Ark looms large. Recorded at Bell Sound Studios in New York City in 1969 - just prior to the alto saxophonist's relocation to Europe - the album was eventually released in 1972 on Alan Bates's Freedom label, and has since acquired near-mythical status among collectors and devotees of the music. Now, Superior Viaduct presents the definitive remastered edition on vinyl, restoring this landmark to the visibility it has always…

Four exclusive tracks. Released in conjunction with a live performance at the Lagerhaus Bremen on 17. April 2004. Record One features two very dynamic untitled tracks by legendary industrial percussionist Zev recorded and mixed in early 2004 , while record Two features Zerfall-Gebiete a new collaborational project by Thomas Köner and Ulrich Krieger (former Zeitkratzer member who besides his solo work also plays in various other projects e.g. in a band project called Text Of Light with Lee Ranald…

Since 2007 Eric Copeland has recorded and released a hand full of LP's and singles and lately has been cranking out the tunes on 7"s via PPM. On his previous three 7" releases "Doo Doo Run b/w "Fundinkdeath", "Puerto Rican b/w "The Eyeball" and "Whorehouse Blues b/w "Guk & UFO's Over Vampire City", Eric has taken and warped pop song ideas and skewed them incredibly, crafting out some very killer tunes. The onslaught continues with Eric's "CAR ALARM" single. Swinging and delayed rhythms make you …

Solo piano from the heart of the Los Angeles underground. Horace Tapscott completely alone at the keyboard, recorded in the early '80s when the Nimbus label was documenting his every move. This is contemplative music of the deepest order - yet the closing piece devastates. "As A Child", Tapscott's own composition dedicated to Adele Sebastian who died just four days before this recording in 1983, aged only 27. She was a pillar of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, and this was her favorite Tapscot…

Three string quartets composed in the 1960's and unsurpassedly performed by the Lasalle Quartett, released on DGG's famed "Avantgarde" contemporary/electronic music series in 1970.

Few copies available. The Los Angeles based pianist, band leader, and composer, Horace Tapscott, always stood apart from the pack. A true visionary who was fiercely principled and independent, across the 1960s, '70s, '80s, and '90s, leading his legendary Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, he produced a tour de force of sound, seeded by social, political, and community-based action. For the entirety of their run together, Tapscott and his Arkestra, which continues to this day, were among the most impo…

A beautiful, dreamlike expression of spiritual jazz recorded in 1981 at City Recorders - a time when this kind of music was considered completely out of vogue. Yet here is Gary Bias, unspooling a suite of deeply soulful and profoundly far-reaching original compositions that vividly evoke the blue skies of the record's Los Angeles origins. Bias plays alto and soprano saxophone and flute with a tone and sensibility that sits somewhere between the lyricism of early Pharoah Sanders and the bold atta…

The only live recording the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra ever released - and arguably the most complete document of this extraordinary musical community in full flight. Recorded between February and June 1979 at the Immanuel United Church of Christ on 85th & Holmes in Los Angeles, where P.A.P.A. played every second Sunday, developing their sound and building an audience rooted in the community. As a culturally radical, communal big band with a visionary approach to American Black music, the Arke…

A singular, radical entry in the Nimbus West catalogue from one of the true pioneers of the free jazz piano. Burton Greene was there at the very beginning - co-founding the Free Form Improvisation Ensemble with bassist Alan Silva in early-60s New York, recording for ESP-Disk and Columbia, playing the legendary loft sessions at Slugs'. After relocating to Amsterdam in 1969, Greene spent decades exploring the intersections of free jazz, Indian music, klezmer and electronic composition. Solo Orches…

A beautiful, dreamlike expression of spiritual jazz recorded in 1981 at City Recorders - a time when this kind of music was considered completely out of vogue. Yet here is Gary Bias, unspooling a suite of deeply soulful and profoundly far-reaching original compositions that vividly evoke the blue skies of the record's Los Angeles origins. Bias plays alto and soprano saxophone and flute with a tone and sensibility that sits somewhere between the lyricism of early Pharoah Sanders and the bold atta…

We have all been there at some point or another, maybe even last night. There are those moments when you are drifting into or out of sleep when it is hard to identify exactly what is real and what is imaginary. Time spent working through the hazy gauze separating waking and dreaming blurs the edges of perception and leaves us sorting through myriad versions of hyper-reality. The music of Body/Head has always existed for me within this liminal space. Whether it is Kim Gordon’s spectral, invocatio…

"Pop Record/Evolving" is a unique 7-inch vinyl single by Roger Clark Miller, released on RRRecords in 1994. It transforms the pops, clicks, and surface noise from worn records into an evolving sound composition. Originally conceived in 1985 as a one-of-a-kind acetate under Fun World Product 003, the RRRecords edition pressed 1,000 copies, now out of print (OOP). Inspired by John Cage and Marcel Duchamp, Miller isolates these "flaws" as source material, allowing the record to change with each pla…

One of the most important jazz albums of the 1970s - finally on vinyl in its definitive edition. Julius Hemphill's Dogon A.D. is the missing link between the avant-garde and the blues, between the cotton fields and outer space. Recorded on a freezing February day in 1972 at Oliver Sain's Archway Studios in St. Louis - no heat, malfunctioning equipment, some musicians didn't even show up - and yet what emerged was nothing short of a masterpiece. An "almost accidental classic" that has haunted col…

Geography lesson: "Riding the San Andreas" - living on a fault line, waiting for the shake. "Southwester Avenue Shuffle" - street-level LA, the neighborhood Tapscott never left. "On the Nile" - Africa, always Africa, even from a piano bench in South Central. Then the portraits: "Amanda's Tone Poem," "Sonnet of Butterfly McQueen" - dedicated to the actress who refused to play maids after Gone with the Wind, who said no when no was dangerous. "Yesterday's Dream" looks back. Thelonious Monk's "'Rou…

October in Los Angeles. Horace Tapscott sits down, plays for 38 minutes, gets up. No audience, no applause. Just Tom Albach and his tape machine. This is how monuments get built - one session at a time, one composition at a time, nobody watching. "Ancestral Echoes" opens - nearly thirteen minutes tracing lineages back through time, the piano as time machine. Then Roy Porter's "Jessica," a beautiful detour into someone else's melody, proof that Tapscott could interpret as powerfully as he compose…

Solo (Steinway) piano. Los Angeles, September 1982. Just read the titles: "A Dress for Renee" - infectious melody, keeps coming back like a persistent thought. "Shades of Soweto" - South Africa seen from South Central. "The Hero's Last Dance" - whoever that hero was. "First Call of the Humming Bird" - nature breaking through concrete. And then "Forgiving" - as a closing statement, as a breath. Horace Tapscott was a fierce critic of racial bigotry, and his music never hid it. But here there's als…

Solo piano. Recorded March 1983, Los Angeles. Five pieces, forty-one minutes. Where Sun Ra meets Erik Satie. This is the third volume in what would become Tapscott's monumental series of solo recordings - over thirty hours captured between 1982 and 1985, documenting his own compositions alongside works by unknown Black composers in the Los Angeles area. Producer Tom Albach considered these the most important music Horace Tapscott ever made. The titles read like chapters from a life: "The Tuus," …