Jazz /
Tetterettet
Originally recorded and released in 1977, the Instant Composers Pool's Tetterettet is the first classic of the band's larger incarnations. Assembled out of elements recorded live in Uithoorn, Utrecht, and the band's home base of Amsterdam, with Misha Mengelberg using a cut-and-paste collage method akin to Teo Macero's work with Miles Davis, the record features an all-star lineup that added three leading lights of free music: bassist Alan Silva and saxophonists John Tchicai and Peter Brötzmann. I…
Option 1
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…
Live
If you've missed out on bassist Torbjörn Zetterberg, now's your chance to play some catch up ball. He's one of creative music's most eloquent exponents, having emerged from the fertile Swedish jazz scene around 2005. With his band Torbjörn Zetterberg Hot Five, he began a fruitful relationship with the thoroughly excellent Moserobie label, run by his frequent band mate, saxophonist Jonas Kullhammar, and by the time he was making records like Skildrar Kvinnans Kamp and Och Den Stora Frågen, Corbet…
Sounds of Liberation
Hailing from the Germantown section of Philadelphia, well known as the site of the Sun Ra Arkestra communal homestead, Sounds of Liberation were at the forefront of '70s Black liberation music. After a series of gigs in elementary schools, prisons, and community centers, the band travelled along with their manager George Gilmore (father of Linc Gilmore of Breakwater fame) to NYC in 1973 for a recording session at Columbia University. This five-song session has never been heard until now. Had it …
Drift
**25 copies** Brand new sparkling hard-bop in the Quintet formula, from aspiring Finnish drummer talent Aleksi Heinola featuring a top cast of Finnish jazz-men: Mikael Jakobsson on keys (Five Corners Quintet), Mikko Gunu Karjalainen on trumpet and flugelhorn, Manuel Dunkel on tenor saxophone (UMO Jazz band) and Swedish Daniel Franck on double bass.
Live at Romu Jazz
**250 copies** Here comes a special duo recording, featuring the crème de la crème of the younger generation of Finnish players – Max Zenger and Teemu Åkerblom. A unique live set that stands the test of time, hear Max and Teemu improvise their way over five original compositions, using alto saxophone, flute and double bass with bow. Rich in detail and a surprisingly fresh set of songs. Very seldom do you get superlatives about something from the players themselves, but swear I heard a bird say “…
Tales of Life and Miracles
**250 copies** More music from trumpeter extraordinaire Etuk Ubong! We’ve run a limited hand-stamped vinyl run with the best tracks from his first album and EP from 2016 and 2017, 'Miracles' and 'Tales of Life'. The music is simplistic yet thoughtful modal jazz that was written around the time of the death of Ubong’s mother Margaret. The Quartet features an all-star Nigerian rhythm section rounded up with Ubong’s unique voicing. "Short and snappy, ‘Battle For Peace’ opens with a tight electric b…
Aleksi Heinola Quintet
Brand new sparkling hard-bop in the Quintet formula, from aspiring Finnish drummer talent Aleksi Heinola! This is the full album by Aleksi Heinola Quintet, featuring a top cast of Finnish jazz-men: Mikael Jakobsson on keys (Five Corners Quintet), Mikko Gunu Karjalainen on trumpet and flugelhorn, Manuel Dunkel on tenor saxophone (UMO Jazz band) and Swedish Daniel Franck on double bass. Aleksi wanted to make his debut album where his heart lies musically, in the modern hardbop landscape of past gr…
Fayrus
More than ten years after the demise of Sun City Girls as an entity, something wild and weird has now surfaced, grown and ripened in the heat and dust of the same desert. Described as “deep spirited, Arabic-music-tinged free jazz-punk and harsh exotica”, Sunn Trio’s ever-evolving ensemble digests a number of genres, spitting them back out in “creative destruction.” Carrying on a long tradition of sun-beaten Phoenix punk, Sunn Trio evokes the sweltering and hallucinatory Arizona desert. Echoes of…
Carte Blanche
It took more than just some time and imagination to believe that 'Carte Blanche' , this piece of astonishing contemporary music by some of the most talented and able musicians of the international avant-circuit, could be realized. Karkhana, a highly explosive mostly Middle Eastern / Mediterranean ensemble - Sam Shalabi Land of Kush, Shalabi Effect, Dwarfs of East Agouza), Sharif Sehnaoui (“A” Trio), Michael Zerang (Peter Brötzmann, Hamid Drake, Jaap Blonk, Vandermark, etc.) Mazen Kerbaj (“A” Tri…
Electric Smog
The newest installment in Unrock’s ongoing Saraswati Series is the most rebellious and wildest to date. Again an intercontinental output. A dangerous, electric brew filled with exotic aroma from Cairo’s sound guerilla, Alan Bishop (Sun City Girls), Maurice Louca (Karkhana) and Sam Shalabi (Land of Kush, Karkhana). The always changing face of Dwarfs of East Agouza, shows them in a feverish mode and adrenalin rush. Massive eruptions fight genuine flow. Sultans of Unrock. Chris Corsano and Bill Or…
Aamm
Back in August of 2015, the legendary London Grand Seigneurs of improve pioneers, AMM (John Tilbury and Eddie Prévost) joined forces with Lebanese electro-acoustic-free-jazz outfit "A" Trio (Mazen Kerbaj, Sharif Sehnaoui & Raed Yassin). Two generations of improvisers with a very differing approach to work, captured dancing slowly along a very thin line of fine tuned, both, clear and crackling improvised sounds. Harsh at times with magic mellow moments of intense, fragile, broken noises. No overd…
Burj Al Imam - Extended Version
**2019 stock** 140-gram LP in gatefold sleeve with a special drawing by Mazen Kerbaj + bonus 7". Mastered for vinyl by Harris Newman. Edition of 500. Entirely recorded at Tunefork Studios on the outskirts of Beirut, Burj al Imam's five tracks include three largely improvised numbers, a loose reworking of Sun City Girls track "The Imam", and a cover of traditional Americana song "Gently Johnny" (a highlight of Alan Bishop's live Alvarius B. shows). True to their habits, the Lebanese trio of trump…
Lubok
**100 copies** Blend 3 is an organism made up of three different but similar personalities. The group explores the diverse sonorities of a trio that, without a predetermined set, utilizes composition and improvisation as its only resources. By means of this combination of composition and improvisation, what is already written is proposed in an original and revisited way time after time. Concurrently, improvisation as an actual practice rather than as a genre is developed with a deep compositiona…
Down at the Docks
"This dialogue between the two musicians sounds both genuine and profound; a sort of four-handed diary, reflecting throughout the natural moods, signs, colours, and spaces. Allusions, rips, bursts of humour and sudden gusts of poetry flow into each other in an unusual animation based on strings, wood, breaths and brass. Musical stories that linger with you." (Fabrizio Spera) Luca Tilli: celloSebi Tramontana: trombone
Zuppa di Pazienza
"Insalata Statica" (Silent Water, 2017), Giovanni Di Domenico's first solo album, allowed the Italian pianist based in Brussels to free himself from his abundant creativity by proposing six dense movements. It took him five years to record and produce this first record. With "Zuppa di pazienza", recorded and produced in five months, Di Domenico worked much faster, but the result is that these compositions are more thorough. Reduced to two, the movements are more refined, taking the time to devel…
Three For Shepp
In 1966, when Marion Brown was ready to make his first record as a leader, he was standing on the shoulders of giants. Formative associations with Ornette Coleman and Sun Ra established Brown as a saxophonist to watch, and he had already appeared on free jazz landmarks Archie Shepp's Fire Music and John Coltrane's Ascension. Originally released on Impulse!, Brown's debut lays down three startling originals and three tunes by Shepp – echoing his mentor's 1964 homage to Coltrane, Four For Trane. …
An Avant Garde of Our Own: Disconnected Works 1980-2018 (8CDBox)
Saxophonist/guitarist/composer/music historian/ provocateur Allen Lowe spans the history of jazz in his music in a way that few besides Jaki Byard, Beaver Harris, Steven Bernstein, and Air have ever done, intertwining blues, early jazz, bebop, and the avant-garde. A prolific composer who was incorporating American roots music into his jazz decades before it was hip, he has led project bands featuring a broad array of jazz greats ranging from Doc Cheatham, Randy Sandke, Joe Albany, Don Byron, Ken…
Hikima: Creativity
**800 copies** Key System Recordings present a reissue of Yusef Lateef's "Hikima: Creativity", originally released in 1983. In the early 1980s, famed jazz saxophonist and musical luminary Yusef Lateef traveled to Nigeria as a Senior Research Fellow to study, write, and teach at Ahmadu Bello University. He cut this record while there; pressed locally in Nigeria, it remained virtually unknown by jazz fans and collectors for over 30 years. On Hikima, Lateef leads a nonet of African musicians in sev…
Phil Ranelin Collected Works 2003-2019
Phil Ranelin's "Collected Works 2003-2019" features songs with Pharoah Sanders, Kamasi Washington, Donald 'Duck' Bailey, Henry Franklin, Big Black, Calvin Keys, Roger Glenn and many, many more. Phil founded cult label Tribe Records in 1973 then went on to perform with artists such as Max Roach, Gary Bartz, Freddie Hubbard, the Temptations and even the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Here in this collection of 16 years of Phil's work, his 'Tribe' spiritual root continues to grow into greatness and he is a…