Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

Milestone reissue, one of the greatest singular sonic gestures of the 20th century.. Soprano saxophone solos recorded in 1986 in St. Paul's Church, Oxford by the late Michael Gerzon. One of the final Incus releases and one that was written up in The Penguin Guide to Jazz as ‘an essential document of modern music’. Otoroku is proud to release the first ever vinyl re-issue of Evan Parker’s legendary recording The Snake Decides. Featuring 4  solos recorded in 1986 in St. Paul's Church, Oxford by th…

**Numbered edition of 1000. Already sold-out at source** Jazzman Records presents the Don Rendell/Ian Carr Quintet's The Complete Lansdowne Recordings, 1965-1969. After an epic licensing odyssey that's taken Jazzman almost 20 years, the label is finally able to announce the five-LP box set release of the first-ever official re-issue of all five of the iconic Lansdowne recording sessions by legendary UK jazz combo, the Don Rendell/Ian Carr Quintet. The five albums (Shades Of Blues (1965), Dusk Fi…

Double LP version. Gatefold sleeve with liners notes and pictures; Includes download card. Jazzman Records deliver A New Life, Vol. II: Independent and Regional Jazz in Great Britain 1968-1988, continuing their series of under-heard jazz from the UK. It's been three years since Jazzman's A New Life (JMAN 075CD/LP, 2015) alerted jazz heads to the existence of an unknown world of British jazz private pressings and indie obscurities. Back for a second round, compilers Francis Gooding and Duncan Bro…

Recorded in ’73 and rejected by tin-eared major label execs in ’75, Crystal Spears (or “Crystal Clear” as it appears on the tape box) subsumes a cathartic brawl between Minimoog and Yamaha combo organ, with percussionists providing tonal textures, and plaintive oboe colliding with roaring electronic keyboards over waves of rollicking marimba, devilishly chattering below the fray. Crystal Spears is Sun Ra’s once lost aural cinematheque! Includes a quad-ra-color Sun Ra poster!Crystal Spears, inten…

One of the most righteous albums ever issued by the always-righteous Tribe Records label of Detroit – a really collective effort, one that features ensemble vocals and spiritual jazz – all pulled together by pianist Harold McKinney! The album showcases a group named Voices Of The Creative Profile – formed by McKinney to accompany his Creative Profile instrumental group – and the overall style is a great blend of spiritual soul jazz that gives equal time to the voices and instruments in the set. …

Genius work from the Detroit underground of the 70s – one of the greatest records ever on the now-famous Tribe Records label, and a masterpiece of soul, jazz, and righteous spirit! The session's headed by tenor player Wendell Harrison – and it's got an all-star Motor City lineup that includes Marcus Belgrave on trumpet, Phil Ranelin on trombone, Jeamel Lee on vocals, Charles Eubanks on electric piano, and Charles Moore on flugel horn.The tracks have a spacious spiritual approach that recalls som…

The remarkable Music, Inc. Big Band remains the apotheosis of trumpeter Charles Tolliver's singular creative vision. Rarely if ever has a big band exhibited so much freedom or finesse, while at the same time never overwhelming the virtuoso soloists on whom the performances pivot. Built around the core of Tolliver, pianist Stanley Cowell, bassist Cecil McBee, and drummer Jimmy Hopps, the music boasts the kind of give-and-take born equally of talent and telepathy -- each player seems to communicat…

Phil Ranelin was a session trombonist recording with the likes of Steve Wonder before setting up the Tribe label with Wendell Harrison in Detroit. Like other contemporary artist run labels like Strata East and Black Jazz, Tribe releases were characterised by a heady mix of post Coltrane free jazz, soul and funk, all informed by a strong political conscience. Vibes From the Tribe is a fine record. The title track is lusciously, greasily funky and stands in pretty stark contrast to the kind of air…

Rahsaan Roland Kirk's live club gigs were usually engaging, freewheeling affairs, full of good humor and a fantastically wide range of music. The double album Bright Moments is a near-definitive document of the Kirk live experience, and his greatest album of the '70s. The extroverted Kirk was in his element in front of an audience, always chatting, explaining his concepts, and recounting bits of jazz history. Even if some of his long, jive-talking intros can sound a little dated today, it's clea…

This jazz recording is considered as the 'magnum opus' of master "drummer extraordinaire'', composer, arranger, producer, and leader Norman Connor's in a career that has spanned 4 decades. This recording is what many will consider the debut of the legendary vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater who has since gone on to a brilliant career. Connor's put together an all-star group with Herbie Hancock and Onaje Allan Gumbs on piano and Fender Rhodes, Dr. Eddie Henderson on trumpet/flugelhorn, Carlos Garnett …

Five decades after the event, Charles Lloyd's Love-In, recorded live at San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium in 1967, endures as much as an archaeological artefact as a musical document. From sleeve designer Stanislaw Zagorski's treatment of Rolling Stone photographer Jim Marshall's cover shot, through the album title and some of the track titles ("Tribal Dance," "Temple Bells"), and the inclusion of Lennon & McCartney's "Here There and Everywhere," Love-In's semiology is a powerful reminder of t…

2017 Release. LP version. Gatefold sleeve. Wewantsounds present a reissue of Buddy Terry's Awareness, originally released in 1971. Following the highly-acclaimed release of theHarold Land's 1971 album A New Shade Of Blue. Awareness was Buddy Terry's first album for Mainstream Records, one of the three he recorded for Bob Shad's label. This is pure, undiluted spiritual jazz that is both deep and funky. Prior to the release of Awareness, Terry had recorded a couple of soul jazz albums for Prestige…

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…

Miles Davis' 1974 album Get Up With It is a collection of tracks recorded between 1970 and 1974. Released as a double LP, it was Davis' last studio album before five years of retirement from music. He Loved Him Madly was recorded by Davis as his tribute to then-recently deceased Duke Ellington, who used to tell his audiences I love you madly. English musician Brian Eno cited it as a lasting influence on his own work.This album is an essential. An overlooked classic of Psychedelic Soul, represent…

"Listening to Miles Davis' originally released version of In a Silent Way in light of the complete sessions released by Sony in 2001 (Columbia Legacy 65362) reveals just how strategic and dramatic a studio construction it was. If one listens to Joe Zawinul's original version of In a Silent Way, it comes across as almost a folk song with a very pronounced melody. The version Miles Davis and Teo Macero assembled from the recording session in July of 1968 is anything but. There is no melody, not ev…

Black Beauty, Miles Davis At Fillmore West, was recorded on April 10, 1970 at Fillmore West, San Francisco, when Davis performed as the opening act for the Grateful Dead. The recording took place shortly after the release of Miles' classic album Bitches Brew. The album was released in 1973, originally in Japan only. Black Beauty, a true jazz-rock album, captured one of Davis' first performances at a rock venue during the early stages of his electric period. At the concert, he led his band (saxop…

The 1972 masterpiece by Chicago singer-songwriter and guitarist Terry Callier, returning here in the Music On Vinyl 180g audiophile edition. Cut at the heart of Callier's tenure on Cadet, the jazz imprint of Chess Records, What Color Is Love stands as the artistic peak of his collaboration with arranger and producer Charles Stepney, captured across three Cadet albums, Occasional Rain (1972), What Color Is Love and I Just Can't Help Myself (1974), plus a fourth project that was cut short by Stepn…

Re-issue on Everland of an overlooked Dutch Jazz LP 'A Safe Return' by the Surinam jazz flutist Ronald Snijders. Recorded in 1980, flute-centered, spacious as it is soulful, which makes for a perfect mix with the album's use of keyboards and other electric instrumentation .'Lenox' the opening track, has a playful haze escaping from every groove,with a solid hypnotical rhythmical base and haunting flute melodies that have the character of the lead vocals. Despite the slower pace, the jazzy approa…

 Nate Wooley and Torben Snekkestad recorded live at "KoncertKirken – Blågårds Plads" in Copenhagen, July 5, 2015. The result is an astonishingly focused music, which transfers listeners into a completely different world and different order of things, enclosed in sounds played with great care, as if each of them was so fragile that any inattention could destroy its structure

"Few vocalists have the sheer boldness – the outright fearlessness – of Fay Victor as an improviser. The New York native has long been a creative force on the avant-jazz scene, as a singer, bandleader, composer, arranger, and teacher. She has worked on both sides of the Atlantic with the likes of Misha Mengelberg, Roswell Rudd, and Anthony Braxton, along with recording several distinctive albums as a leader. Reviewing her recent disc Absinthe & Vermouth, NPR declared evocatively that Fay’s origi…

Last year Maciej Karlowski invited me to participate in the Ad Libitum Festival and perform four different concerts to celebrate my 60th birthday. From among the many projects I have been a part of, he chose three: The Aurora trio, which had been performing regularly for over ten years and has released four CDs; the piano solo El Laberint de la Memòria; and the Thunder trio, which was a world première. The fourth concert was an invitation to play and conduct a group of Polish musicians who had t…

The second album of Zakrocki & Olak is even better than the first one. The reason is simple: it is recorded with Agustí Fernández, whose inside piano effects enrich the general sound of the ensemble.

The City of Gardens is an album that is a natural consequence of the artistic initiative "Contemporary Sonus", initiated by RGG in 2015. It is an idea, within which a completely new musical story was created, composed and dedicated to performers with a specific approach to improvisation. Artistic agreement and a friendly bond between the members of the quintet was a key deciding factor of the character and emotional charge, flowing directly from the creation of sound. The Contemporary Sonus of o…

Strut presents the brand new album from cosmic jazz travellers The Pyramids, led by saxophonist Idris Ackamoor, ’An Angel Fell’. “I wanted to use folklore, fantasy and drama as a warning bell,” explains Idris Ackamoor.  “The songs explore global themes that are important to me and to us all: the rise of catastrophic climate change and our lack of concern for our planet, loss of innocence and separation... but positive themes too, the healing power of music, collective action and the simple…

Strut and Art Yard present another exclusive from the vast catalogue of cosmic jazz pioneer Sun Ra: a previously unreleased radio session most likely recorded at the WXPN FM radio studios in Philadelphia, 1974-5.  This newly discovered session features a new version of Ra’s earlier ‘Island In The Sun’, a romping, raucous rendition of ‘Unmask The Batman’ and the first studio recording of ‘I’ll Wait For You’ There is no bass player on the sessions and Ra’s left hand beats out a rhythmic bass patte…

"Play me your music – said Ravi Coltrane years ago, to the Polish participants of the SIM workshop. What does "your music” mean? Is it the music you love, the music desire to play, the one you study thoroughly or the one you've been listening to as a child and it awakened your imagination for the first time? Or perhaps, the one considered our roots music for historical and traditional reasons? How can we meet the criterion of "ourness” and how can we determine which music is more „our” than othe…

It is very common today to see musicians from diverse musical and cultural backgrounds converging at some geographical point to improvise together. Collective improvisation is an interactive art. The responses among the improvisers are individual and subjective, but the whole result implies a kind of inter-subjectivity. Subjectivities are historical and embodied. They are configured through successive experiences within concrete contexts and are embodied in the sense that subjectivity can’t exis…

"Tools Of Imagination is one of the newest albums, recently released by Fundacja Sluchaj. The music was recorded by great duo – Evan Parker (tenor saxophone) and Eddie Prevost (drums, percussion). Both musicians are great famous jazz masters. Their improvisations always are played with passion and have expressive, live and bright musical language. The music is based on avant-garde jazz and free improvisations. Musicians like to improvise spontaneously – they are the masters of creative, colorful…

"Torben Snekkestad and Barry Guy first worked together on 2015’s impressive Slip, Slide and Collide - that recording, with its labyrinthine improvisations and near-feverish eruptions, proved the duo to be fiercely attuned to one another. Now, on Louisiana Variations, another voice is drawn into the fold - that of Spanish pianist Agustí Fernández, a long-time collaborator with Barry Guy and an excellent composer/improviser in his own right. On this release, the trio lose none of the intensity pre…

The Art Ensemble of Chicago and Associated Ensembles is a 21-CD limited and numbered edition issued as the standard-bearers of Great Black Music prepare to celebrate their 50th anniversary. Both the Art Ensemble of Chicago and ECM Records were founded in 1969, and there have been many shared experiences. As Roscoe Mitchell says, “It has been amazing to have taken this journey together.”With their first ECM album, the widely-acclaimed Nice Guys, the Art Ensemble’s revolutionary and polystylistic …

"From the inheritor of John Coltrane's mouthpiece a re-integration of deep South African jazz roots with the Black Atlantic spiritual jazz continuum. Celebration's release trumpeted the emerging dawn of South Africa's epochal changes. Sainted and blessed, Bheki Mseleku appeared as the herald of a new era, a prophet of rebirth and reconnection. This is a work signalling change, a sign of a South African music that was properly reconnected with global currents. Recognizing Bheki as a kindred spiri…

The American tenor saxophonist Steve Grossman flew to Japan to record this studio session that features an incredible line up of four local musicians: Takehiro Honda is on the piano with a rhythm section of Hideo Kawahara, Yasushi Yoneki, and Masahiro Yoshida, all working together with a tremendous energy. The recordings are dated February 1986, and include the eponymous Katonah, Afternoon in Paris(J. Lewis), and Friday the 13th (T. Monk).It is worth remembering that Grossman started his journey…

Last copies. Originally released in 1979 on Love Records a few months before the label went bankrupt, Joe Davidow's album is a true hidden gem. In the age of the internet the term “hidden gem” has lost a lot of its meaning, as there are very few records of which there is no trace online – no Discogs entries, no Youtube tracks. Joe Davidow’s 1979 album, however, is one of those records. Perhaps one of the reasons for its complete unobtainability is the fact that it was one of the very last recor…

Repressed for the first time on LP by Le Très Jazz Club, this fantastic album comes with an insert documenting the story of The Elysian Spring and the recording of this true masterpiece. « Glass flowers », recorded in 1969, and only pressed by 500 copies at the time, is an unclassifiable album, overtaking the jazz outlines. Can words really describe music? It may be hard when music is as fantastic as on this LP. « Glass flowers » is an unclassifiable album, overtaking the jazz outlines, recorded…

CD Edition. Replica reissue of one of the rarest free jazz LP ever made: Masayuki Takayanagi & Kaoru Abe's earthshattering Kaitai Teki Kōkan. Supposedly released in a limited run of 100 copies in 1970, this incredibly rare record igot finally  its first vinyl reissue via Craftman Records. The album features a recording of the duo’s live performance at the Kōsei Nenkin Kaikan concert hall in Shinjuku on June 28th, 1970. The reissue also includes a replica flyer that advertised the original event.…

Few copies back in stock, totally sold-out at source. Originally released in 1978 on El Saturn Records. Disco 3000 is one of Sun Ra's greatest from the '70s. Recorded in Italy in 1978, it features some incredibly otherworldly keyboards that are some of his most enigmatic on record. Original tracks from the album include "Disco 3000", an incredible workout on synthesizer, with a tiny bit of drum machine, a little "Space Is The Place" breakdown, and all of the wild sound you'd expect from a Sun Ra…

Second album by Turkish free jazzers Konstrukt and the Japanese avant-garde/noise icon Keiji Haino, this time recorded live in concert. Celebrating their tenth anniversary these days, Konstrukt have since been creating an impressive catalog including collaborations/performances with significant musicians like Peter Brötzmann, Joe McPhee, William Parker, Akira Sakata, Marshall Allen, Evan Parker, Thurston Moore, Michael Zerang, Alfred Harth, or Alexander Hawkins that gained them an ever growing a…

2012 Release. 80 Minutes of previously unreleased recordings from 1969-70, not to be found on the tenor player's regular "Moshi" album. Dark and trance-like amalgam of Afro-blues, acid-rock jams, polyphonic rhythms and spiritual jazz influences from the likes of Coltrane or Sanders. Recorded 1969-1970 in Africa by Barney Wilen on Nagra (Stereo/ Mono). Unreleased archive sounds, transferred on Telefunken and Nagra from original tapes found in the estate of Barney Wilen. Moshi: trance utterance by…

Exact LP repro edition A grey-area edition of the legendary 1967 modal masterwork by one of the greatest unsung jazz pioneers of the 20th century. A ture lost underground jazz classic from the late '60, filled with long, flowing tunes that have tremendous modal energy and a very cohesive feel. Backtracking a little, Nathan Davis was born in 1937 in Kansas City, Kansas and attended the University of Kansas in Lawrence before shipping off to military service in Germany in 1960. After being dischar…

Japanese free/jazz sax legend, Kaoru Abe, dies at the age of only 29 in 1978, living a fast and crazy life and dieing of a drug overdose. His entire music career was only 10 years, from 1968 to 1978. In that short period, he was well recorded with around 30 releases, ten of which are solo sax efforts, duos with guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi, bassist Motoharu Yoshizawa and drummer Sabu Toyozumi. Mr. Abe also toured and recorded with Milford Graves, Derek Bailey and Toshinori Konda in 1977 & 1978.…