Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

Big Tip! 2024 Stock. Edition of 300. Swedish free jazz trio consisting of piano, double bass and drums. The trio has during the years since their first recording moved from composition-like melodies, riffs and rhythms to 100% improvised music. However, the trio has strong roots in “conventional” jazz which shines through from time to time with tough swing and clear rhythms and melodies. Correction has received fine reviews from all over the world for their releases, the strong point being their …

Edition of 200. Killer. A shadow-strafing suite of spidery rhythms and inquisitive jazz gestures, effortlessly binding avant instrumental dexterity with spacey feeling in a timeless style that could feasibly be dated to any point between the mid ‘70s heyday of jazz-fusion. Especially highly recommended if yr into Miles Davis 'Big Fun'. In 2017 Giovanni di Domenico released an album with a big band (at least for my standards) of 12 musicians, the band was called Abschattungen and the album «The E…

* 180 gram vinyl* Ramsey Lewis is an American jazz pianist, keyboardist and composer born 1935, Chicago. He has recorded over 80 albums and played with artists like Max Roach, jazz-singer Nancy Wilson and performs with his own trio. The album Sun Goddess is a soul jazz-funk album, recorded in 1974 and was produced by Maurice White, Teo Macero (who had produced albums by Miles Davis) and Ramsey Lewis himself. The opening track "Sun Goddess" was composed, by Earth, Wind & Fire member Maurice White…

Since 2015, Chicago's Experimental Sound Studio has been the host of Option, a series of intimate concerts of improvised music. Featuring an uncommonly wide range of players representing virtually all haunts of free music, the series has fostered not only an important exchange of ideas in musical form, but it has also promoted literal conversation about the music, usually substituting a dialogue with the musician or musicians for the requisite second set. In 2018, the series was funded by a cons…

In process of stocking. Anteloper is a duo of psychedelic sonic compatriots starring a pair of raggedy celestial sound warriors: trumpeter Jaimie Branch and drummer Jason Nazary. These longtime friends and collaborators met as young explorers and consider their electronic duo a continuous experiment into the unknown sonic abyss. Recent results have come back as mind-bendingly abstract head boppers, improvised organisms guided by a unique desire to hear what hasn’t been heard before. This is musi…

US sax player Stanley J. Zappa and Finnish drummer Simo Laihonen come together on the new album "Muster Point" on We Jazz Records, August 7. The two students of Milford Graves add bassist Ville Rauhala on a couple of tracks to make a bold and adventurous album captured both live and in the studio while Zappa was touring in Finland with the Black Motor musicians. This is a set full of fire and thunder, but also features some more meditative spiritual jazz. RIYL: Milford Graves, ESP-Disk', spiritu…

When Lonnie Liston Smith left the Miles Davis band in 1974 for a solo career, he was, like so many of his fellow alumni, embarking on a musical odyssey. For a committed fusioneer, he had no idea at the time that he was about to enter an abyss that it would take him the better part of two decades to return from. Looking back upon his catalog from the period, this is the only record that stands out -- not only from his own work, but also from every sense of the word: It is fully a jazz album, and …

**75 copies** Long Day documents a live performance by Daniel Wyche (guitars), Patrick Shiroishi (saxophones) and Ted Byrnes (percussion). The performance took place in Los Angeles in August 2019 and was recorded by Jared Rodriguez. The album was mixed by Daniel Wyche and mastered by Brian J. Sulpizio in Chicago, IL.

Music history is full of miracles and wonders. Ofege is certainly one of them. It's quite easy to imagine this band's story turning into a movie. In 1973, a bunch of teenagers with an abundance of passion for music got their hands on the official school band's instruments and jammed away. Inspired by the psychedelic rock sounds and guitar wizardry of Carlos Santana, Jeff Beck or Led Zeppelin they wrote an album worth of songs and decided to have them recorded. The goal was to press them on vinyl…

Four exceptional improvisations of powerful solo piano with an unusual and inventive twist live at London's Cafe Oto

[Ahmed], the quartet of Pat Thomas, Antonin Gerbal, Joel Grip and Seymour Wright – make music of heavy rhythm, repetition and syncopation set deep into an understanding of jazz and the obscure depths of its history. Across the 2 LPs which make up Super Majnoon [East Meets West] the group work and rework the music of the late musician Ahmed Abdul-Malik to create a stamping, swinging, relentlessly propulsive record where profundity and physicality root right back to ecstatic feeling.Abdul-Malik wa…

A passionate and personal album, more or less a piano only instrumental work that will attract all kinds of music lovers from jazz, classical music, avantgarde and progressive rock. Excellent performance with a great flow in the composition and breathtaking improvisations. Some kind of jazz version of Keith Emerson. Stanley Cowell, born in 1941, is a living legend as jazz pianist and his skills can be witnessed on his 1974 solo effort “Musa: Ancestral streams”. This record already fetches high p…

Tip-on sleeve. For every celebrated name in jazz, soul and related music, there are probably another 1000 musicians who had all the talent and potential but for whom widespread recognition remained elusive. Roscoe Weathers is one such figure, a jazzman who earned his chops the hard way, a sideman in smoky clubs from Memphis to Seattle, before finally settling in LA. He recorded a significant amount of music through the 1960s, but never found the slightest modicum of commercial acclaim nor the su…

Rodrigo Amado was born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1964 and took up the saxophone at the age of 17 while convalescing from an accident. Later he studied at the Hot Club Music School and was soon playing with numerous rock, pop and experimental projects. At the shifting boundary between free jazz and improvised music, Amado's position is clear: he plays jazz. He is so clearly a jazz musician that he doesn't require any pre-determined elements of rhythm, harmony, chorus lengths or melody to play jazz.…

Finnish vinyl nerds, Svart Records, dig obsessively into the vaults of international music history to uncover rare gems. “Mondo Svart” can be defined as “exceptionally Svart.” This is the core of the Svart Records exploration for gold at the back of the record crate. Those rare, undiscovered, and sometimes secret, albums only talked about in hushed voices between collectors in the know. Priceless and out of touch for the general masses, until now.One of the rarest albums on the infamous Jazz lab…

The Pop-Liisa and Jazz-Liisa broadcast session series presents previously unreleased and forgotten gems from the biggest names of Finnish prog and jazz of the 1970’sNever bootlegged and known up until now only to a few faithful servants (and largely thought to have been lost for ever), these sessions offer a hitherto unrivalled look into the state of Finnish jazz and progressive rock between the years 1972-1977. Imagine if the sessions recorded by John Peel had only recently been discovered, and…

The Pop-Liisa and Jazz-Liisa broadcast session series presents previously unreleased and forgotten gems from the biggest names of Finnish prog and jazz of the 1970’sNever bootlegged and known up until now only to a few faithful servants (and largely thought to have been lost for ever), these sessions offer a hitherto unrivalled look into the state of Finnish jazz and progressive rock between the years 1972-1977. Imagine if the sessions recorded by John Peel had only recently been discovered, and…

The Pop-Liisa and Jazz-Liisa broadcast session series presents previously unreleased and forgotten gems from the biggest names of Finnish prog and jazz of the 1970’sNever bootlegged and known up until now only to a few faithful servants (and largely thought to have been lost for ever), these sessions offer a hitherto unrivalled look into the state of Finnish jazz and progressive rock between the years 1972-1977. Imagine if the sessions recorded by John Peel had only recently been discovered, and…

The Pop-Liisa and Jazz-Liisa broadcast session series presents previously unreleased and forgotten gems from the biggest names of Finnish prog and jazz of the 1970’sNever bootlegged and known up until now only to a few faithful servants (and largely thought to have been lost for ever), these sessions offer a hitherto unrivalled look into the state of Finnish jazz and progressive rock between the years 1972-1977. Imagine if the sessions recorded by John Peel had only recently been discovered, and…

Chicago drummer and composer Jeremy Cunningham wrote The Weather Up There in response to the loss of his brother Andrew, who died in a home invasion robbery in 2008. Co-produced by Jeff Parker and Paul Bryan, and engineered by Paul Bryan and John McEntire, this new work confronts the tragedy of violence and examines the acute ripple effect on several people's lives through the lens of memory, response, and collage. Further deepening the textural and emotive impact, Cunningham formed a “drum choi…

Powerful saxophone textures from the sax player of the mighty ZU. On this debut album Luca T. Mai is placing his probing and powerful saxophone artistry from energetic sound scapes to celestial layered drones. A stunning solo piece of work, immersive and deep.Luca T. Mai: baritone saxophone. Recorded in September at ZK Squatt Riot Studio. Mixed and mastered by Lorenzo Stecconi.

Rare Brazilian spiritual jazz reissued for the first time worldwide from the original master tapes. Legendary sessions produced by Amado Maita, deluxe numbered limited edition with OBI and thick cover. Recorded live at São Paulo in 1982, the album was originally issued on Amado Maita’s small indie label called Poitou in the '80s, and features one of the best Brazilian sax players, the legendary Nestico and his sister composer, piano player Lilu. Nestico joined several Jazz ensembles in São Paulo…

**300 copies, 2019 stock** Punk Kong is a chameleon, it changes color according to the circumstances to avoid being part of any particular musical idiom. The bassless ensemble offers you a crossover among African blues, avant-garde jazz, noise rock and improvised music. In addition to his collaborations with improvisers from all over the world, the leader and guitarist of the group Giotis Damianidis was influenced by his long collaboration with the legends of Afro-beat Oghene Kologbo and Tony Al…

**300 copies** Pull Ninja, the second album of the chameleon quintet Punk Kong is relesed by Mr. Nakayasi / El Negocito Records. Edgy guitar, powerful drums and three hyper dynamic saxophones, a special instrumentation that creates a unique sound. Pull Ninja continues the story telling of Lonely Cedar - Punk Kong's first album released back in 2016 - with songs that blend Jazz, Psychedelic rock, African Blues and improvised music into a remarkable amalgam. Viktor Perdieus: tenor & baritone saxGr…

Zeitkratzer keeps on being good for a surprise and finally goes jazz! Looking at the line-up of the "modern composition supergroup" (The Wire) it seems astonishing that it took so long: Saxophonists Frank Gratkowski and Hayden Chisholm both won independently the German radio SWR Jazz award, the French horn virtuoso Hild Sofie Tafjord grew up with jazz, as her father and uncle are members of Norwegian jazz group Brazz Brothers, Hilary Jeffery toured with numerous jazz musicians, as did drummer Ma…

“Peter Brötzmann has made no secret of the fact he doesn’t especially dig playing with pianists, citing a few notable exceptions including Fred Van Hove, Pat Thomas and Masahiko Satoh. Recorded in Dublin in 2015, this adventurous set extends the honour to Irish pianist Paul G Smyth. As Brötzmann locks into a characteristically savage mutter, Smyth responds with hyperkinetic leaps up the keyboard but, when the tenor briefly drops out, he’s able to employ a more deft touch, generating intricate dr…

Peter Evans on trumpet and compositions, John Hébert on bass and Kassa Overall on drums. Recorded live at the Zebulon Cafe in March of 2012. Debut album by this rare trumpet - bass- drums trio. A review from Gapplegate Music Review: "Peter Evans was and is a trumpet player who never ceases to surprise me. When I first heard the solo album he did for Evan Parker a number of years ago I thought, "huh?" And it's been that way ever since, whether it's with MOPDTK, with others or on his own. He is a …

The long awaited second release from the Peter Evans Quintet. Four new compositions commissioned by the Jerome Foundation's Emerging Artist Grant and recorded at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in Troy, New York. The album is named after a novel by Frank Herbert concerning a mission into space to create an artificial consciousness, a mission designed to use planned failure as a springboard to new levels of creativity. Destination: Void is an epic, cinematic synthesis of eccentr…

The eponymous debut recording from the quartet Rocket Science, recorded live at the Vortex in London. Rocket Science brings together four virtuosic instrumentalists: Evan Parker (tenor and soprano saxophones), Craig Taborn (piano), Sam Pluta (live electronics) and Peter Evans (trumpet and piccolo trumpet). Together they perform an hour of highly detailed, dynamic and surprisingly beautiful improvised electro-acoustic chamber music. Each member of the group is widely recognized as having pushed t…

The first release from Evans' new group Being & Becoming, featuring some of the leading lights from the next generation of creative musicians: Joel Ross, Nick Joziwak, and Savannah Harris. This debut album features a set of new compositions from Evans, moving between notated chamber music textures, free improvisations, deep grooves and telepathic ensemble playing. Being & Becoming represents a new chapter in Evans' commitment to composition and improvisation in a small-group format. After workin…

Ornette Coleman's most controversial album back on vinyl. Originally from 1966, 'The empty foxhole' also marking the recording debut of his son Denardo, who was ten years of age at the time of the recording. " Ornette Coleman's brief tenure at Blue Note was neither as seminal as his Atlantic output nor as brazenly ambitious as his early-'70s work for Columbia and later with Prime Time. Still, the period did produce some quality music, and The Empty Foxhole is one of his most intriguing efforts. …

Agharta was recorded on the afternoon in 1975, at one of two concerts Miles Davis performed at the Osaka Festival Hall in Japan. He performed with his flautist and saxophonist Sonny Fortune, bassist Michael Henderson, drummer Al Foster, percussionist James Mtume, guitarist Reggie Lucas, and Pete Cosey, who played guitar, synthesizer, and percussion. Produced and recorded by Teo Macero, the album's four seemingly unstructured segments emphasize the playing of Davis' sidemen rather than his own tr…

**500 copies** First release from the first time trio of legends Susan Alcorn, Joe McPhee and Ken Vandermark. Invitation to a Dream is not only the first recorded statement, it is also a document of the very first meeting of the trio. Back in 2016 we asked Alcorn and McPhee to play a duo set at our favorite festival Cropped Out in Louisville, KY, and after getting our minds blown we knew we had to get the duo into a studio to record an album. After a few failed attempts due to schedules and bad …

New Rituals is exploring the relation between form and freedom, between modern Western culture and traditional Eastern culture, and between written and open musical material. The piece is written in three parts for (1) ensemble and a chant-choir, (2) ensemble, and (3) solo bass.The three parts are all rooted in and based on the same source material: 10 ancient Zen Buddhist sutras, or chants. The music is presenting Buddhist philosophy in a nutshell: What we experience as an independent self is i…

"The debut album of The Jason Stein Quartet, The Story This Time, brings together Chicago bass clarinetist Jason Stein with three of his favorite improvisers. With Joshua Abrams on bass, Frank Rosaly on drums, and Keefe Jackson on tenor saxophone and contrabass clarinet, the album features five original compositions by Stein and six underexplored compositions by jazz luminaries Lee Konitz, Warne Marsh, Lenny Tristano, and Thelonious Monk. Following three critically acclaimed albums with …

**CD edition** Alexander von Schlippenbach: piano; Aki Takase: piano; DJ Illvibe: turntables; Paul Lovens: drums. Recorded by Rainer Robben at AudioCue, Berlin. Lovens joins the Lok 03 trio of Schlippenbach, Takase, and DJ Illvibe for the follow-up to their 2005 debut. Mastered by Beat Halberschmidt. Artwork by Philip Hillers. Liner notes by Yoko Tawada.

**Feature a 12” sized 4pp booklet featuring rare photos and a comprehensive interview with Plunky Branch within liner notes by Chris Menist** Strut present a comprehensive 3LP compilation of the seminal Oneness Of Juju, led by Plunky J. Branch. Tracing their career from the band’s earliest work in 1970 with South African exiled jazzman Ndikho Xaba in San Francisco, the compilation covers the band’s journey to New York’s loft jazz scene, forming Juju and releasing two landmark albums of hard-hitt…

"I have to admit that this record contains some of the most intriguing and wicked music I ever experienced. And I say that from the point of view of a John Coltrane aficionado. Well, Ayler and his mates Don Cherry on trumpet, Sonny Murray on drums and Gary Peacock on bass guitar are definitely on par with the before mentioned god of free jazz and others like Ornette Coleman. If you listen to this album from the pop music perspective you may find only screeching and overblown saxes and some non s…

Cam Jazz reissue the complete Black Saint and Soul Note works of Cecil Taylor in hisexemplary series of boxed sets dedicated to the catalogues of the legendary Italian labels. This set contains four albums in slipcases with original album artwork, housed in a sturdy box. The window afforded into the artistry of pianist Cecil Taylor by this new CAMJazz collection, like all of that label’s Black Saint/Soul Note reissue sets, is not that of a curated collection, greatest hits package or introductor…

For the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the legendary Machine Gun recordings at the Lila Eule in Bremen, Peter Brötzmann put together a trio with the Berlin pianist, composer Alexander von Schlippenbach and the percussionist Han Bennink, who already sat on the drums 50 years ago. They were so pleased with the music that they decided to release it and continue to play gigs as the trio. Machine Gun was originally recorded in May 1968 by an octet consisting of influential musicians of new ja…