Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

Joshua Abrams' Natural Information Society expanded into a larger community ensemble with Chicago tenor saxophonist Ari Brown, Hamid Drake, harp, cornets and saxophones around the core of guimbri, harmonium, drums and bass clarinet.

Orrin Keepnews produced Art Blakey's 1963 debut for Riverside Records, a hard-bop triumph featuring an all-aces band: Curtis Fuller, Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Cedar Walton and Reggie Workman. Blakey drives them with power and passion as they play Caravan: Sweet 'n' Sour: In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning: This Is for Albert: Skylark, and Thermo. Back on vinyl again!

Deluxe CD edition with Obi. The title of Horace Tapscott's debut release is apt, if not self-referential, for indeed a giant of West Coast jazz had awakened with this, the pianist / composer / bandleader's 1969 album for the Flying Dutchman label. Tapscott went on to form two groups crucial to the flowering of modern jazz in the Los Angeles area, the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra (or P.A.P.A.; the name is an homage to Tapscott's predecessor and peer, Sun Ra), which eventually became part of a lar…

Three musicians of different generations came together to form this unusual free jazz trio. Comprised of veteran musician Akira Sakata (alto sax, clarinet, narration), noted young drummer Raiga Hayashi, and Toshimaru Nakamura (no-input mixing board)—who has been active on the improvised music scene inside and outside Japan since the 1990s—this much-talked-about band performs mainly at live music venues in the Tokyo area. Naturally, their performances contain the furiousness and wildness characte…

Radio broadcast of a daytime performance at The Penthouse, Seattle, Washington, September 30, 1965 taped by an amateur fan.

Radha-Krsna Nama Sankirtana was the first of two albums Alice Coltrane released in 1977 (the other being Transcendence). Coltrane's music during this period grew out of an epiphany in which she would renounce secular life and don the orange robes of a swamini (spiritual teacher in the Hindu tradition). Musically, this meant leaving jazz behind (at least partially) and embracing the chants and rhythms of devotional music. The first half of Radha-Krsna is mostly filled with simple arrangements of …

观世音 Kannon' is an album that was composed in the aftershadow of Sunn O)))’s most recent successes in immersive collaboration (the group worked with Scott Walker on 'Soused', Ulver on 'Terrestrials' in 2013 and 2014) and also from the broad and influential wake of their epitimous 'Monolith’s & Dimensions'. '观世音 Kannon' emerged both independently as a conceptual entity and with roots in the legacies of those projects, yet was fully realized years later, in 2015. The album is 36 minutes in length a…

On December 17, 1947 Art Blakey led a group known as “Art Blakey’s Messengers” in his first recording session as a leader, for Blue Note Records. The records were issued as 78’s at the time and two of the songs were released on the New Sounds 10” LP compilation (BLP 5010). This octet included Kenny Dorham, Howard Bowe, Sahib Shihab, Musa Kaleem, Ernest Thompson, Walter Bishop, Jr., and LaVerne Baker. Around the same time – in 1947 or 1949 – Blakey led a big band called “Seventeen Messengers”. Th…

Adroit jazz guitar, prog rock fantasia, and Japanese environmental music all rest comfortably behind Leo Takami's Next Door. The follow up to the acclaimed Felis Catus & Silence, Next Door finds Takami ruminating on passages — of time, seasons, consciousness. Through music, Leo contemplates daily events and finds beauty in ordinary moments. He also seems to be questioning the value of being stuck in the world, allowing his mind to wander towards something beyond it. His music is earnest, deeply …

Tip! This is the lost pearl, this is the most secret album coming from the ancient land of Sicily, the oyster island of the Mediterranean sea, on the borders of Italy. No Holy Grails here, we are not at the crusades, but in the presence of one of the busiest ensembles on the Italian scene during the 70s and 80s of the last century, devoted to only one creed: To Play! Enzo Randisi and his son Riccardo, take us into a world of visionary spiritual jazz atmospheres on the track "Windows", an opening…

2024 Stock. Modern Silence present the first ever reissue of Archie Shepp/Lars Gullin Quintet's The House I Live In, originally released in 1980. An incredible live album featuring saxophonists Archie Shepp and Lars Gullin, recorded at the Jazzhus Montmartre in Copenhagen, Denmark on November 21, 1963. 180 gram, virgin vinyl; Edition of 500."This is a fascinating release. Tenor-saxophonist Archie Shepp would not burst upon the U.S. avant-garde scene until 1964-65 but here he is featured at a Dan…

Original artwork tip-on 700 gram cardboard. Black polylined innersleeve. Insert sheet Q&A with Lloyd Miller by Tony Higgins + original archive pictures on 350 gram Bristol paper. Made with the intention of exploring and experiencing the various musical and cultural perspectives of a territory as vast as that of Persia, "Near And Far East" is a significant historical document that transcends the restrictive concept of territory but rather inhabits a space of absolute time. The album's content is …

**2021 stock** 140 Gram Vinyl / 250 mcn paper / Printed on recycled corn paper 100% biodegradable / handily double plasticization / handily external gluing / PVC outers / original artwor . What jazz music and verse recitation may have to do with each other may be another strange question for the majority. However, it has been proven that the jazz musician and the reciting poet can complement each other and during this hot and concentrated encounter between the two art forms, we see the emergence…

The ninth album in BBE Music's J Jazz Masterclass Series presents ‘At the Room 427’ by Koichi Matsukaze Trio Featuring Ryojiro Furusawa, a rarely heard exemplar of post-modal power bop and free jazz. Delivered by a trio playing with an intensity and energy that draws on classic Eric Dolphy and mid-era Coltrane but definitely with its own particular vibe, At the Room 427 is an exemplar of febrile improvised jazz that could only come from Japan. This deluxe reissue sees a welcome return to the J J…

“Ethiobraz” documents the meeting of Paal Nilssen-Love’s Large Unit big band and Ethiopian dance/music ensemble Fendika at Molde Jazz Festival in 2018. Joining them as a special guest is guitarist Terrie Ex, who was a key component in getting making the meeting happen with his long involvement with the Ethiopian music scene. And, Paal Nilssen-Loves’s first travel to Ethiopia was with The Ex in December 2009. This changed his life. Paal’s first travel to Brazil was in June 2013. This also changes…

'When he performed in Germany, they called him the "black devil violinist," his frenetic playing wrapped in a gyrating, trance-like state. For Billy Bang, who believed he had schizophrenia, the epithet bore a resemblance to his inner turmoil. He was born William Walker in Mobile, Alabama but grew up in the South Bronx. He studied violin and classical music, and his talent earned him a hardship scholarship to the Stockbridge School in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Bang felt out of place in the pred…

**Yellow vinyl** Though Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane were two of the prime forces in what came to be known as free jazz, their approaches couldn't have been more different. While Coleman's music dispensed with chords and rejected instrumental virtuosity in favour of unbroken horizontal development of melodic line, Coltrane's music for the most part relied on stacking up chords in blocks and exploring the results with fearsomely complex, passionate harmonic interrogations. However Coltrane w…

*2024 stock* Can music liberate us? Francisco Mela, who worked and partnered with the legendary jazz musician McCoy Tyner, believes so. On this album, the second volume of Music Frees Our Souls, Mela collaborates with pianist Cooper-Moore and bassist William Parker to build a 2-part extended track project of advanced dialogue between 3 of the genre's most important instruments. Tyner was well-known for his boundless musical talent, and perhaps best-known for playing in John Coltrane’s quartet, w…

*2024 stock* Before any instrumentation, Francisco Mela addresses his fellow musicians, pianist Matthew Shipp and bassist William Parker, with a sense of anticipation and affirmation, “Okay guys, ready? Rolling!” The sense of camaraderie and his artist-focused approach is heard throughout the album’s majestic improvisation—as well as in its inspiration, dedicated to Mela’s longtime musical partner, the legendary jazz musician McCoy Tyner. Tyner was well-known for his boundless musical talent, an…

*2024 stock* New York United is an experimental group at the musical intersection of a classic New York avant-garde scene and forward-looking electronic production. Comprised of multi-instrumentalist and 577-cofounder Daniel Carter (Saxophone, Flute, Trumpet, Clarinet), electronic producer Tobias Wilner from Blue Foundation (Synthesizers, Percussion, Vocals, Piano, Guitar), Wu-Tang Clan bass player Djibril Toure and 577’s Federico Ughi (Drums), their sound reflects their decades of collaboration…

The New Album by Francisco Mela and Zoh Amba 'Causa y Efecto, Vol. 2' is a celebration of differences and unity. Creativity in general and experimental music in particular can serve as a conduit to the inner soul of its creators, a kind of spiritual path that goes two ways and allows a deeper understanding also of ourselves. It's a light projecting the humanity of the players that simultaneously reflects the creator and the humanity in all of us. The vulnerability of the artists and what they se…

*2023 repress* Akhenaten was the first album Nat released on the fledgling Gondwana label back in 2009, it was the second release on the label and has remained a hugely popular and much sought after album ever since. Jazzman Records issued a vinyl version in 2016 (which quickly sold out and is now a collector’s item) and Nat reissued a CD version a few years later, but this is a much needed and long awaited new vinyl pressing. Featuring four original compositions the album is a deeply meditative…

*2023 repress* Eighth album from Gilles Peterson favourite Nat Birchall. Deep, soulful spiritual jazz of the most honest kind and probably Nat's best album to date. The band features two drummers who, along with the rest of the 5 piece group, create enough kinetic energy for interstellar travel, which is exactly where the music takes the listener!

Ptah, the El Daoud was the third solo album by Alice Coltrane. This was Coltrane's first album with horns (aside from one track on A Monastic Trio (1968), on which Pharoah Sanders had played bass clarinet). Sanders is recorded on the right channel and Joe Henderson on the left channel throughout. All the compositions were written by Coltrane. The title track is named for the Egyptian god Ptah, "the El Daoud" meaning "the beloved". "Turiya", according to the liner notes, "was defined by Alice as …

*200 copies limited edition* All written, mixed by Tsuadatta

“A blissfully ecstatic sprawl of spiritual-jazz explorations of the most transcendent order” – Brooklyn Rail

If life is about how we react to what is thrown at us, Sana Nagano chose wisely in the summer of 2020. After nearly half a year of anguished isolation, the violinist made an album of honest, graceful free improvisations with two of her mentors. Anime Mundi, out October 28th on 577 Records, pairs her with pianist/vibraphonist Karl Berger and drummer Billy Martin, veteran players at home in the unknown. And though recorded during the stressful first year of Covid, there is joy and curiosity in the…

*2024 stock* "The music of The Moon can surge like molten lava or flow like a quiet stream. It's a purist form of improvisation -- noise-attuned but rooted in jazz fundamentals, abstract but built on the unusually sturdy bond between guitarist Adam Caine and drummer Federico Ughi. These two play free, while operating like an old-school working band." - Hank Shteamer  The Moon was conceived in an instant. Drummer Federico Ughi happened to run into the guitarist Adam Caine just before setting out …

Four extended electroacoustic works from Berlin's inside pianist and mixing board artist Andrea Neumann and Baltimore's Bonnie Jones on electronics, minimal and edgy pieces of unusual and absorbing character."ANDREA NEUMANN (b. 1968, Freiburg) studied piano at the Hochschule der Kunste in Berlin. Since 1996 she has been primarily active as improviser and composer in the areas of experimental and new music. In the process of exploring the piano for new sound possibilities, she has reduced t…

Long before the pandemic, Reed had been thinking about isolation, haunted by a 2015 story in The New York Times about the death of a resident named George Bell, a hoarder who passed away at home, his body undiscovered for nearly a week. In January 2022, Reed gathered a group of some of the most creative figures in Chicago’s experimental and improvised music community to put sound to those thoughts of forced seclusion: cornetist Ben LaMar Gay, poet and spoken word artist Marvin Tate, and members …

"The Rendell/Carr Quintet was a groundbreaking jazz ensemble featuring saxophonist Don Rendell and trumpeter Ian Carr, among the most influential musicians in post-war British jazz. BBC Jazz Club Session April 1965 is a snapshot of the group in transition, with pianist Michael Garrick new to the ranks and taking them in a more radical direction." - normanrecords.com

This new album was recorded in March of this year, as The Rempis Percussion Quartet made their debut in France after 15 years of touring almost everywhere else across Europe.  At the generous invitation of programmer Antoine de la Ronciere at Le Petit Faucheux in Tours, the band was the test pilot for a collaborative project amongst five venerable venues for improvised music in France. In a tightly packed week-long schedule, the band performed in Tours, Poitiers, Brest, Nantes, and Lyon, while a…

"This overdue duo record by longtime colleagues Tashi Dorji (guitar) and Dave Rempis (saxophones) is a monument to the endless musical curiosity that links them. These two come at it from remarkably different backgrounds – Dorji combining his Bhutanese ethnicity with a love for metal, punk, American blues and folk, and anarchist political theory, with Rempis riding the outer edges of the jazz world throughout his career, while also inspired by his Greek ethnicity and a longstanding interest in f…

On February 19, 1972, a crew of mostly Louisiana-raised musicians came together at the Leo Castelli Gallery on West Broadway in Soho to perform a wholly improvised concert. This ensemble’s solos spring from collective improvisations and a tumultuous backbeat, loosely inspired by the creations of Coltrane, Coleman, Albert Ayler, and their brethren. The de facto leader was Richard “Dickie” Landry, a saxophonist and keyboardist who joined composer Philip Glass’s group in 1969. Landry had become a f…

This bundle includes three LP (one of them is a double set), namely "Solos" "4 Cuts Placed In "A First Quarter"" and "Having Been Built On Sand"

"There is an underground stream that starts from Don Cherry Organic Music and the Art Ensemble of Chicago and meanders through improvised music, finally reaching our days; a flux particularly vital in the works of the Natural Information Society and the Drazek - Fuscaldo extended duo. It has to do with rhythm and use of words and voices and instruments, it creates an experience that focuses the listeners and the musicians on something basic, elementary and yet complex, organic indeed. Przemyslaw…

*300 copies limited edition* Volume 2 is the long awaited followup from the all-star Chicago trio of Quin Kirchner, Daniel Van Duerm & Matthew Lux. Although it's been three years since their debut, Volume 1, KVL has continued to hone their brand of call-it-whatever-you-want jazz, keeping many of the same meditative and ambient qualities as their previous album, but expressed in new and different ways - Van Duerm's repetitive and winding organ lines on "Absent Crash," Kirchner's steady & insisten…

Pedal steel innovator Susan Alcorn combines Chilean folk and nueva canción with free improvisation and contemporary classical on breathtaking new album.

Space is the trio of Lisa Ullén, Elsa Bergman and Anna Lund based in Stockholm, Sweden.This is their second album. Their music is totally improvised and has a strong connection to the traditions of free jazz and European contemporary music.

This is the first collaboration between Australian improvisor Chloë Sobek who plays the Renaissance precursor to the double bass, the violone and New York saxophonist Time Berne.