Jazz /
Members, Don’t Git Weary
Max Roach wasn't just one of the greatest drummers and percussionists in jazz history; he was also one of the greatest bandleaders in all of jazz, able to adapt his playing to an innumerable array of styles, from bop to free, and blessed with a keen eye and ear for talent. And he always, always kept pushing himself and his bandmates to find new modes of musical expression throughout his six-decade career. Speaking of modes, this 1968 release on the Atlantic label is one of his finest albums, a m…
Seeds
This long-awaited LP reissue of a European jazz treasure released in 1969 and led by multi-reedist Sahib Shihab!
Groet
2025 stock In the ever-evolving landscape of European improvised music, Groet stands as a testament to the restless creativity and sly wit of pianist Guus Janssen and drummer Han Bennink. Released on the Dutch label Data in 2005, this album captures two of the Netherlands’ most idiosyncratic voices in a dialogue that is as unpredictable as it is deeply musical.
Janssen and Bennink, both veterans of the Dutch avant-garde, approach the piano-drum duo format with a sense of play that borders on the…
Apa Ini
2025 stock In the ever-evolving landscape of European improvisation, Apa Ini stands as a testament to the restless creativity of saxophonist Tobias Delius and his ensemble. Released on the Dutch label Data Records in 2003, the album brings together a formidable quartet: Delius on tenor saxophone, Hilary Jeffery on trombone, Wilbert de Joode on double bass, and Serigne C.M. Gueye on percussion
Apa Ini is not an album that seeks easy answers or comfortable resolutions. Instead, it thrives on the t…
Cellotape & Scotchtape
2025 stock In the early 1980s, the Dutch improvisation scene was a crucible of restless invention, and Cellotape & Scotchtape stands as a quietly radical document from its margins. Released on the small but influential Data label, this collaboration between cellist Ernst Reijseger and Scottish percussionist Alan "Gunga" Purves is a study in playful, tactile exploration—music that feels as if it’s being assembled in real time from the detritus of the everyday.
Reijseger, already known for his uno…
Mistakes
2025 stock In the late 1970s, Amsterdam was a crucible for radical improvisation, and Mistakes—the collaboration between South African saxophonist Sean Bergin and Dutch cellist Ernst Reijseger—stands as a vivid document of that era’s restless energy. Released on the Data label, the album captures two musicians at the threshold of their creative powers, forging a dialogue that is as unpredictable as it is intimate.
Bergin, who had recently relocated from Durban, brings a raw, searching lyricism t…
Elastic Jargon
2025 stock Elastic Jargon is an album by Dutch composer and violist Maurice Horsthuis, released in 2007 on the Data label. The project brings together a unique ensemble of string players, with Horsthuis as the sole composer, exploring the boundaries of what can be achieved with string instruments alone.
Slang
2025 stock In the shadowy interstices of contemporary jazz and free improvisation, Slang by Elastic Jargon emerges as a document of restless inquiry and coded communication. Released on the Dutch label Data in 2010, the album is a cryptic dispatch from the margins, where genre boundaries are not so much blurred as actively subverted
Elastic Jargon—true to their name—stretch the language of jazz until it snaps, then reassemble the fragments into something at once familiar and alien. The group’s a…
Astronotes
2025 stock In the ever-mutable landscape of Dutch jazz, Joost Buis’s Astronotes stands as a testament to the playful collision of composition and improvisation. Released on the Data label in 2004, the album finds Buis—trombonist, composer, and bandleader—at the helm of a vibrant ensemble drawn from the heart of Amsterdam’s creative music scene.
From the opening bars of “The Eggs,” it’s clear that Buis is less interested in adhering to tradition than in subverting it with wit and invention. The b…
Tides Of Unrest / Berlin 2023
American percussionist Jeff Arnal and German pianist-composer Dietrich Eichmann’s two-decade partnership fuses polyrhythmic structures and vibrant textures in dynamic, improvised soundscapes. "Tides of Unrest" captures their creative synergy in a 2023 session, blending innovation, tradition, and collaboration.
BorderlessSoutheastofTheNorth
"What we have here is a result of an idea ignited almost 15 years ago with its roots deep in the era of subculture 1990s, when its teenage protagonists started listening to records. But the comradeship between the three of us started in the early 2000 when I was pursuing my first Utopian idea of an art commune in the form of a counter-festival in the Southeastern Slovenian countryside on the border with Croatia. An idea from which, years later, another Utopian project was born - an international…
Days As Echoes
Bomb! Estonian multi-instrumentalist Misha Panfilov returns with Days As Echoes, a sophomore release that channels the expansive spirit of Krautrock through the lens of contemporary ambient and spiritual jazz. Part of Panfilov's ever-expanding musical universe, the Misha Panfilov Sound Combo delivers six compositions that function as both individual meditations and a cohesive sonic narrative about hope, journey, and human connection. Drawing from an impossibly diverse palette that includes Ethio…
Poor Isa + Evan Parker/Ingar Zach
Acclaimed Belgian duo Poor Isa (banjoists Ruben Machtelinckx and Frederik Leroux) present their third album, evolving their minimalist style by collaborating with saxophonist Evan Parker and percussionist Ingar Zach. The result is a rich blend of introspective textures and dynamic improvisation.
Plastic Sun
*2025 stock* 'From the early years of Norwegian jazz, few albums have stood the test of time as well as the venturesome and subtly psychedelic Plastic Sun. It was the Svein Finnerud's second disc, and was released on Sonet in 1970. Inexplicably for an album of such beauty, it has been a hard-to-find collector's item for decades, having only been reissued once before, in 1998, as a CD on the Norwegian Jazz Federation's Odin label. In April 2018, Odin have reissued it again, this time on CD and in…
Via Brasil
One of the most outstanding Bossa Jazz productions from West Germany at the beginning of the 80s! These masterpieces captivate with their stylistic perfection and journey from Bossa Nova to Jazz to slight Disco´n Boogie influence. Its still on of the most DJ spinned Bossa tunes from W.-Germany in the last 30 years!
The two highly talented, creative and sensitive artists Judy (Jude Enxuto) and Ximo (Ximo Gregorio) had lived in Germany since 1980 and performing in several clubs, small art stages a…
Ich Will Die Zeit Nicht Bereuen / Sonderbar
Sound Essence is more than proud to presents a very special production from East Germany of the early 70s! One of the TOP Soul-Jazz & Beat combos in the country led by bassist and singer Horst Kruger, recorded two previously unreleased, outrageously good titles here in the newly formed septet format. "Ich will die Zeit nicht bereuen" ("I don't want to regret the time") is probably by far one of the most crispy produced German-language soul beats numbers that existed in the GDR at that time! From…
Dedos
Here comes a true South American Latin JazzFunk treasure from Argentina!!! Sound Essence is more than proud to present these lost recordings from 1974 to music lovers again in all their glory. Carlos Franzetti, who has once again been in the spotlight in recent years thanks to the re-release of his strong late 70s JazzFusion record "Graffiti", was also in charge of this record called Dedos. The story behind: In 1974, after Carlos Franzetti was living in Mexico and worked as the musical director…
That Look Of You / The New York Business
Here comes one of the most exclusive and sought-after recordings of a hotel band from the Caribbean Antilles. The resident and highly talented soul singer Lloyd Baptiste played there during the 70s with his group "The Joys" in the popular hotel called Divi Divi on the then Dutch island of Aruba.
The finest soul, funk and disco filled the repertoire of this outstanding formation. This led to the hotel management sending them to the Pyramid Sound Studio, New York in 1976 for advertising purposes a…
3
Taken from Abdullah Ibrahim’s summer 2023 sold-out headline date at London’s Barbican Centre, the new album “3” follows suit and is spread across two performances – the first is recorded without an audience ahead of the concert straight to analogue on a 1” Scully tape machine, which had previously been used by Elvis at the famous Memphis-based Sun Studios.
The second recording is taken from the evening’s performance itself with Ibrahim performing in a unique trio which includes Cleave Guyton (fl…
The Ruin
"This album is the most personal I’ve made to date. Named after an ancient Anglo-Saxon poem from the 9th century AD about the former glory of an unnamed ruined city, “The Ruin” is inspired by the feeling of living in England (“a country that feels like a living ruin”), the bleak landscape of where I grew up (Medway towns), and a kind of self-portrait reflecting how we all live amongst the ruins of our past selves both collectively and individually. All the musical material on “The Ruin” is taken…