Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

Super Tip ** original copies, last ones ** 'Trumpeter Baikida Carroll was once again in the company of alto saxophonist Julius Hemphill for a January 1982 recording with pianist Anthony Davis, bassist Dave Holland, and drummer Pheeroan Ak Laff for Soul Note called Shadows & Reflections. The material here sounded like it could have been a late Blue Note recording; in fact, there were times when the horns brought back flashbacks of the Jackie McLean-Charles Tolliver front line of the '60s. And for…

** original copy ** "...Of course, they are all just 'grains of sand' in the universe of world music - and yet, a grain of sand, a drop of water, can be a symbol of the entire universe.  In this way, the title given to his composition by German composer and saxophone player Berndt Konrad - 'To Listen To The World In A Grain Of Sand' - so beautifully expresses what this concert stands for."  (from the CD liner notes by Joachim-Ernst Berendt). Live Recorded at the Donaueschingen Musiktage (Contemp…

Terzetto Garibaldi is the meating of three different strong personalities. Roberto Zanisi (Cosmofonia Rudimentale, Eloisa Manera ensemble, Radical Raptors) is a virtuoso musician playing all kind of instruments specialised in string instruments of eastern world. His roots are in ethnic music, jazz, r.i.o. Luciano Margorani (LA1919, Fracture, Artchipel Orchestra, Beauty is in the distance, OppaT) is a versatile musician going from r.i.o, improvisation to electronics. Carlo Actis Dato (Italian Ins…

* Gatefold sleeve. 2022 small repress* By 1971 Pharoah Sanders' playing essentially alternated between two moods: ferocious and peaceful. This live record gives one a good example of how the passionate tenor sounded in clubs during the early '70s. Sanders is joined by an impressive group of players: trumpeter Marvin "Hannibal" Peterson, flutist Carlos Garnett, Harold Vick on tenor, pianist Joe Bonner, the basses of Stanley Clarke and Cecil McBee, drummers Norman Connors and Billy Hart, and percu…

The jazz giant Thelonious Monk is here featured in this live recording in New York. Monk is in his best form during this ‘Village Gate’ gig, along with famed session men accompanying him here and forming this solid Quartet - namely, Charlie Rouse on Tenor Saxophone, John Ore on the bass and Frankie Dunlop on the drums.  The album features three Monk’s originals (“Rhythm-A-Ning”, “Evidence”, “Jackie-ing”) and two jazz standards (“I’m Getting Sentimental Over You” and the immortal “Body And Soul” …

For the past 20 years Nostalgia 77 has become a catch all for the musical life of Benedic Lamdin. His schizophrenic offerings range from songwriting sessions, soundtracks, excursions into Soul and in this case Jazz. The Loneliest Flower in the Village is an album that sees Lamdin reunited with longtime collaborator and arranger Riaan Vosloo and experienced veterans from a host of Nostalgia 77 projects. 'It had been a long time since we'd gigged or recorded so the idea was as much a little reunio…

Temporary Super Offer! Johnny Griffin came to Thelonius Monk with a reputation as a speed demon – double-timing the tempo was his default mechanism, elaborating melodies with a mixture of mellow swing and complex bop phrasing. Their contrasting nature – Griffin’s fluid extravagance and Monk’s percussive dissections – intensified by Roy Haynes’ forceful divisions of the beat, generate a tension unlike any of Monk’s subsequent groups' – Art Lange

Temporary Super Offer! 'The CD’s title is borrowed from computer language: STRG + X is the key combination for “cut to the clipboard” to be temporarily stored and pasted somewhere else at a later time. Perhaps the most important quality of this carefully thought-out yet anything but cerebral music: it is aware of its means and can twist and turn and rearrange them as it pleases, in which case improvised contexts create their own forms and play with original material in a fresh, new way. This is …

** Ltd. 100 copies ** "Supergolden" is the name of Petter Asbjørnsen’s debut album featuring Kjetil Møster on saxophone and bass clarinet, and Øyvind Skarbø on drums. Møster and Skarbø are prominent figures in the Norwegian jazz community, known from ensembles such as Zanussi 5, 1982, Skarbø Skulekorps, Møster! and the Trondheim Jazz Orchestra. Stints living in Bergen, Copenhagen, Berlin and New York informed Asbjørnsen’s work as a composer and performer in projects with Molecules and Erlend Sko…

2022 Repress. "Joe McPhee's solo album, Tenor literally changed my life. The recording (one of his first for Hat Hut, in September 1976) displayed his unique ability to integrate unconventional sounds and extended techniques with pure melodicism, and it permanently altered my perspective on what the saxophone could do and what music could be. Nation Time was recorded six years earlier, but ideas regarding the integration of means and methods were already at the forefront of McPhee's approach to …

Renowned Swedish musician Tomas Hallonsten’s debut solo recording started out as a Mark Hollis-influenced project featuring Hallonsten’s instrumental compositions sparsly performed with acoustic guitar,piano, bass and drums at its core. Gradually the music morphed and eventually it turned out as a solo album where the compositions came to life mainly via Hallonsten’s unique treatment of drum machine and synths.

By the time poet, singer-songwriter, and artist Lizzy Mercier Descloux recorded 1984’s Zulu Rock, she’d marked herself out as both a globe trotter with more passport stamps than Tintin and a musical innovator whose loose, arty spirit could be applied to styles as varied as no wave, Bavarian oompa and Soweto jive. She’d also established a tight-knit threesome with muse/former lover Michel Esteban and producer/on-off lover Adam Kidron, who all reunited to follow Zulu Rock – a surprise hit in her n…

'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…

Born in 1981 in Mdantsane in the Eastern Cape, Ayanda Sikade is one of South African jazz’s most in-demand and respected drummers, a familiar face on the scene for years and a driving force behind its growing prominence on the world stage. Dedicated to his grandmother who raised him, Sikade’s long-awaited sophomore album as a bandleader, Umakhulu, follows his 2018 debut Movements. Recorded in Johannesburg in early 2021, it features the talents of frequent collaborator Nduduzo Makhathini on piano…

*300 copies limited edition* Alpacas Collective takes you on a trip from Lagos to Addis Ababa, from Augusta, Georgia to New Orleans, and from Delhi to sci-fi worlds, bringing it all back home in a unique set of original songs featured on its debut album Seven Wisdoms of Plutonia. During the covid 19 pandemic, when everyone was in lockdown the group retreated underground for a quest to soul saving creativeness, to come out again as Alpacas Collective with a first release. 'Seven Wisdoms of Pluton…

'The British trumpeter and composer Henry Lowther, who first made an impact in the 1960s and released the well received album Can't Believe, Won't Believe (Village Life) in 2018, came to jazz via a circuitous route. After playing cornet in a provincial Salvation Army band, he moved to London around 1960 to study violin at the Royal Academy of Music. While a student, he encountered improvised Indian music and albums by Sonny Rollins, discoveries which encouraged him to commit to jazz, playing tru…

Not Two Records proudly present a 5 CD boxset by different constellations led by Barry Guy; recorded in Krakow in 2018 .

Fifty years and counting. One of the most important larger bands in European jazz, The London Jazz Composers Orchestra celebrated its golden anniversary over three days in Krakow which culminated in a triumphant performance of "Harmos." Long a staple of the LJCO repertoire, with its beautiful melody, it's one of leader Barry Guy's most approachable works. This rendition was powerful and moving, studded throughout with absolute dynamite individual contributions, and furnished a fitting conclusion…

"A project called ‘BeingFive’ might be motivated by a search to know the nature of being and, by extension, what it means to be together. In this way Montreal clarinettist Lori Freedman set up at once an atelier and a laboratory where both a group music could be made of practically nothing and a social organism could uncover both its organising principles and, perhaps, their limits. Here are exceptionally gifted improvising musicians –– hand-picked by Freedman for a Berlin residency project, a "…

*Blue vinyl limited edition* In 1973 the Blue Note Records label landed at the Montreux Jazz Festival, showcasing some of the showcasing some of the top artists of those years under the banner of the soulful and muscular jazz of which the blue label was then the standard-bearer. Muscular jazz of which the blue label was then the standard-bearer. This resulted in several albums entitled Live: Cookin' with Blue Note at Montreux (by Bobby Hutcherson, Ronnie Foster, Bobbi Humphrey, Marlena Shaw), bu…

*2022 stock* "Hidehiko Matsumoto Quartet – Sleepy released by Three Blind Mice. Album recorded in 1976  and it was DSD mastering from the original analogue master tapes. This record, made in 1976 in a one-horn quartet setting, showcases Matsumoto’s brilliant playing on both tenor saxophone and flute. He is a true master of both instruments and it is a great pleasure to hear him beautifully recorded by the people of Three Blind Mice. A masterpiece, with great sound." - Audiophile Music

*2022 stock* "This is a live recording of "5 Days in Jazz 1976". The album features the seventh release of TBM's "5 Days in Jazz 1976," which concentrates the charm of Tsuyoshi Yamamoto, including his signature tune "Misty," "Summertime," featuring Oyui, and "Cookin' the Blues", which shows off his signature blues feeling to the fullest." - Koki Hanawa

*2022 stock* "A beautifully spare session from the mid 70s – one that features bass and cello from Isao Suzuki – stretching out here in a sound that's totally unique! The trio's a great one – with Donald Bailey on drums and Tsuyoshi Yamamoto on both acoustic piano and Fender Rhodes – the latter of which sounds amazing next to Suzuki mellow-stepping lines. If you've heard any of Suzuki's other albums from the period, the style is somewhat similar – quite soulful throughout, but with an easygoing,…

*2022 stock* "Mindblowing sounds from Japanese bassist Isoo Fukui – one of a handful of 70s players on that scene who really helped reinvent the sound of his instrument in jazz! Isoo really drives the group here up from the bottom – by playing both bass and cello with these well-inflected notes that are heavy on soul and rhythm, and which often enforce a modal sensibility that's carried out perfectly by the vibes of Kazuhiro Matsuishi and piano of Hideo Ichikawa! A few numbers feature guitar fro…

*2022 stock* Amazing 1976 record by drummer George Otsuka, Physical Structure is an amazing jazz-fusion record featuring Fumio Karashima on piano and Fender Rhodes and Shozo Sasaki on tenor sax. Check the surprising and sublime cover of Naima which alone justifies to get this record! Personell list: George Ostuka (drums), Shozo Sasaki (tenor and soprano sax), Fumio Karashima (piano, electric piano and synthesizer), Mitsuako Furuno (bass), Norio Ohno (percussion).

*2022 stock* Naosuke Miyamoto Sextet's Step!, originally released in 1973. A fantastic modal jazz album, led by Naosuke Myamoto on bass, with Masayoshi Yoneda on the piano and Takashi Goto on saxophone. On One For Trane, the group delivers a strong and amazing moment of spiritual jazz. Also features Kunji Shigi (trumpet), Takashi Furuya and Shoji Nakayama (drums). Produced by Takeshi Jujii. Recorded on August 25, 1973.

*Limited edition of 200*  Cheval Rodéo by Trombe, Thomas Beaudelin (sax) and Erwan Cornic (drums), a really jazz-like energy album, with low dynamic sensibility and great interaction between the two musicians.

The International Nothing is a Berlin-based psycho-acoustic clarinet duo formed by Michael Thieke and Kai Fagaschinski in 2000. They collectively compose multilayered sound sculptures using multiphonics, beat frequencies and difference tones as an integral part of their language. Both musicians might be known as improvisers but in this project they develop and perform exclusively their own compositions crafted with an extreme care for detail and precision. The duo's works have been released on f…

The International Nothing is a Berlin-based psycho-acoustic clarinet duo formed by Michael Thieke and Kai Fagaschinski in 2000. They collectively compose multilayered sound sculptures using multiphonics, beat frequencies and difference tones as an integral part of their language. Both musicians are well known as improvisers but in this project they develop and perform exclusively their own compositions. The duo’s progression from release to release is subtle, but with "The Dark Side Of Success t…

The International Nothing is a Berlin-based psycho-acoustic clarinet duo formed by Michael Thieke and Kai Fagaschinski in 2000. They collectively compose multilayered sound sculptures using multiphonics, beat frequencies and difference tones as an integral part of their language. Both musicians are well known as improvisers but in this project they develop and perform exclusively their own compositions.Every four years the duo releases an album on the Japanese Ftarri Label. In 2018 they are pres…

Just released, the 5th album "Just None of Those Things" by the revered psycho-acoustic clarinet duo The International Nothing

*2022 stock* Recorded in 1973, “Morning Flight” by trombonist Hiroshi Fukumura is a stunning modal and spiritual jazz album! Genius work from Japanese trombonist Hiroshi Fukumura – working here at the helm of a twin-trombone group that also features the talents of Shigeharu Mukai – in a style that's filled with soul and free-thinking imagination! The two players work together beautifully here – avoiding any of the cliches of trombone-heavy groups from the past – and instead, using the open-ended…

2026 Repress. Sublime release from Masaru Imada Trio. Imada's got a way of letting a tune really find its way organically – almost as if the songs here are little flowers opening up in his fingers on the keyboard of the piano – although never in a style that's "flowery" at all, because Imada's a master of finding just the right notes at the right moment – never embellishing things just to show off. Instead, his imagination finds all the best paths forwards, especially on his original tunes on th…

A piano-bass duo session cut in a single day at Tokyo's Onkio Haus on 24 October 1977, during one of the bassist George Mraz's rare passages through Japan. The format leaves nowhere to hide and the two players treat that exposure as the point of the exercise: Masaru Imada's voicings opened up to admit Mraz's lines as full equal voices, the Czech-American bassist drawing on the resonant, singing tone he had developed through his work with Tommy Flanagan and Stan Getz. The programme alternates two…

*200 copies limited edition* “Costa and Ernsting are assertive and confident players who don’t hesitate to claim their positions, but most of all, they are keeping up with each other, using their dialogue to explore and expand. And that is what it is about, a quest for ideas and a way for them to co-exist, make sense, keep the story moving forward on all levels. And as far as the greater story is concerned: this album is another fine addition to an endlessly fascinating mosaic of sounds.” - Guy …

Tip, sold out at source! After more than 45 years forgotten in the personal archives of Jean Schwarz, Transversales Disques is very happy to release this previously unpublished recording which brings together the great Don Cherry and his friend, composer Jean Schwarz, pioneer in electro-acoustic music and member of G.R.M. This concert was recorded in 1977 at the Paris MIX festival (Théatre Récamier) organised by G.R.M and hosted by director François Bayle. An elegant mix of spiritual jazz and el…

In Nov. 1987, a three-concert Ed Blackwell Festival was held in Atlanta. The festival served as a good excuse to reunite the members of Old And New Dreams (trumpeter Don Cherry, tenor-saxophonist Dewey Redman, bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Blackwell), a quartet comprised of Ornette Coleman alumni. The unit interprets three rarely-performed Ornette Coleman compositions and a tune apiece by Blackwell and Redman. All of the musicians are in top form on this no-changes music, creating fresh and …

Tip! *In process of stocking. 2022 stock* Peter Evans believes that his music is closely related to the philosophical concept of "Wu Wei (literally means "doing nothing" or "inaction")" from China. He has also been studying how it reflects in different academic and cultural contexts. As a composer and improviser, Peter Evans talks about "Wu Wei" with his superb trumpet playing, and named his first album released in China "Into the Silence". It's worth mentioning that the artwork on the front cov…

*300 copies limited edition. In process of stocking. 2022 stock* A great, unprecedented show! Two of the most influential artists in Lithuania, Vladimir Chekasin and Vladimir Tarasov performed as a duet at the 8th OCT-LOFT Jazz Festival. Titled “La Grande Sonata”, it was absolutely a one-of-a-kind performance specially presented to the Chinese audience. As the former members of the legendary Ganelin Trio (GTCh), they shared the glorious years with Vyacheslav (Slava) Ganelin. Together they have n…

*In process of stocking. 2022 stock* In October 2018, Steve Holtje, the mastermind of the pioneering American music label ESP, was invited by the 8th OCT-LOFT International Jazz Festival to give a lecture in Shenzhen entitled "55 Years of Pioneering and Non-Mainstream Music: The Continuing Revolution of ESP-DISK", unveiling the label for the first time to Chinese The talk was entitled "55 Years of Pioneering and Non-Mainstream Music: The Continuing Revolution of ESP-DISK", and unveiled the myste…