Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

Two x 2LP sets that examine the influence and expression of the underground jazz that evolved in California and surrounding states during the latter part of the 20th century.

Two x 2LP sets that examine the influence and expression of the underground jazz that evolved in California and surrounding states during the latter part of the 20th century.

Solo percussion album recorded in August 1980 by Masahiko Togashi, alone with drums, gongs, bells and hand percussion on a kit of his own design, reissued on LP with obi and liner notes in the Spin This Now! series.

Live double album from Perujazz's 2023 European tour, with concerts in Norway, Austria, Germany, the UK, Spain and France: the Lima group founded in 1984 mixing cajón, Afro-Peruvian and Andean sounds with jazz, rock and funk.

Four improvisers in a historic water tower in Braunschweig: overtone singing, Tibetan bells, trumpet, pipe organ, alto sax and double bass stretched into seven long, reverberant, meditative pieces. Limited to 350 copies.

A new LP by JJ Whitefield (Poets of Rhythm, Whitefield Brothers etc) and Gonçalo Mortágua on Ultraääni Records.

2026 Repress. Limited edition 180g vinyl. Stoughton tip-on gatefold jacket. Restored artwork + previously unseen family photos. In 1993, when Chicago's Adler Planetarium commissioned Kelan Phil Cohran to score their "African Skies" program, they tapp…

Masahiko Togashi was a pivotal figure in the development of the Japanese free jazz scene in late 60s. Percussionist and composer, he lost the use of the legs in an accident which nevertheless didn’t not prevent him from continuing an astonishing care…

Le Très Jazz Club keeps on exploring Japanese jazz and the Three Blind Mice catalog with the reissue of this amazing 1976 record by drummer George Otsuka. Unavailable for more than forty years, the album is released for the first time outside of Japa…

Huge Tip! Small repress. "I stood on top of the mountain and looked out over the landscape. It was so beautiful that my chest hurt. The light vibrated, time stood still, and the contours dissolved for a moment. Everything had changed; I felt it then.…

Recorded 29th May 1977 at A Day in Solidarity with Soweto: A Fund Raiser, Harlem Fight-Back, 1 East 125th St., New York Violinist Billy Bang made his recording debut as a leader with the Survival Ensemble, the first working band he ever led, on New …

Doug Carn made four records for the Black Jazz label, more than any other artist, and each one topped the previous release's lofty standard. Adam's Apple was his last (1974) album for the label, representing the final note in his staggeringly creativ…

2023 restock; originally released in 1965. 2019 reissue. Some of the most exciting jazz albums to listen to are those that try to strike a middle ground between the mainstream and the Avant-garde. One such example is Archie Shepp’s Fire Music: an oft…

Reese and the Smooth Ones was captured during the same revolutionary Paris session as Message to Our Folks, but stands apart as a two-part, 40-minute odyssey of unchained invention.

Historic 1969 Paris session by the american saxophonist-vocalist-intellectual who conveys his deep anguish at the loss of a civil rights icon.

Published on the 50th anniversary of the original printing, Black Art Notes features writings by Tom Lloyd, Amiri Baraka, Bing Davis, Melvin Dixon, Jeff Donaldson, Ray Elkins, Babatunde Folayemi, and Francis and Val Gray Ward. “If there is one lesson…

A rare document of the 1960s Black Arts Movement featuring Albert Ayler, Amiri Baraka, Milford Graves, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, and many more, The Cricket fostered critical and political dialogue for Black musicians and writers. Edited by poets and writ…

Where Future Unfolds is a new work spirited by Chicago-based sound & visual artist Damon Locks. Starting as a solo sound collage piece (where Locks pulled samples from Civil Rights era speeches and recordings to create an improvisational pallet for p…

The impact of Weldon Irvine’s music across a wealth of genres cannot be overstated with his jazzy piano playing and compositions regularly passed down to newer generations. Artists like Q-Tip and Mos Def are noted admirers of the jazz-funk artist, an…

Digitally remastered edition of this 1974 album, a true holy-grail for Deep and Spiritual Jazz collectors around the world. This album was originally independently released to raise funds to combat the ongoing drought in the Sahel region of Africa (a…

Iconic musician and political activist makes a typically thought-provoking statement on historic 1969 recording.

Strut presents an exclusive reissue of Experience Unlimited’s 1977 debut album, Free Yourself, featuring a brand new interview with bandleader and co-founder ‘Sugar Bear.` This seminal recording blends soul, jazz, and funk-rock, laying the foundation…

Originally released in 1967, Ayler's first LP on Impulse! and arguably his best for the label. "During 1967-69 avant-garde innovator Albert Ayler recorded a series of albums for Impulse that started on a high level and gradually declined in quality. …

A breathtaking self-conscious free-jazz masterwork, 'Rise Vision Comin'' summarizes more than 30 years of musical and theoretical/political expression from renowned activist/scholar/free-jazz pioneer Haki R. Standing on the verge of spiritual jazz ae…

2 × 180g vinyl LP, Flating jacket, Obi. Deluxe edition. Informel emerged from the rupture of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, and stands as the point of origin for the present-day Sinsuke Fujieda Group. With regular performance activity brought to a ha…

McCoy Tyner looked towards Africa on his stunning 1970 album Extensions, a far-reaching exploration of Black identity that marked the masterful pianist’s fifth recording for Blue Note Records. After leaving John Coltrane’s band Tyner had moved from I…

Sun Ra is better known to most as a musician than a poet, but he identified equally as both. My Words Are Music provides direct access to the sentiments of a poet who never called Earth home. The spoken word album hosts an inspired array of artists w…

The sounds of late '70s and '80s east coast avant-garde jazz, soul, and punk rock are well documented, but in Nothing but the Music Thulani Davis gives us something beyond, delivering a collection of synesthetic, transportive documentary poems that b…

Huge Tip! Original released in 1971 by the Black Artist Group group's own label “Universal Justice Records” this album has for years been an impossible to find/listen to album, and this is its first reissue ever. Ofamfa by The Children Of The Sun, a …

One for the ages here.  Unearthed from the ESS archives and officially released for the first time ever, a previously unknown half-hour from cosmic mythologist and sound scientist Sun Ra's 1971 U.C. Berkeley course "The Black Man in the Cosmos." Ra's…

If being the founder and chairman of Third World Press Organisation - the largest independent black-owned publishers - wasn't enough for activist and poet Haki R Madhubuti, he is also credited with a lesser-known yet remarkable music career. As the b…

** Deluxe 180gr. Black vinyl edition. Comes in a deluxe matte laminate gatefold sleeve. Original 1969 BYG album facsimile-edition. Mastered to vinyl from BYG tapes by Nick Robbins. Exclusive liner notes by author John Masouri ** 'A Jackson in Your Ho…

ErstLive 003 is from the duo of Burkhard Stangl and Christof Kurzmann, titled 'schnee_live', the final show on the last night of AMPLIFY 2004: addition. Stangl and Kurzmann began working as a duo in late 1999, releasing Schnee in 2000, and playing nu…

Ever since Otomo got into his minimal misuse of stereo equipment phase, a collaboration with Swiss toaster torturers Voice Crack was on the cards. Although Otomo's refraction of high end sinewaves around cranial interiors may not seem like an ideal p…

Over the past decade, Swiss-based Günter Müller has collaborated with many of the most prominent Tokyo-based musicians, recording CDs with Otomo Yoshihide, Taku Sugimoto, Sachiko M, Masahiko Okura, and Toshimaru Nakamura. Points and Slashes is the la…

The five tracks on neuschnee form an ambitious meta-song suite, with the various lyrics and musical styles combining to create a whole greater than the sum of its parts. The design is again from Berlin designer Marion Gerth, previously responsible fo…

Jim O'Rourke plays a lot with Japanese Free jazz legend Akira Sakata in various formations. Together with Italian composer and pianist Giovanni di Domenico and the drummer Tatsuhisa Yamamoto they form this powerful band. This is their first release, …

A precious documentary capturing Otomo Yoshihide Special Big Band’s (OSBB) first European tour. It’s their first live release in ten years. Formed in 2013, OSBB has performed concerts and live shows, contributed scores for productions including Ama-c…

"Ramune and the Power Plant" is the first duo album by Otomo Yoshihide and Ruike Shinpei, who have performed together many times in groups such as ONJQ. This recording captures almost the entire completely improvised live set held in October 2024 at …

*250 copies.* Sonata Islands is a cultural association, born from an idea of Emilio Galante, that promotes and performs new music and jazz. They organized many concerts and festivals in Italy. After Sonata Islands goes RIO (dedicated to the music of …