Jazz /
Cuts
If jazz, as the eminent critic Whitney Balliet once wrote, is the “sound of surprise,†Cuts, an intensely cathartic, fiercely turbulent collaboration between Japanese noise purveyor Masami Akita (aka Merzbow), Hungarian drummer Balazs Pandi…
For Adolphe Sax
At last, the reissue of German saxophonist Peter Brötzmann's long out-of-print first record, one of the most auspicious debuts of free music, and a trenchant tribute to the inventor of the saxophone. For Adolphe Sax is a roundhouse punch of European …
Musiki
Reissue of a very obscure free music document, recorded in Cambridge, MA, sometime in 1970. Notable for it's Saturn-esque paste-on cover artwork (eloquently reconstructed here), and general cosmic vibe, this record harkens back to days when "out" …
At WKCR Studios NY 12-8-74
Massively unlikely unearthing of a previously unreleased live radio broadcast from legendary free jazz saxophonist Charles Tyler in a hand-numbered edition of only 99 copies: Tyler is a comparatively unsung player compared to the better known free…
Quintet
Things get dislocated, gather themselves, spread across areas of varying intensities. More intimate or more complex song. closer to the sacred, left untouched by mediation, even slightly incomprehensible, though mostlyambivalent and reality-pierc…
By the Stream
A study of free-form improvisation, rhythm and language using vocalizations, cello and analog electronics. These recordings in two movements can be taken as, on the one hand, pieces for two voices and improvisation chamber orchestra (which is what …
A winter's night at the crooked forest
Kari Rønnekleiv, violin. Ole-Henrik Moe, viola. In 2011 Rønnekleiv/Moe released the album “A summer’s night at the crooked forest” on SOFA. The London based music magazine WIRE wrote that the album is a technical tour de force. And a musical one, …
Live at Knot Gallery, Athens, November 2011
Edition of 300 (coproduced with phase records & mafia). 'it was in dhalgren that i had read about a father getting fired, and who trying not to depress his family about it, wakes up every day, shaves, dresses himself up, has breakfast and leaves …
Cosmo Earth Fantasy: Sub Underground Series Vol. 1 and 2
A Saturn release from the 1960's featuring a wide-range of pieces from studio recordings, rehearsals, and live concerts that are all heart-felt and made in the traditional Sun Ra style, starting with eight delirious minutes of kora and piano frame -…
Sieve
As a duo Tim Catlin and David Brown aka Candlesnuffer come together as 'Helium Clench' and boast long histories in the Melbourne and international avant-garde music world. Both have independently developed a fascination with microtonal sound, in …
Cocaine blues
Guitarist and founding member of Maajun in 1969 (That released one album under the Vogue label), Cyril Lefebvre recorded three beautiful albums during the Seventies. Cocaïne Blues, the second one, is one of the finest achievements of the Golden Age o…
Long Story Short
Long Story Short, the festival organized as the 25th edition of the Unlimited Festival in Wels, Austria (November 2011) designed a festival around Peter Brotzmann's musical practice -- not a retrospective, but a representation of the contemporary mus…
Solo 1973.3.30 Pit Inn Tearoom
Latest (and final) volume of the long dormant J.I. Collection - PSF's groundbreaking collection of rare Japanese free jazz recordings from the early 1970s! Kaoru Abe was easily the brightest shooting star of the late sixties and early seventies J…
Bulletproof Brass
The HBE family are in full effect on this 6-track mini-album. Forming like a brass-plated Voltron, they spin from swaggering Hip-Hop funk on 'Starfighter' to sparky, feel-good breakbeat funk on 'Touch The Sky' and more sultry, jazzed up styles for…
Stellar Pulsations
Originally schooled in the foundations of hard bop, cornetist Rob Mazurek, quickly surpassed the form's conventional limitations; his multihued electro-acoustic work over the past two decades has subsequently drawn inspiration from numerous genres be…
Trente belles annes
Triumphal new CD, the first new recordings in an age, from one of the greatest bands on the goddamn planet, the trio of saxophonists Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich and guitarist Donald Miller aka Borbetomagus: this is a roof-raising performance, reco…
Bell Trove Spools
Northern Spy is proud to present two of John Butcher’s most recent experiments in moving sound waves through space. On Bell Trove Spools we hear Butcher in two distinct situations: Richmond Hall, a Houston art gallery housing a permanent Dan Flavin c…
Joining the queue to become one of those ordinary ghosts
Koboku Senju, meaning something like a Selection of Dead Trees', is the quintet of Tetuzi Akiyama, Toshimaru Nakamura, Martin Taxt, Eivind Lønning, and Espen Reinertsen. Akiyama and Nakamura, on guitar and no input mixing board respectively, have lon…
Alemayehu Eshete
Hard-grooving Ethiopiques killers from the "Ethiopian Elvis". This eponymous collection gathers some of his finest moments from 45's recorded between 1967 and 1974, nine total, mixing R&B, soul, rock'n'roll with that magically mystical blend of mo…
Stone/Water
With any sizeable Brötzmann group, the temptation is always there to compare it to his classic Machine Gun unit. This new tentet doesn’t match up to the unbridled ferocity of that earlier grouping, but then what has? Perhaps the greatest sea change s…