Jazz /
The New Breed
Heavyweight old-style tip-on jacket with IARC obi strip and dome pattern inner-sleeve. Album insert includes production credits and vintage portraits of Jeff's father Ernie Parker. Best known as a multi-instrumental member of Tortoise and a pillar of the Chicago jazz and experimental music scene, Jeff Parker has been incomparably prolific over the last 20+ years while merely producing 5 albums as a “lead artist” (just 2 since 2005, including 2016’s duo recording with Rob Mazurek on Rogue Art). “…
Suite For Max Brown
Deluxe tip-on Stoughton jacket plus insert sheet with self-portrait photo and credits, IARC obi strip and dome-patterned inner-sleeve. The label behind Angel Bat Dawit’s amazing debut present a glorious side from persistent jazz innovator Jeff Parker (Tortoise), melding deeply soulful charm with naturally explorative leanings operating at similarly loose but focussed levels of intuition and dextrous freedom across his swirling ‘Suite For Max Brown’, but with plusher recording and production valu…
Max Brown, Pt. 1
Tortoise mainman Jeff Parker throws down the lissom, balmy jazz-fusion of ‘Max Brown’, the final track of his ‘Suite For Max Brown’ album as a tease for the promising full LP “I’m always looking for ways to be surprised,” says composer and multi-instrumentalist Jeff Parker as he explains the process, and the thinking, behind his new album, Suite for Max Brown, released via a new partnership between the Chicago–based label International Anthem and Nonesuch Records. “If I sit down at the piano or…
Gowanus Sessions II
Gowanus Session II was seven years in the planning. Thollem McDonas, Nels Cline, and William Parker convened at Peter Karl Studios in Brooklyn on January 3rd, 2012 and recorded two complete albums. The first was Gowanus Session I, released by Porter Records in April of 2012. GS II was put aside to eventually complete the five-album palindromic cycle of trio albums Nels and Thollem ambitiously set out to realize. The albums in between include Radical Empathy with Michael Wimberly (Relative Pitch,…
Retribution, Reparation
Available on vinyl for the first time since its original release in 1984, Outernational Sounds proudly presents Build An Ark pianist Nate Morgan’s second outing for the celebrated Nimbus West label – the conscious and spiritualised sounds of Retribution, Reparation.
Bitter Balls
Bitter Balls – the second full length studio album from mostly Middle Eastern supergroup Karkhana, features members of Dwarfs of East Agouza, „A“Trio, Konstrukt, Chicago Tentet, Land of Kush among others – shows the ongoing incredible progression and artistic flow the group is currently working under. Four new fine tuned compositions of crystal clear and deep, dark, distorted unrock – electric and acoustic. The cross between old school and contemporary oriental free-jazz sounds and western impro…
Threnody, At The Gates
This trio is on to something extraordinary; full on furor brushed w thin melodic lines or rage contained in a certain kind of drunken beauty and bliss - all stumbling on towards the heard and the unheard - in a whisper, in a shriek, forces joined and disjoined....This trio is the whole in the never ending audible crack Johan Berthling: double bass; Martin Küchen: tenor and soprano saxophones, retardophone, flute; Steve Noble: drums and percussion. Recorded by David Carlsson at Gula Studion, Malm…
Media Dreams
**2020 Edition with updated colour** Blinding Sun Ra reissue, finding Ra on his newly acquired Crumar Mainman synth (with early drum machine!) in stellar 1978 recordings from the same Italian sessions that birthed ‘Disco 3000’ and ‘The Sound Mirror’ Well known to Ra disciples, but not as much to everyone else who stands by his catalogue and doesn’t know where to start, ‘Media Dream’ is a massive highlight of Sun Ra’s fecund period circa 1977 and 1980 - the peak of his output of new LPs. Recor…
AC/DC
Two totally infectious sets from Decoy -- the trio of John Edwards, Steve Noble, and Alexander Hawkins -- reunited with pocket trumpet and saxophone player Joe McPhee on the closing night of his four day residency at Cafe OTO. In the eight years between the recordings which make up AC/DC and their last release Spontaneous Combustion, Decoy and each of its members have been practicing individually at the very top of their form. Coming together again in such celebratory circumstances and in the go…
Oriental Jazz
Born in 1938, and raised in Glendale, California, Lloyd Miller has had one of the most unusual careers in all of jazz. By age 12 he had declared an intent to make his living as a jazz musician, and by high school he had already begun to experiment, shunning swing music's mechanical perfection, and chafing at his parents' desire for him to nurture his talents with formal training. This tumultous relationship with his parents would eventually lead to a stint in a psychatric hospital, before reunit…
1983
Wonderful, previously unreleased recordings by Derek Bailey and his guests at Company Week in 1983. What's remarkable throughout this album is the respect and affection the musicians show for each other, exemplifying the dictionary definition of "company" as "the fact or condition of being with another or others, especially in a way that provides friendship and enjoyment." It starts with "Landslide", a brilliant, spiky, spluttering, twanging reunion of Music Improvisation Company members Evan Pa…
First Time Out: Live at Slugs 1967
The musical legacy of Rashied Ali receives a powerful rejuvenation with the publication of a previously unissued set by Ali's group, recorded live at Slugs in 1967. This obscure appearance may have been only the second time that Ali had led a band in public. Band membership is stellar and unprecedented, and the tunes they play predate all known segments of Rashied's career as a composer or bandleader. Drummer Rashied Ali (1933–2009) was still officially on the job as John Coltrane's drummer whe…
Air Time
Vinyl repressing of a classic '70s jazz recording - one of the first recordings led by Pulitzer winner Henry Threadgill with bassist Fred Hopkins and drummer Steve McCall. This edition is limited to 550 copies pressed by QRP, the vinyl manufacturing division of Acoustic Sounds. These are 150 gram discs in 'rice paper' sleeves.Saxophonist Henry Threadgill, bassist Fred Hopkins and drummer Steve McCall originally came together in 1971 as a group designed to play the music of Scott Joplin for a Chi…
Signaling
**2020 stock** Cellist / composer Tomeka Reid and saxophonist / composer Nick Mazzarella have become valuable contributors to the Chicago music scene(s) for over a decade. This collection of duets demonstrates equally their instrumental skills and innate musicality. The saxophone / cello combination goes back to, at least, the '50s with the Chico Hamilton Quintet and recordings by Eric Dolphy and Ron Carter in the '60s. Most relevant here though is the pairing of Julius Hemphill and Abdul Wadud …
All the Numbers
These first recordings under Lester Bowie's name were made in 1967 with his compatriots from the Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble. Originally issued in edited form as Numbers 1 & 2 on a single LP, these two discs contain all the material recorded over two days in the studio. The first session was a trio date with Malachi Favors (bass, etc) and Roscoe Mitchell (saxophones, etc). A week later reed virtuoso Joseph Jarman was added to the group. These recordings were the first documentation of the quart…
Early Combinations
**2020 stock** As the title implies, this is the Art Ensemble in a formative stage. Three parts Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble and three parts Joseph Jarman quartet. A To Ericka was recorded for submission to a Jazz Festival in Poland and was not successful in landing them a ticket to Europe. Quintet was a dress rehearsal for a concert that was cancelled on the day of this recording. Luckily both performances survived on tape to reach a much larger audience than the concerts could have provided. B…
Saga of the Outlaws
Alto and baritone saxophonist Charles Tyler was an early associate of Albert Ayler and recorded with him for ESP in the middle 1960s. Tyler also recorded 2 dates for ESP under his own name. Saga of the Outlaws was recorded "live" at Sam Rivers' Studio Rivbea in 1976 and is generally considered to be his finest recording. The band includes Earl Cross - trumpet, Ronnie Boykins - bass, John Ore - bass and Steve Reid - drums. Charles moved to Europe in the middle '80s and died of cancer in 1992.
Battle Pieces
Battle Pieces uses trumpeter Nate Wooley's "social music" system, where each piece is constructed for a soloist who improvises with no score while the remaining player choose at will from over 75 compositions over which the soloist must find their path; here at Roulette in NYC with Nate Wooley, Sylvie Courvoisier (piano), Ingrid Laubrock (saxophone), and Matt Moran (vibraphone).
Felis Catus and Silence
Felis Catus and Silence is a breakthrough release for Tokyo composer-guitarist Leo Takami, following the milestone albums Children’s Song (2012) and Tree of Life (2017). Takami counterpoints the soothing aesthetics of prime-era Windham Hill New Age guitar-heroism with meditative, intellectual compositions comprised of ambitious, process-oriented arrangements. While Takami largely wears his genre influences on his sleeve -- jazz, classical, Japanese gagaku -- the influence of ambient music is a t…
Live at The East 1973
"Now-Again Records presents limited edition deluxe reissues of the lauded black fire catalog in 2020. First up in the series, this previously unreleased live session recorded at the legendary Brooklyn venue The East in 1973. Magical, mystical, Afrocentric, progressive -- words that could be used to describe any number of musical compositions by Sun Ra or his cosmic brothers and sisters, from John to Alice Coltrane, early '70s projects on record labels like Detroit's Tribe or Houston's Lightin' o…