Jazz /
Shifting Types Of Amazement
Tip! A compelling live performance from Munich's Waldkirche Planegg uniting Udo Schindler's inventive bass clarinets, Erhard Hirt's textural guitar and computer interactions, and Ove Volquartz's resonant low reeds, weaving a rich tapestry of spontaneous, intricately layered improvisations infused with subtle electronic nuances.
Antibes '62
Jazz in Britain are pleased to announce the forthcoming release of a stunning previously unissued live recording of the legendary saxophonist Tubby Hayes and his quintet live at the Antibes Jazz Festival in July 1962. Hayes' band including trumpeter Jimmy Deuchar, pianist Gordon Beck, bassist Freddy Logan and drummer Allan Ganley were the UK's representative on a starry festival bill also featuring US stars Jimmy Smith, Dizzy Gillespie and Fats Domino, drawing rave press reviews and the admirati…
Free Flow
"None of the musicians need to be introduced to anyone Alexander von Schlippnebach is one of the founding fathers of free improvised music, a great expert on the music of Thelonious Monk and an exquisite piano master, Barry Altschul co-founded Anthony Braxton's first great quartet, a friend and musical companion of Sam Rivers, Chick Corea, Roswell Rudd, Dave Liebman, Barre Phillips, Kenny Wheeler, Andrew Hill, Sonny Criss, Hampton Hawes, and Lee Konitz and one simply of the greatest drummer in j…
Agree To Diagree
A chance to spend several days in the gorgeous Chamber Music Hall of the Deutschlandfunk Cologne, recording your music, is surely a coveted opportunity for any musician. No wonder I was elated to receive such an invitation from the radio producer Thomas Loewner. Pondering the question of how exactly I would like to use the time in the studio, I decided to write a series of pieces for three ensembles, keeping the same rhythm group throughout, adding the rest as my writing progressed. The resultin…
The Poets Walk
"Friendship as a principle. A superb case, like a quiver. Inside, magnificent clarinets. That's all it took for Joe Fonda, passing through Brest, in France, to invite their owner to play with him on his next visit to the US. After all, anyone who owns these beautiful instruments ‘can really play’. And that's how New Origin began. From the very first bars of Vers le soir, the double bass leaps onto the springboard, cast by an urgent call from the drumsticks. Urgency, energy, decisiveness—it all c…
Moontower
2012 release ** "The second release from two of the most fearless and creative improvisers on the planet, guitarist Craig Green and drummer Dave King. Moontower is not so much an object or fixed location as it is a state mind or stream of consciousness channeled from the energy that these two sonic sculptors posses. Recorded and mixed over two days at the vintage audio temple, The Hideout which is nestled along the Mississippi River in King’s hometown of Minneapolis. Coincidentally, Green is fro…
Torque
2006 release ** "Here’s a superior set of contemporary jazz, blazing straight out of the long and unruly heritage of left-field explorations. Rising trumpeter and composer Groder is here teamed with the eminent saxophonist and flautist, Sam Rivers, plus Rivers’ usual rhythm section of bassist Doug Mathews and drummer Anthony Cole. Together, they whip up a bubbling, effervescent concoction of jagged, free-jazz group improvisations and hard-swinging free-bop that recalls Miles Davis’s mid-’60s ‘ti…
Overgrown Babeling
2006 release ** "The Homesweepers was born in 2006: the trio Maier/Pacorig/Pascolo has released the album Overgrown Babeling for the Palomar records label, in which they confront the traditional form of the European improvisation trio."
Nuits De La Fondation Maeght
Hugest tip! "Originally released across two edited volumes by Shandar in 1971, the concerts are now being reissued by Strut in a stunning expanded 6 LP vinyl box set for Record Store Day 2025. The set is housed in a hardboard box and features a reprint of the original festival programme, a 12-page over-sized booklet featuring liner notes by Daniel Caux, Jacqueline Caux and Paul Griffiths and stunning restored photos of the festival by Philippe Gras.
Sun Ra’s Nuits de la Fondation Maeght recordin…
Gilles Peterson Presents International Anthem
Tip! Gilles Peterson presents International Anthem is a Deluxe Double LP compilation chronicling the infamous London-based radio host, DJ, label head, curator and cultural impresario's long-standing affinity for and interaction with artists and music from the Chicago-born record label International Anthem. The tracks on this compilation were chosen by Peterson via an extensive review of track lists from his broadcasts on BBC 6 Music, Worldwide FM, and various syndicated radio programs. The compi…
Misterioso
Back in the mid 80's, Paul Motian, one of the greatest jazz drummers of all times, assembled one of the most inventive groups of the decade. Motian invited four highly individual players such as Joe Lovano and Jim Pepper on tenor sax, Bill Frisell on electric guitar and Ed Schuller on bass, and the result was a unique sound in perfect balance between post-Ornette free-bop and a new and spacier form of interplay. First released in 1987 "Misterioso" stands as a stunning example of modern jazz!
Serenade To A Soul Sister
Horace Silver had been delivering hard bop classics for over a decade when he moved into more groovy territory in the late-’60s on albums including Serenade to a Soul Sisterfeaturing two different quintets performing a set of Silver originals from the high-octane ‘Psychedelic Sally’ to the groove waltz title track to the tender ballad ‘Next Time I Fall In Love’. This Blue Note Classic Vinyl Edition is stereo, all-analog, mastered by Kevin Gray from the original master tapes, and pressed on 180g …
Le Temps Qui Passe
1989 release ** "Métarythmes de l’Air, a ten year-old band, consists of the prolific composer Christian Leroy, he is also an occasional keyboard and percussion player, contrebassist José Bedeur, a graduate from Huy Music Schaol, and Philippe Saucez, who has made a name for himself in classical clarinet playing. The trio has recently turned into an octet, with five new musicians, classical, contemporary, jazz or free-jazz: Jeannot Gillis (violin), Ivo Van Der Borght (percussions), Adelsan Defrise…
Millefleurs
2009 release ** "Millefleurs is a vocal ensemble led by Christoph Schiller. More precisely: an experimental choir. Imagine a dozen vocalists in the vein of Phil Minton and Joane Hétu joining forces. It’s a nice surprise. Twelve pieces, each featuring a different line-up of singers (between one and ten). Abstract, textural, guttural pieces without words. It gets long (70 minutes), and with two or three selected tracks edited out the album would have been tighter and better sustained the listener’…
Now Please Don't You Cry, Beautiful Edith
Released in 1967 with personnel including Lonnie Liston Smith (piano), Ronnie Boykins (bass), and Grady Tate (drums), Now Please Don’t You Cry… marked the beginning of Roland Kirk’s groovier explorations that would eventually lead him to record Blacknuss (1971). It’s vintage Kirk in a pared-down setting and is considered an essential Kirk album. Verve’s Acoustic Sounds Series features transfers from analog tapes and remastered 180-gram vinyl in deluxe gatefold packaging.
Don't Worry Be Happy
2020 release ** "Isabelle Duthoit makes her throat jump like a madwoman, Thierry Waziniak grinds on the skins with rage and circumspection, Pascal Bréchet makes his electrocuted guitar implode and shred, Franz Hautzinger articulates by belching into the mouthpiece, detonating the vibrations of the air in the bell of his trumpet. What is astonishing is the precise alternation of interventions, which makes them play more as a three-piece than a four-piece, as each imposes brief silences, which ind…
Erogenous Biome
Madronas’ debut LP Erogenous Biome is an amorphous, murky, cathartic offering. A duet of modular synthesizer and winds that’s equal parts doom and devotion, it’s the sound of a majestic butterfly emerging from it’s slimy chrysalis just in time to catch the sun setting on the end of days, a bewitching, heavy ceremony, a power-wash of both mind and spirit. Tracked in one continuous take at Brooklyn’s Heavy Meadow studio, individual tracks were gleaned from the purge and eschew predictable structur…