Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

The impossibly cool 1973 album What's Going On from Late, Great Japanese Funk & Jazz Don Takehiro Honda which swings through jazz orchestral renditions of American R&B and Funk Classics like Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On, "Otis Redding's "Sitting On…

French non-jazz trio overflowed by Simple Music Experience’s funders Tamara Goukassova, Théo Delaunay and Alexandre Larcier, offering a 40mn of non-simple music madness, and navigating between a dozen of etiquettes from undecided space rock to motori…

Jazz In Britain was very fortunate recently to receive a large collection of reel tapes and discover three early seventies Barbara Thompson sessions amongst it, sessions that we don’t believe have been circulated before. The label proposed to Barbara…

The grand old man of Finnish Jazz, Eero Koivistoinen, has not kept still in his old age. Far from it, he's played with rappers from the younger generation, Argentinian tango singers, you name it. The Eero Koivistoinen Quartet, onto its 10th year in e…

Dynamite cuts, loves a touch of Jazz.It's such a pleasure to release this 7" 45rpm by Dave Grusin, a well-known Jazz pianist & music arranger –in both jazz, soul and film scores. Dynamite Cuts have selected two of his early jazz gems which just stand…

"Following my recent phone call with Prof. Benson, I left him to continue his 92nd birthday celebrations with his family. We’d talked about his life, his music, his achievements. Throughout our conversation it struck me what a kind, humble and pleasa…

For more than two decades Swedish reedist Martin Küchen has cemented his place as one of the most versatile musicians within improvised and experimental music, following his innate curiosity to pursue many different approaches. Depending upon one’s a…

Charles Mingus brought together an amazing lineup spanning the totality of the nation's jazz scene with such luminaries as Eric Dolphy, Buddy Collette, Clark Terry, Zoot Sims, Pepper Adams, Jaki Byard, Grady Tate, and more. Brought together to perfor…

Horst Jankowski was a classically trained German pianist, most famous for his internationally successful easy listening music. Born in Berlin, Jankowski studied at the Berlin Music Conservatory and played jazz in Germany in the 1950s, serving as band…

First recording of Eric Le Lann under his name in 1983. Around him, a group composed of Césarius Alvim on bass, André Ceccarelli on drums and Olivier Hutman on piano and Rhodes which escorts the sublime phrasing of a trumpet entirely placed on the me…

"This band has a certain Finnish (and forestral?) nature, like e.g. Pekka Pohjola's music too. The composer is the guitarist Pekka Tegelman (who later wrote and played for singer Liisa Tavi among others, by the way). The sound is rather mellow, besid…

*300 copies limited edition.* Actor/singer/flautist Vesa-Matti Loiri's debut album 4+20 was a largely instrumental piece of psychedelic jazz. The follow-up, Vesku Suomesta, from 1972, is more vocal-oriented but no less psychedelic. With guitar hero H…

As listeners to the experimental, improvised, Jazz, Ethiopian and style-free music communities in Sydney will testify, Peter Farrar has been doing astonishing solos the last few years. He’s been honing techniques that use various extensions on his al…

Thought you knew about British jazz? Think again. Diving into the unknown world of the private pressing, Jazzman Records presents some of the rarest and wildest British jazz ever recorded! The major stars of British jazz such as Stan Tracey, Michael …

Highly recommended, a true Revelation! After a long hiatus since the homonymous 2006 release on Schema Records, The Invisible Session is back with Echoes Of Africa to be released on the newly-launched Space Echo label. Initiated in 2006 by Schema Rec…

Koma Saxo, the explosive quintet led by Berlin-based Swedish bassist/producer Petter Eldh, returns on We Jazz Records with their new album, cut live at We Jazz Festival in Helsinki, December 2019. Whereas their lauded debut was a triumph of remapping…

Highly anticipated sophomore release from saxophonist and composer Sisonke Xonti, winner of South Africa's 2020 Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Jazz. At the centre of the album, Xonti's four-part "Migration Suite" is his boldest work to date, ex…

Gideon Nxumalo was a key figure during the formative years of South African jazz in the 1950s and 60s, helping shape a modern African jazz sound as a composer, arranger and pianist and contributing to the scene as a music teacher and radio presenter.…

Repress of Wildflower's 2nd album. The band continued to explore areas of groove-based improvised jazz. Taking a slightly freer approach to the writing process, simple but effective melodies and bass motifs are explored to create fully realised piece…

Paul Dunnall’s dynamic Birmingham quintet’s release Yes Tomorrow was a Discus highlight of 2022. We enjoyed the release so much that we took the unusual step of suggesting he add Julie Tippetts and Charlotte Keeffe to the group to make a second relea…

Theta Six – OUA’s sixth album – is an ever morphing tapestry of new sounds arriving via wormhole direct from the left field progressive sound universe. It evolved from a studio session of bass driven rhythms followed next day by a marathon free-impro…

Drawing to light rhythms, grooves and Afrocentric traditions, Hyperjazz Records takes an unprecedented dive into the incredible back catalog of the seminal Italian imprint, Soul Note, with “Hyperituals Vol. 1”. Gathering an astounding group of record…

Two legendary tenorists, coming together here in a record that's one of the most striking from both players at the time -- a real return to the spare space of some of Joe McPhee's earliest albums, and some of the sharper edges that Evan Parker wasn't…

Drummer and multi-instrumentalist Salah Ragab was a central figure in the history of jazz in Egypt. A sometime collaborator with Sun Ra, Ragab founded the Cairo Jazz Band in 1968, the same year that he became the head of the Egyptian Military Music D…

From Wales, the home of the harp, Amanda has taken her classical roots and forged them in the path of jazz harpist Dorothy Ashby. She has toured extensively with Matthew Halsall and the Gondwana Orchestra performing at Jazz festivals around the world…

Deeper in Black was inspired by the 1969 Blue Note recording of American trumpeter Blue Mitchell entitled Collision in Black and took its name from Pillay’s cover of the album’s Peggy Grayson composition. Pillay’s album featured another two compositi…

Featuring Ken Vandermark & Mats Gustafsson. Recorded live at Victoriaville in May of 1999. Fantastic live material from a very unique group – the instantly-legendary meeting of reedman Peter Brotzmann with the leading lights of the Chicago avant jazz…

Thrust barely made a blip in the marketplace; it was mostly available around the Akron area. But Niles was undeterred. He returned the following year with the just-as-good Thrust Too, which is a touch more muscular, more precise — partly due to being…

"Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang drum up a storm, to put things succinctly. This album of percussion duets features intricately interlaced drums, bells, shakers, and chimes. Rolling patterns, melodicism, and moods pervade this fine album. Forget your …

These 18 short duets between cellist/trombonist Gunter Christmann and Swedish new music provocateur and saxophonist Mats Gustaffson eschew all melodic pretension, leading to some very difficult, though rewarding listening. Christmann performs mostly …

"A masterful statement from the Peter Brotzmann Tentet – a large group, but one that's capable of a rich array of sounds and sentiments – maybe given best exposure here in this key recording from the prime years of the ensemble! Ten players can be a …

The Dried Rat-Dog is a free jazz energy wallop from the duo of multireedist Peter Brotzmann and percussionist Hamid Drake. It kicks off with the title track, a cavorting of saxophone and drums that tears off, speeding over the hills and through the w…

"Peter Brotzmann's Chicago Tentet combines some of the finest avant improvisers out of Chicago and Europe. For a such a logistically and musically complex multi-member outfit they've had a rather long and significant life. And they still flourish tod…

This live recording from a 1996 Austrian music festival is a powerful interaction of three musicians from different countries, each of whom have extraordinary improvisational abilities and deep, grounded technique. A somewhat unusual instrumentation …

The short-lived 'Super Star Quintet', which formed specially to play at the Live Under The Sky festival in Tokyo in July and August 1982, was accurately named. After all, those involved - tenor saxophonist Joe Handerson, pianist Kenny Barron, bassist…

Drummer Tilo Weber joins forces with bassist Petter Eldh (Koma Saxo) and Elias Stemeseder, who plays harpsichord and keys here on Weber's We Jazz debut, "Tesserae". The three musicians plus guests present a unique jazz trio sound for all times, witho…

Marfa TX-based multidisciplinary abstractivist Rob Mazurek has made an indelible impact on creative music over the past 30 years. Emerging from the musical nexus of the 1990s Chicago scene, he’s written more than 400 compositions and is featured on m…

After a duo album and two trio albums by Shipp and Walerian, all for ESP-Disk', we get a quartet album from them that continues their strategy of working with different musicians each time out. Bisio and Dickey are long-time collaborators with Shipp,…

Four magnificent improvisers from different countries. Among them, legendary and iconic double bass master Barry Guy, one of the greatest jazz / improvised music drummers Ramon Lopez, Japanese living in Ireland classically trained piano master Izumi …

"Improvised music is invariably meant for live consumption, where the give-and-take between musicians is laid bare for all to hear and the ephemeral nature of the playing is intrinsically linked to that one moment that’s never to be repeated. In a wa…