Jazz /
The Embalmer
Matthew Bourne is a renowned pianist with a reputation as a fearlessly unpredictable improviser. Emil Karlsen is an independently minded drummer who plays with power and delicacy. The Embalmer documents one of Karlsen and Bourne’s first meetings. Recorded in a single session in 2020, The Embalmer sees a wide-ranging musical discourse between the two musicians unfold in its most lean form across the six improvised tracks.
Conduits
*In process of stocking* Freely improvised music for baritone saxophone and double bass. Cath Roberts and Olie Brice found an escape from the musical isolation of lockdown with the amazing discovery that it was possible to play (and record) online in almost real time - these are the results.
Space
*In process of stocking* Ullén/Bergman/Lund is a piano trio based in Stockholm that plays free jazz that channels the American free jazz tradition as well as contemporary classical music. Combining raw power with an exquisite attention to detail, the three musicians make every moment sparkle with possibilities. In this aural space, every movement matters.
Ullén and fellow Swedes Bergman and Lund are all significant players in the Scandanavian freejazz scene and the trio first met in the sextet A…
Prosperity
*In process of stocking.* Next Festival Records is thrilled to announce that the new album 'Prosperity' from Mats Gustafsson & Christof Kurzmann, has been added to the catalogue.
Mats Gustafsson is a Swedish saxophone player, composer, and improviser. Gustafsson works on the boundaries of noise, electronica, contemporary rock, and free jazz, as well as contemporary dance and theatre production. He performs solo and in various all-star impro projects. He has gone on international tours with artis…
Fukiya
*In process of stocking* The sublime first solo saxophone release of Masayo Koketsu is deeply steeped in the free jazz tradition of Japan. From Coltrane's visit to Japan in 1966 to the free jazz exploits of Kaoru Abe, Masayo Koketsu's astonishing solo session marks her as a force to be reckoned with. A single 46 minute piece of achingly beautiful wails and declarations punctuate the bedrock of silence then retreat back. A singular effort.
Until The Next Time
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* More than half a century has elapsed since the founding of the legendary British free improvisation group AMM. We could say there would be no free improvisation as we know it today without AMM’s Eddie Prévost, John Tilbury and Keith Rowe. The mystery surrounding AMM has not faded; to the contrary, even nowadays it carries a particular appeal due to its engaged, intelligible and nonetheless radical message. AMM Until The Next Time Next Festival LP 2019 In 196…
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Tip! *In process of stocking. 2022 stock. Limited edition of 300 copies.* ‘The demands from users have often contradicted engineering possibilities. However, once the targets became clear, we, Shibuya, have made every effort to knuckle down to achieve them. The keyword is “No Compromise” believing that we can overcome the difficulties without sacrificing anything.’
Unce upon a time… somewhere between free jazz mountains, sea of death metal and islands of live electronics… there were Shibuya Moto…
Ort
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Next Festival Records presents free improvisation band Stavros Papadopulos, recorded live at Next Festival in Bratislava. Next Festival is an annual celebration of exploratory music and sound art: from electronic experimentation and freeform improvisation to audiovisual projects, it brings together artists who push the boundaries of music. On the occasion of its 20th anniversary, the Next Festival in Bratislava has started a new edition of releases recorde…
Papirfuglen
Moskus conveys their perspective of the world with vivid improvisation in a genre-free universe. In their In their most recent release, “Papirfuglen”, the ensemble further solidifies their position as one of the most cutting-edge and transfixing voices in the newest generation of both Norwegian and international jazz. They have a unique musical approach, with a combination of infectious playfulness and a headstrong penchant for experimentation. And with these tools Moskus takes yet another ste…
Sleeping Beauty
In 2021, the international contemporary music festival Only Connect commissioned an interpretation from I Like to Sleep of the first movement of Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalila symphony. A project which initially led to a 15-minute piece performed at the festival, with the trio re-writing the music of Messiaen, but also rewriting the music of their own. Messiaen as a reference and compositional tool may be heard in the album for those really listening for references. With “Sleeping Beauty” the tr…
Tauhid
Recorded November 15, 1966 at Van Gelder Studios, Englewood Cliffs - New Jersey, Tauhid is one of the most iconic album recorded by the tenor saxophonist Pharoah Sanders. On his debut for Impulse ! the leader assembled an extraordinary line-up, defining the boundaries of the so-called spiritual jazz movement. Henry Grimes (bass) Roger Blank (drums), Sonny Sharrock (guitar), Nat Bettis (percussion) and Dave Burrell (piano)Pharoah, (born Farrell Sanders of Little Rock, Arkansas on October 13, 1940…
Fire Hills
Fire Hills is Olie Brice’s third album as a composer bandleader, following the critically acclaimed ‘Immune to Clockwork’ (Multi Kulti, 2014) and ‘Day After Day’ (Babel, 2017). A double album, Brice’s compositions for improvisers are explored by two groups of the most exciting and creative musicians in the UK, all significant bandleaders themselves.
Fire Hills showcases two versions of a new phase in Brice’s music. During 2021 – a year of covid lockdowns and greatly reduced gigging opportuniti…
light as never
The distinctive sound of Linus is born from a delicate balance between folk, jazz, minimalism, chamber music and free improvisation. Starting as a duo, Ruben Machtelinckx and Thomas Jillings have always tried to infuse their compositions, which tend towards poetry and simplicity, with the ungraspable spirit of true open-minded improvisation. In the search of new stories to tell, it therefore did not come as a surprise that they chose to expand their palette by including both an eclectic mix of i…
Als Ik Niets Meer Van De Kano Zie
*Limited Edition of 100 hand-numbered copies.* Improvisation is a universal non-verbal language. For many of us it is a practice, not a music genre, one that knows no boundaries. Personally I’m really interested in the locality of an improvisational recording. I find it much more intriguing to listen to someone who improvises and lives outside of the big hubs for free jazz and free improv of the western world. It might seem trivial to many of you, but the fact that the titles and bandcamp notes …
Pacemaker
* Limited Edition of 300 copies with hand-made artwork. Hand-numbered edition. * Lithuania saxophonist - here on contrabass and prepared clarinet, tenor and soprano saxophones - is a musician with many faces, ranging from the powerful free jazz of "Kablys" over the melodic and sensitive excursion with pianist Petras Geniusas, to the angular free improv with Barry Guy on "Lava". On Pacemaker he demonstrates yet another side of his art, now in the company of Christian Windfeld on prepared drum kit…
Red Clay
The first Freddie Hubbard album released on Creed Taylor CTI label marked a shift away from Hubbard's recording with Blue Note Records. It was the album that established Taylor's vision for the music that was to appear on his labels in the coming decade. "Red Clay" is Freddie Hubbard's seventeenth overall album.
Searching in Grenoble : The 1978 Solo Piano Concert
Searching In Grenoble: The 1978 Solo Piano Concert is a previously unissued recording of jazz icon Mal Waldron's mesmerizing performance at the "Five Days of Jazz" series in Grenoble, France on March 23, 1978. Waldron was Billie Holiday’s final accompanist, played on classic sessions with John Coltrane, Charles Mingus and Jackie McLean among others, and recorded dozens of solo albums as a leader before his passing in 2002. Originally produced by the legendary André Francís and transferred from t…
Carpathes
"Percussionist Paul Lovens turns in some exemplary work on Carpathes, joined by Michel Pilz (bcl) and Peter Kowald (b). Actually it is mostly Pilz' date as he appears throughout the record either in solo, trio or duo with Kowald. But it is Lovens who most impresses me here as he hammers, rings, jingles the percussion, managing to both give rhythmic freedom and abstraction while implying a more traditional rhythm and he sustains himself very well. Actually the rhythm is constantly outstanding in …
Ritual
Belgium, not the first place you’d think of when it comes to Latin or Afro funk. Yet one of the greatest records to blend both styles came from the small northern European country, masterminded by Nico Gomez and his Afro Percussion Inc.
Ritual was originally released in 1971 on the Dutch label Omega International (Gomez was born in Holland before moving to Belgium in the late 40s) and is being reissued by Mr Bongo in 2013, bringing its blazing funk grooves to both new ears and those already tune…
Marc Ribot Plays Solo Guitar Works of Frantz Casseus
*2020 stock.* Long before Marc Ribot made a name for himself as a pioneering force in NYC's downtown music scene, and as guitarist for luminaries like Tom Waits, Wilson Pickett and The Lounge Lizards, he began his guitar studies as a teenager with close family friend, the Father of Haitian classical guitar, Frantz Casséus. In 1946, Frantz came to NYC from his native Port-au-Prince, Haiti with the ambition to compose a distinctly Haitian classical guitar music, to fuse the European classical trad…