Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

*Limited edition of 500 copies.* Eiko Ishibashi and Jim O‘Rourke created the installation Lifetime of a Flower for the Dortmund exhibition Flowers in 20th and 21st Century Art. In it they set parameters, but allowed the process itself to literally gr…

Two days after his 100th birthday, Marshall Allen started recording New Dawn, his debut solo album. A member of Sun Ra’s Arkestra since 1958, Allen assumed leadership of the band in 1995. Throughout his nearly seventy-year career, Allen has never rel…

**400 copies** Blue Cat is a great live recording taken in June 1991 by Frode Gjerstad in Albany, London, during a UK tour. Musicians on these recordings are: Bobby Bradford - cornet, Frode Gjerstad - alto saxophone, Kent Carter - acoustic bass, John…

Tippin' On Through, by tenor saxophonist Curtis Amy, stands as a defining statement from one of West Coast jazz’s most eloquent voices. Recorded and released in 1965, the album pairs Amy’s warm, hard‑bop tenor with soulful grooves, crisp arrangements…

Components documents vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson’s early emergence as a vital voice in modern jazz. Recorded and issued in 1965, the album presents Hutcherson’s distinctive mallet work and original compositions that bridge post‑bop lyricism and mid…

The title says it: a deliberate, joyful return to bebop fundamentals from the Kenji Mori quintet, recorded at a moment when the language could already feel like a stylistic choice rather than a default. By 1982 the Japanese jazz scene had moved throu…

Toshiyuki Miyama led The New Herd for decades, one of the most important and most adventurous Japanese big bands of the post-war period, and the working ensemble through which a remarkable number of Japanese composers and arrangers found a sympatheti…

Another date from Toshiyuki Miyama's New Herd for Three Blind Mice, and a strong candidate for the band's most accessible single record. Sunday Thing leans into the warmer, more groove-conscious end of the New Herd's repertoire: there are still the h…

The third album from singer Mari Nakamoto for Three Blind Mice, and the one that pushes hardest at the conventions of mainstream vocal jazz. The line-up is the giveaway: alongside Nakamoto's voice, the record places bassist Isao Suzuki at the centre …

A live document from the legendary “5 Days In Jazz” festival in Tokyo in March 1974, and one of the most ambitious multi-band albums in the Three Blind Mice catalogue. The record gathers some of the most important working units of the moment: bassist…

Nobuo Hara led Sharps & Flats for an astonishing run, well over half a century, and the band became one of the institutions of Japanese jazz, in roughly the same way the Clarke-Boland Big Band held its place in Europe. Active Volcano catches the ense…

The Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio in concert at Montreux, and one of the relatively few records that documents the working group on an international stage. By the time of this recording the trio had already been together for years, and the band's mutual und…

A mid-seventies entry from the Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio, and one of the records where the leader's bluesy, groove-conscious side comes most clearly to the front. The title track is the Ramsey Lewis standard, and the choice tells you most of what you ne…

*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 s…

Big Tip! Basil Kirchin, a forgotten genius of post-war British music, was an influential jazz drummer, creative free-spirit and pioneer of Musique Concrète. He spent most of his life living and working in Hull, the 2017 UK City of Culture, which is h…

As a member of the all-star Jazz Epistles in the late 1950s, saxophonist Kippie Moeketsi (also spelled Moketsi during his tenure with the As-Shams record label in the 1970s) was one of the pioneering forces of modern South African jazz. While Jazz Ep…

We Are Busy Bodies announces the officially licensed reissue of the 1966 cosmic, free jazz album Zodiac by French saxophonist and composer Barney Wilen. The album’s astrological theme and Robert Crumb-esque comic-book style cover art, illustrated by …

At the makeshift Man-Ray Studios in Akron, Ohio, where barrels of soap were rolled away to make room for recording, guitarist Wilbur Niles and his then-girlfriend, Machelle McNeal, recorded "Ja Ja." Niles, a history major, titled it after King Jaja, …

* 180 gram vinyl * Herbie Hancock is one of the most prolific jazz pianists of the 20th century. A child prodigy, he played with the greats such as Donald Byrd and Miles Davis. He was one of the first to embrace and master the electric piano, but he …

The 1971 entry point into Herbie Hancock's celebrated Mwandishi trilogy, returning here on vinyl. Mwandishi opens what would become the most adventurous and freely exploratory chapter of Hancock's discography, the first record to officially document …

Duo Concert Frankfurt 1986 was recorded live in Germany on February 15th. The album captures tenor icon Pharoah Sanders and celebrated pianist John Hicks in a moment of profound musical harmony. Sanders, known for his evolution from fierce free-jazz …

Sublime solo piano from Masaru Imada – a Japanese player with talents in a range of different styles, but who sounds especially nice up-close here in an intimate setting! Imada's got a way of letting a tune really find its way organically – almost as…

2026 Re-issue. A cornerstone of postwar Japanese free improvisation, captured before three thousand listeners at the ninth Moers New Jazz Festival on 26 May 1980 and issued later that year as TBM-5023. By this point Masayuki "Jojo" Takayanagi had spe…

Drummer George Otsuka was a fixture of the Tokyo jazz club scene from the sixties onwards, leading a series of working bands that earned a reputation for tight ensemble playing and consistently high temperature. 'Go On', one of the early releases on …

*2026 stock* One of the more obscure entries in the early Three Blind Mice catalogue, and a record that points to the label's willingness, from very near its beginning, to host visiting players alongside the domestic scene. The American saxophonist A…

Guitarist Sunao Wada spent the seventies as one of the most consistently working figures in Japanese jazz, a player whose tone owed something to Wes Montgomery and Kenny Burrell but whose phrasing carried a particular Japanese weight, more thoughtful…

Saxophonist Kenji Mori belongs to the second generation of TBM regulars, a player whose work for the label spans several years and several formats, but whose quartet records have a particularly distilled quality. Firebird fits cleanly into the modal …

The pianist Fumio Karashima is best known internationally for his long association with Elvin Jones, having held the piano chair in Jones's working bands for years, a credit that already tells you most of what you need to know about his playing. Gath…

One of the more intimate entries in the Three Blind Mice catalogue: a duo session, with all the exposure and concentrated focus the format implies. Conversation lives up to its title. Two players in close, careful dialogue, with neither voice dominat…

A later Sunao Wada session for Three Blind Mice, and one of the more outward-looking records in his TBM run. The quintet-plus-one format brings the saxophonist and flautist Minoru Ikeno alongside Wada's working group, and the addition shifts the musi…

*2026 stock* An earlier Sunao Wada outing on Three Blind Mice, recorded with both quartet and quintet formations across the programme, and built (as the title suggests) around the blues. But this is blues in the broader, more searching sense the seve…

The music of Horace Silver is magically presented here by drummer Hideo Shiraki – grooving nicely in the same exotic approach to soul jazz you'd find on Silver's best Blue Note sides of the late 50s! Shiraki's always had a bit of a Jazz Messengers ap…

On Live at the It Club, Thelonious Monk and his classic quartet - Charlie Rouse, Larry Gales and Ben Riley - burn through two nights of Los Angeles brilliance in 1964, turning familiar originals and standards into angular, swinging explorations now f…

Known for their exhilarating live-to-record albums such as last year's critically acclaimed Wood Blues and Giant Beauty, سماع [Sama'a] (Audition) is the first of two releases that will surface after [Ahmed]’s first studio recording sessions at North …

Sploosh Records presents Monkey Cop by Martín Escalante and Teté Leguía. Suspects: Lolo, Kevin Salkeld, Nicole Remy, Sam Weinberg, Tomas Orrego, Camilo & Alex Ángeles, The Weez. To protect and serve.Martín Escalante: sax violenceTeté Leguía: bass ext…

Sploosh presents "Martín Escalante and Eloe Omoe". Art and layout by Ron Regé, Jr. Mastered by John Hegre. Thanks to Skaset. Martín Escalante - SaxSam Rowell - BassTim Leanse - Drums

Sploosh Records presents Ftarri by Riuichi Daijo, Martín Escalante and Yuma Takeshita. Recorded live at Ftarri on 06/08/19. Special thanks to Toshimaru Nakamura. Art and design by Everardo Felipe. Mastered by Skaset. Riuichi Daijo: guitarYuma Takeshi…

Sploosh Records presents Knuttel House by Jun Numata, Martín Esclanate and Yuji Ishihara. Paintings by Aron Briggs Mastered by Skaset. Layout by Nicole Remy. Special thanks to Akira Saito. Recorded live at Knuttel House on 06/07/19. Jun Numata: guita…

Huge Tip! Oiro Pena is a Finnish jazz collective helmed by prolific composer Antti Vauhkonen. Their last album, Puna, recorded in bedrooms, studios and other salubrious locations around Helsinki during 2022, is a mix of lo-fi spiritual jazz, experime…

For approximately 18 months (from the fall of 1961 to June 1963), Archie Shepp and Bill Dixon co-led a group that varied in size between a quartet, quintet and sextet, depending on the gig. They mostly played coffee houses and small theatres in Green…