Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

" Here we have the tasty combination of two blog favorites, finding China-native Lao Dan joining forces with the visiting Jooklo Duo for a set of cosmic vibrations (and a little bit of free funk) at Old Heaven Books during 2018's LOFT Festival. Here Vanzan takes up his usual percussion duties while Lao Dan and Genta load up on various reeds and flutes which Genta supplements with a generous sidecar of vintage keyboard. This rowdy little number has a little bit of everything and once the trio get…

Remastered reissue on Impulse/Elemental Music. Alice Coltrane was among the most important creative voices of 20th century. A woman like no other, who sculpted a body of music, so singular, that it can be distinguished a mile out – sounding like nothing, before. Originally released in 1972, Lord Of Lords was Alice Coltrane's final album for Impulse! and the last installment in her awe-inspiring trilogy that also included Universal Consciousness and World Galaxy. While all three records featured …

The Mapendo album of the Mighty Cavaliers, up to today, has been shrouded in mystery. Why is that, you can find next to nothing about the band and the album. The only song which is maybe well known in the collectors scene is "Dunia Ina Mambo" from the first Release out of 1976. So it was more or less a surprise to get my Hands on the Original Mapendo Release in January 2023 directly from Kenya. I've never seen such a hypnotically good cover and what do could I expect from the Record? Cleaned the…

Axis / Another Revolvable Thing is the second installment of Blank Forms’ archival reissues of the music of Japan’s eternal revolutionary Masayuki Takayanagi, following April Is the Cruellest Month, a 1975 studio record by his New Direction Unit.

*2024 stock* Swedish pianist Karin Johansson has set music to some of Tomas Tranströmer’s poems for her band ORD. Vocals, horns, and bass converse freely around the piano. Some parts are free improvisations, often with a prepared piano.

*2024 stock* First release of the Swedish duo Karin Johansson / Lisen Rylander Löve. Fine-veined Crinkle Weed, Wentletrap and The Two Lipped Door Snail are some of the poetically resonating titles on the pianist Karin Johansson and saxophonist Lisen Rylander Löve’s new album Arter (Species). The song titles are also names of plants and animals from the SLU Artdatabanken’s red list of threatened species. The reality that many species disappear completely from our planet yearly is what the duo sh…

Outerdisk is very pleased to present Rosanna Gunnarson's and Karin Johansson's dizzying (sound) work, which was composed in 2021/22. Their piece "I grunda vikar är bottnarna mjuka" is inspired by August Strindberg's classic short story about a fortepiano being dropped into deep waters off an archipelago island, Stora grusharpan. The musical content is based partly on secret underwater recordings during a summer, autumn and winter, as well as audio recordings of a piano being lowered into the wat…

*2024 stock* "Quagmire on “Creative Sources Records”. Album was recorded by Nina de Heney (double bass), Karin Johansson (piano) and Henrik Wartel (drums). All three musicians are interesting and talented improvisers. They’re the central figures of avant-garde jazz scene. Nina de Heney is a famous bassist. The improvisations are filled with drive, passion and expression and are based on the main elements of experimental jazz innovations and the roots of avant-garde jazz. Improviser is getting on…

An all-time classic, must-have rare groove record from the Hawaiian Islands.

Another absolutely mind-blowing gem from Transversales Disques, Archie Shepp's "Live in Paris (1974) Lost ORTF Recordings" is some of the best jazz of the era that almost no one ever heard. Fully mastered from the original tapes and capturing one of the great giants of free jazz in a crucial moment of change - tracing toward funkier, fusion tinged compositions, and more straight ahead bop at the boundaries of spiritual jazz - the historical importance and raw beauty of these never before release…

First-ever reissue of this cult and extremely rare record by one of the leading musicians and composers of Italian jazz and cinematic music. This album was recorded in 1972 in Piero Umiliani’s Sound Work Shop studio with a similar line up to the one of legendary ‘To-Day’s Sound’ album.

Big Tip! LP version. Includes 20-page booklet. France, early sixties: the Mouvement de l'École moderne is in full bloom. Relying on the experiments and writings of its founder, the educationist Célestin Freinet, this consortium of teachers is about to give empirical evidence proving that another approach to music in school can be fruitful. With its pragmatic, anti-authoritarian tack, the method that Freinet was already developing in the 1920s held children in respect, giving them confidence and …

* 2021 Stock *  The Super Biton has existed since the 60s, like Ségou, its orchestra, the Super Biton has always remained behind what was done in Bamako and in the big cities of Africa. The Ségou orchestra developed and incorporated amplified instruments that mingle with brass, in particular electric guitars, symbols of modernity at the time. It opens up to Cuban music, and congas and bongos complement the sound of the orchestra. The group drew a unique sound from it, a perfect balance between t…

One of the rarest Georgian [Soviet] releases ever. Previously unreleased song "Borjomi Valley", new Georgian Reissue label TBILISI Records from Vodkast.

The title of Tom Skinner’s first release under his own name is a reference to cellist Abdul Wadud’s ultra-rare 1978 solo album ‘By Myself’, which Skinner listened to repeatedly during lockdown. Wadud’s album was privately pressed on his own label, Bisharra, and whilst Skinner’s title uses the more conventional spelling of this common Arabic name, they both have the same intention or meaning: it translates as ‘good news’, or ‘the bringer of good news’. This is a classic-sounding record that conne…

2024 stock. Recorded live at Jazzfestival Saafelden August 28th 1987. This trio live performance, with the great Lester Bowie on trumpet, and the great Malachi Favors on bass is a must for all fans. Kahil El'Zabar is the real great of tribal rhythms, creating very long hypnotic foundations for the soloists to improvise freely, spiritually, bluesy. Lester Bowie is of course a master at all that : he sings, wails, growls, weeps, stutters, moans, farts,  ... he can build tension, he can build stori…

25 copies limited edition. 2024 stock. Lo-fi but still fantastic documentation of a 2011 concert by Arthur Doyle in a duo with drummer Steve Noble. Doyle sounds pretty great to me here. The top end of his sax playing is less powerful than it once was, but a lot of his magic was always derived from his sheer otherness, and there's enough of that here to go around. Noble works hard to provide the right rhythmic racket for whatever's going down, and this is some swank soundtrackery for long drives.…

*2024 stock* "Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore has been exploring this kind of radical free improvisation since the 1990s. The three pieces on the record feature the guitarist with two highly compatible veterans of the avant-garde scene: cellist and electronic manipulator Walter Prati and trombonist and electronics guru Giancarlo Schiaffini. The three pieces arise from spontaneous improvisation but there is such energy between the musicians that the flow of ideas is uninterrupted." - S. Loew…

*2024 stock* Collaborators for years, here is the first shared record release by two of the leading figures in contemporary improvisation, here grappling with trombone, cello, bass, electronics. A disc for explorers of less frequented and predictable sounds, full of unexpected cues and solutions.

*2024 stock* Gaetano Liguori, jazz pianist, he was part of the Gruppo Contemporaneo in 1971, which provided one of the earliest examples of Italian "free"; in '73 he founded the Idea Trio with Roberto Del Piano (double bass) and Filippo Monico (drums) and later devoted himself to socially engaged works (including with poet Giulio Stocchi), music for theater, ethnomusical research. He recorded, among others, with his father "Lino" pasquale (Naples 1927), an active jazz drummer.

This is a recording of a live February 2006 performance by the Chicago-based Ethnic Heritage Ensemble (EHE). To say that this band, who through 35 years has had many incarnations, is tied to anything earthly is a misstatement, however. Ever since Kahil El'Zabar returned to Chicago from Ghana and formed the band whose intention was to combine African American music with traditional African music, the EHE has sought to transcend walls that would box music in. Joining the multi-percussionist, vocal…

Featuring Mike Taylor (piano), Dave Tomlin (soprano saxophone), Tony Reeves (double bass) and Jon Hiseman (drums), this is the first ever release of a newly discovered tape of this legendary British jazz quartet’s final rehearsal before going into the studio to make their fabled Pendulum album in October 1965. Recorded in Taylor’s grandparents’ London living room by Reeves, it’s has striking presence and immediacy, and will fascinate all admirers of this most enigmatic of composers and musicians…

2016 Release. Seven Storey Mountain V is the fifth of seven evening length works that began with a Festival of New Trumpet commission in 2007. Recorded live at Abrons Art Center in New York City as part of the 2015 Tectonics NY festival, SSMV continues Nate Wooley’s idea of creating an ecstatic and communal music that is non-religious and non-genre based. The massive collective group includes international stars from the jazz, new music, electronic, and noise worlds–working together to rea…

Edition of 150 copies. Seymour Wright and Paul Abbott have yet to become household names in America, even within the confines of experimental and improvised music circles. XT: Pah’ (POTTR1306) on Pleasure of the Text Records is the document that will change all that.  Pah’ is a monolithic document of the shared improvisational language of saxophonist Seymour Wright and percussionist Paul Abbott, also known as XT. One piece, just under eighty minutes long, begins in the well-traveled territory of…

*2022 stock* Futura Marge presents Chloé by Ray Mauger trio. Ray Mauger (guitar), Alain Raman (electric bass) & Chris Dailey McCraven (drums) - guest on two tracks: Félix Perron (curved soprano saxophone). Recorded in Paris on 12 January 2007 at Studio Mesa, and on 8 June and 16 July 2007 at Studio Border.

Greg Osby, alto sax #1,2,7; Dave Fiuczynski, guitar; Santi Debriano, bass; Cindy Blackman, drums; Jerry Gonzalez, congas #5. Recorded in NYC, August 29 and 30, 1990

*2022 stock.* Futura Marge presents Casa-Port/Rabat-City by Dar Jazz: Michel Fernandez (tenor & soprano saxophones), Adil Riski (guitar), Abdou Beckouri (electric bass) & Marc Chambon (drums)Recorded in April and May 2008 at Studio 75 in Rabat (Morocco)

*2022 stock.* Futura Marge presents Some Jive Ass Boer / Live at Jazz Unité by John Dyani (double bass, piano & vocals) & Mal Waldron (piano) - Guest on one track : Pablo Sauvage (percussion)Recorded live on 16 April 1981 at Jazz Unité (Paris-La Défense)

Between May 1968 and the end of 1969, Paris became the Mecca of new jazz. Many American musicians, struggling to make a living from their activity in the USA, went to live in Paris. Thus: Don Cherry, Sunny Murray, Marion Brown, Anthony Braxton, Alan Silva, the Art Ensemble of Chicago… By their side, the French musical avant-garde gained confidence and emancipated itself with Jef Gilson, Michel Portal, Bernard Vitet, François Tusques, Jean-François Jenny-Clark, Henri Texier, Jacques Thollot… Unde…

What would it sound like if Miles Davis and Radiohead had a baby? Released February 5, 2010.  Greg Spero - keyboards Corey Wilkes - trumpet Makaya McCraven - drums Junius Paul - bass uartet – Radio Over Miles

Cosmic is the long awaited recording by Dwight Trible, one of the most prolific vocalists of the time. This recording is the follow up to his critically acclaimed Living Water which made a big impression throughout the world. On Cosmic, Dwight brings an A-list cast of characters to bring forth his his heartfelt expressions of love for human kind and for love itself. Musicians like Grammy nominee John Beasley and long time collaborator Munyungo Jackson help create the Cosmic landscape. Also noted…

Avery, currently head of Jazz Studies at the California State University Dominguez Hills, has played with everyone from Art Farmer, Hank Jones, Roy Ayers and Roy Hargrove to Lauryn Hill and Amy Winehouse.  Post Modern Trap Music is a collaboration with drummer Marvin "Bugalu" Smith (Sun Ra, Archie Shepp, Chet Baker) in the spirit of duo albums of the 1960’s and 70’s such as John Coltrane’s Interstellar Space and Frank Lowe & Rashied Ali’s Duo Exchange

Presented here are parts from three solo concerts from the early 1970s. Roscoe Mitchell plays soprano, alto, tenor, and bass saxophones. One of the tracks on this LP reissue includes an early version of 'Noonah,' a composition that many of his followers will recognize. Originally released on Sackville recordings in 1974 as The Roscoe Mitchell Solo Saxophone Concerts, this historical reissue has been remastered and contains the same material as the original, which is primarily solo concerts from …

Katalyst Entertainment presents Kabalaba, a live album by the Art Ensemble of Chicago recorded at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1974 and originally released on their AECO label in 1978. It features performances by Lester Bowie, Joseph Jarman, Roscoe Mitchell, Malachi Favors Maghostut, and Don Moye along with Muhal Richard Abrams.

Katalyst presents Fundamental Destiny by the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Live at the Frankfurt, Germany Jazz Festival with Don Pullen. Now, the production team at AECO has once more gone through the archives and come up with another gem, culminating in the recent release of Fundamental Destiny, a record of a live 1991 Art Ensemble concert given in early June of that year at the Frankfurt, Germany Jazz Festival. All the members of the ensemble are present: Lester Bowie on trumpet, Joseph Jarman on w…

As in Benjamin Jephta words: ss musicians coming from different training institutions, we are taught a variety of concepts and are exposed to various styles and genres of music. We are taught what is ‘hip’ and what is not. I assimilated what was trendy and emulated the people I looked up to. In the processes, I lost track of the real spirit of my music. The reason I play music, the essence of what first inspired me to compose a melody. It’s that spirit I wanted to capture by calling this album ‘…

Black Saint present a reissue of John Carter Octet's Dauwhe, originally released in 1982. Dawhe is the first chapter in John Carter's Roots and Folklore saga. A five-part epic journey through the African American heritage conceived by the great clarinetist-composer and performed by a stellar line-up featuring Carter himself, Bobby Bradford (cornet), James Newton (flute), Charles Owens (soprano sax, oboe, clarinet), Red Callender (tuba), Roberto Miranda (bass), William Jeffrey (drums), and Luis P…

*2024 stock* "This album gives listeners the chance to hear what a very young Tyner sounded like outside the confines of the classic John Coltrane quartet of the early '60s; it reveals a lyrical approach to jazz piano that seems a far cry from Tyner's mature style" - Alexander Gelfand

*2024 stock* "Although he is best known for his bluesy soul-jazz outings, tenor saxophonist Stanley Turrentine's first Blue Note session as a leader was a much more traditional bop affair, and the resulting album... shows as much artful restraint as it does groove. Not that this is a bad thing, since it allows Turrentine's big, clear tone to shine through in all its muscular sweetness, giving Look Out! a wonderful and flowing coherence" - Steve Leggett

*2024 stock* "Classic jazz in construction and execution. The place to begin appreciating the many and great virtues of one of jazz's finest aggregates" - Douglas Payne "In terms of seminal Modern Jazz Quartet entries, it is hard to exceed the variety of styles and performances gathered on Django." - Lindsay Planer