Jazz /
King Hussein Bridge
2010 release ** "This part of Martin Vognsen’s SCATAW project features a trio with Yasuhiro Yoshigaki (drummer in Altered States, Otomo Yoshihide’s New Jazz Orchestra, ROVO) and Kumiko Takara (percussionist in Bondage Fruit, P.O.N., Warehouse). Spontaneously created on miscellaneous percussion, semi-acoustic dobro and sparse electronics the music takes improvisation through a fresh mix of crisp sounds, meticulous rhythms and enigmatic melodies. Together the 10 distinctive tracks compose a highly…
Transparent Skin
2011 release ** "Canadian drummer André Michel Arraiz-Rivas is a versatile guy, one who you find grinding out prog with Quasiviri and post-folk ghosts with Ronin, just to name a few. Then he happens to be seized by the urge for jazz, and here he is, whipping together a made in Italy quartet, calling it Mondongo – like a traditional hypercaloric South American soup – and releasing an album that will make your ears prick up. Transparent Skin – this is the title – is eight tracks plus one (ghost) i…
The Talking Bass
2010 release ** ""Giovanni Maier is an architect. No, not the traditional brick and mortar sense but a true architect of sound. With his latest CD "The talking bass" he is building musical bridges all over the map. The quartet he has assembled for the recording doesn't just glow, they shine! Crossing and blurring the boundaries of music are what these guys do best and together they seem unstoppable. There is a deep beauty and rawness in the sound of Giovanni's compositions. The bass gives us the…
Agartha
1991 release ** "Along with its sister recording, Pangaea, Agharta was recorded live in February of 1975 at the Osaka Festival Hall in Japan. Amazingly enough, given that these are arguably Miles Davis' two greatest electric live records, they were recorded the same day. Agharta was performed in the afternoon and Pangaea in the evening. Of the two, Agharta is superior. The band with Davis -- saxophonist Sonny Fortune, guitarists Pete Cosey (lead) and Reggie Lucas (rhythm), bassist Michael Hender…
Friedrich Gulda, Ursula Anders, Barre Phillips, John Surman, Cecil Taylor, Stu Martin, Albert Mangelsdorff
Nachricht Vom LandeFriedrich Gulda (16 May 1930 – 27 January 2000) was an Austrian pianist, composer and musical crossover artist. Coming from a classical background, he began playing the piano at the age of seven. At the age of 12, he began his musical education with Bruno Seidlhofer (piano) and Joseph Marx (music theory and composition) at the Vienna Academy of Music, now the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. At the age of 16, he won the Geneva International Music Competition and quickly rose to…
AngelicA 93
1994 release ** Audience, All Dax Band, Han Bennink, Steve Beresford, Lindsay Cooper, Tom Cora, Dietmar Diesner, ensemble Eva Kant, Fred Frith, Gianni Gebbia, Lars Hollmer, Catherine Jauniaux, Peter Kowald, Ikue Mori, Butch Morris, Hans Reichel, Riciclo delle Quinte, Wolter Wierbos.
On Top Of Your Head
2002 release ** "With a curriculum vitae as one of the original New Thingers stretching back to 1960s membership in the New York Art Quartet (NYAQ) and an appearance on John Coltrane’s ASCENSION, reedman John Tchicai has never lacked for playing partners. Adapting orchestral sequencing plus variations on different ethnic musics to a formula that already reflected his Danish-Congolese background and American experience; Tchicai was a unique presence on the scene. Moving back and forth from Europe…
Vol. 4 Jo Maka
Rerelease of the fourth album of the Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra recorded with the Guinean saxophonist Jo Maka. The title says it all: Vol.4 – Jo Maka. The Intercommunal Free Dance Music Orchestra was created in 1971 by an “old hand” of French free jazz, François Tusques. Free Jazz, was also the name of the recording made by the pianist and other like-minded Frenchmen (Michel Portal, François Jeanneau, Bernard Vitet, Beb Guérin and Charles Saudrais) in 1965. But, six years later Tus…
Après la Marée Noire
If the jazz of François Tusques is “free”, his spirit is even more so: having recorded Free Jazz with other like-minded Frenchmen (Michel Portal, François Jeanneau, Bernard Vitet, Beb Guérin and Charles Saudrais), the pianist had covered a lot of ground, with Barney Wilen (Le Nouveau Jazz) or even solo (Piano Dazibao and Dazibao N°2), so as not to repeat himself…
In 1971 he founded the Inter Communal Free Dance Music Orchestra which, as the notes the this album stated, “is an interpretation of a…
Our Thing To In ’N Out
Joe Henderson Our Thing To In ’N Out Revisited notes: The Blue Note label in the early and mid 1960s was a haven for musicians engaged in the process of expanding the jazz vocabulary with unconventional harmonic strategies and new compositional infrastructures that elicited equally exploratory improvisational responses. And it was an ongoing process, benefiting from the sporadic, albeit calculated, interaction of different perspectives and methods of creative inspiration. Established or working g…
Die Unwucht
Big Tip! As poets from Shakespeare to Heine have recognised, “the forest” is not just about grandeur and most expansive of gestures; it is also about intimacy and there is a remarkable intimacy to Christopher Kunz’s and Florian Fischer’s music. The forest is both inhuman, wild, and, because it houses us and to a degree depends on us, profoundly humane. You’ll find these qualities here as well. Focus, breathe and listen. (Brian Morton)
ViaLucis Trio
2025 stock ** "ViaLucisTrio is a improvised training with members related to the collective Rare Musics , agency dedicated to promote primarily the free improvisation in Madrid (Spain). The four members of ViaLucisTrio they met in the meetings of improvisers (Tuesday Wednesday), musical call organized by Rare Music; precisely to encourage participating musicians and facilitate the creation of projects such as the group ViaLucisTrio. As well as those demanding musicians in its task and aesthetic …
NOHC
1998 release ** NOHC is a French quartet featuring Daunik Lazro (alto and baritone saxophones), Denis Colin (bass clarinet), Michael Nick (violin) and Didier Petit (cello and voice).
Composition No. 30: Compilation III For Improvisers, Bigband And Chamber Ensemble (2CD)
1998 release ** "Composition No.30, which represents Simon H. Fell's third 'Compilation' for large ensemble, is, in my view, an important monument in the history of late 20th Century music. In this single piece one finds not only Ives, Webern, Cage, Ligeti, Partch, and Boulez, but also Ellington, Mingus, Sousa, Sun Ra, and even a little urban blues. It's as if all of Braxton's varied and copious output were microscoped into one audacious work for large ensemble. Fell seems to me to have created …
In The Shadow
Joe Maneri’s last Microtonal recordings from the year 2002. These are not typically arranged songs, but asymmetrical, asynchronous constructs that develop from simultaneous, complimentary but peripheral gestures of the mind and heart. The harmonic contrasts that result from Joe Maneri’s breathy microtones; the fixed pitches, inclining towards atonality, of Tyson Rogers’ piano; and Jacob Braverman’s ambiguously scored percussion color their contrapuntal angles and parallel lines. Layers of energy…
Say Yes. Till No.
2025 stock ** "What Phil Minton creates with nothing but his voice those "simply unbelievable and uncanny sounds for which nothing comparable exists, far and wide" (Bert Noglik) seems to lie beyond what it is possible. He is the indisputable vocal giant of the jazz avant-garde. He meets a collective of kindred spirits with the ICI Ensemble. Comprising some of the most enthusiastically experimental instrumentalists and sonic artists of the German improvisation scene, this ensemble has been creati…
De Anima
2025 stock ** "It’s been almost 10 years since Louis Minus XVI reigned over the free jazz of the Flandres. Fortunately for us, his reign is not ready to stop with this new album “De Anima “. This Art Ensemble of Lille is hyperactive. In addition to three albums and a split with the Berber artist Lahcen Akil, we find members of the quartet in equally ambitious projects, such as Unik Ubik, M.Thibault, Hook, L’Atelier d’Education Musicale du Centre Social Raymond Poulidor, but also in the company o…
Asynchronous
2009 release ** Paul Dunmall's playing goes from strength to strength. 'Asynchronous' was recorded live at The Europa Jazz Festival, Le Mans in May 2008, and sees Paul in the unmistakable company of longstanding sidemen Paul Rogers and Paul Lytton and the titanic Fred Van Hove on piano.“Dunmall's big, rounded sound and spiralling runs bursting out of a low-key overture, and then engaging in a long, dignified dance with Rogers's dark bowed chords. Dunmall sometimes builds solos in patterns of bri…
Plays Arirang & Other Assorted Classics
* 2025 stock. 40th anniversary reissue. Gatefold LP + booklet with Obi-strip. * "There is no jazz in Korea" Music critic Choi Kyung-sik's liner note for the 1974 record by Shin Joong-hyun and the Yup Juns starts off with this stark statement. Though it may have been a rhetorical device to emphasize the birth of an album embodying Korean rock, the statement itself holds nevertheless when one considers that Korean jazz has never enjoyed a place of its own - not in the 8th Army scene nor the civili…