Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

Original 1982 Japanese edition of the 1980 album. With obli and insert. With insert and obi.

1985 Japanese re-issue on Compendium Records of the 1976 album. With insert and obi.

Original edition on Victor with different cover from worldwide pressings of the 1972 Japan-only album. With insert.

Original Japanese edition on Milestone of the 1977 double-album featuring Tony Williams, Jack DeJohnette, Eddie Gomez and Ron Carter. With insert and obi.

Original US edition on Milestone of the 1977 album.

Original 2LP documentation released by MPS/Basf of the great 1972 jazz/rock/fusion festival with exclusive live recordings by Anima, Association P.C., Kurt Edelhagen Big Band, Brassy Brew, Erwin Lehn Big Band, Karl Berger Company, Hans Koller Free Sound, Tremble Kids, Art Farmer Quartet, Rhythm Combination & Brass and the Michael Naura Quartet.

The self‑titled Pat Metheny Group album is the moment an idea becomes a band. Emerging in the late 1970s, Pat Metheny Group arrive with a sound that feels fully sketched yet still buzzing with first‑chapter urgency. Pat Metheny’s guitar speaks in a clear, ringing voice that draws as much from Midwestern folk and rock radio as from bebop lineage, while the writing leans into expansive song forms rather than head‑solo‑head orthodoxy. The result is a music that sounds like it grew up on wide horizo…

On Blue Maqams, oud master Anouar Brahem brings his instrument into the very heart of the modern jazz tradition, recording in New York with a band of genuine giants. Bassist Dave Holland, drummer Jack DeJohnette and pianist Django Bates meet Brahem's Arabic maqam vocabulary on its own terms, translating its modal subtleties into the elastic swing, deep groove and open interplay of the highest level of jazz. Holland and DeJohnette, who have decades of shared history, provide a foundation that is …

Jan Garbarek crafts a brooding, electronic-tinged song without words, with violist Kim Kashkashian and drummer Manu Katché. Spacious, hypnotic and cinematic; ambient chamber music, unmistakably ECM.

Guitarist John Scofield offers a warm and affectionate tribute to a lifelong friend and mentor on Swallow Tales, an album devoted entirely to the compositions of the great electric bassist Steve Swallow. Joined by Swallow himself and by longtime drummer Bill Stewart, Scofield revisits a songbook he has known intimately for half a century, having first studied with Swallow as a young musician. The trio recorded the whole set in a single relaxed day, and that spontaneity is audible in every track:…

On this absorbing recording Keith Jarrett steps away from jazz entirely to interpret the Württemberg Sonatas of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, performed on clavichord. Best known for his groundbreaking improvised concerts and his luminous jazz quartets and trios, Jarrett has long maintained a parallel life as a serious interpreter of notated keyboard music, and here he turns to one of the most adventurous composers of the eighteenth century. C.P.E. Bach's writing is famously restless and expressive,…

Where it all began: Keith Jarrett's first ECM solo piano album (1971). Spontaneous compositions of startling melodic and rhythmic invention that foreshadow The Köln Concert. A cornerstone of jazz piano.

Intimate duo standards from pianist Keith Jarrett and bassist Charlie Haden, from the Jasmine sessions. Unhurried and conversational, two old friends; a poignant and beautiful farewell.

My Song is the beloved high point of the so-called "European" or "Belonging" quartet led by pianist Keith Jarrett, and one of the most cherished albums in the ECM catalogue. Recorded in 1977, it unites Jarrett with three of Scandinavia's finest musicians: saxophonist Jan Garbarek, bassist Palle Danielsson and drummer Jon Christensen, a band whose chemistry was extraordinary. Where Jarrett's contemporaneous American quartet leaned toward fire and abstraction, the European group cultivated a more …

Swiss pianist Nik Bärtsch and his band Ronin deliver hypnotic 'ritual groove music': interlocking minimal patterns, funk-tinged grooves and Zen-like repetition. Precise, physical and mesmerizing.

The Pat Metheny Group at a joyous peak, with Lyle Mays, Mark Egan and Dan Gottlieb. Bright, anthemic and melodic, led by the soaring '(Cross the) Heartland.' One of ECM's most popular records.

Offramp marks a bold and pivotal step forward for the Pat Metheny Group, the album on which the band significantly expanded its sonic palette while deepening its emotional reach. The great innovation here is Pat Metheny's embrace of the Roland guitar synthesizer, whose vocal, brass-like timbres opened up entirely new textural possibilities and would become a signature element of his sound for years to come. Equally important is the arrival of the Argentine vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Pedr…

The first ever reissue of one of the great hidden artifacts of early prog and fusion: 'Power On!', the second and final full-length by the little-known Frankfurt ensemble From, originally issued by the German arm of CBS in 1972 and now returned to print by Free Flow Archive. Building upon and radically expanding creative ground pioneered by Miles Davis on 'In a Silent Way' and Herbie Hancock on 'Mwandishi', alongside roughly contemporaneous efforts by Soft Machine and The Nice, the sounds of Fro…

Privately released 1982 album of lovely free-flowing piano music by the French musician who had previously released the fantastic electronic Images LP on Pôle and on the NWW list.

The very first record released on Three Blind Mice, a debut for both label and bandleader. Recorded in Tokyo in August 1970, Mine announces the saxophonist Kosuke Mine and sets out, in advance, the editorial stance the label would hold for the next two decades: serious post-bop with European clarity, Coltrane-era heat, and a particularly Japanese sense of restraint that lets the most intense solos hold their shape. Mine's quintet pairs his alto and soprano with trombone, the great Hideo Ichikawa…

1983 re-issue on Discovery Records of the influential 1958 jazz-avant-poetry album by experimental poet Patchen, who had previuosly collaborated with John Cage, reading his poetry backed by a chamber-jazz composition by Ferguson.

Special discounted Bundle. Two of the most important and exciting free jazz reissues of 2026, together in a single bundle. Both belong to Charly Records' extraordinary ongoing audiophile initiative dedicated to BYG Records' legendary Jazz Actuel series - one of the single greatest bodies of avant-garde jazz documentation ever assembled - and both finally receive the presentation they have always deserved, fully restored and remastered from the original BYG master tapes. Jacques Coursil's Black S…

Few groups working today have built their catalog with this kind of sustained intention. Founded in Ottawa in 2013, Atlantis Jazz Ensemble have spent a decade assembling one of the most coherent bodies of work in contemporary spiritual jazz - three albums, each mapped to a mythological realm, each pushing further than the last. Oceanic Suite charted the tides: a debut of remarkable assurance that quietly became an underground classic, establishing the group's language of modal fire and Afro-infl…

Roscoe Mitchell and Michele Rabbia are made for each other, because they've always made everything audible in their respective music and improvisations. The materials their instruments are made of; the bodies, gestures and movements that breathe life into them; the ideas and visions that guide them or lead them astray; the systems of play and thought they freely use; their imaginations. You can hear everything on the percussion of one, the slightest contact, the slightest clash, the slightest im…

Solo piano from the heart of the Los Angeles underground. Horace Tapscott completely alone at the keyboard, recorded in the early '80s when the Nimbus label was documenting his every move. This is contemplative music of the deepest order - yet the closing piece devastates. "As A Child", Tapscott's own composition dedicated to Adele Sebastian who died just four days before this recording in 1983, aged only 27. She was a pillar of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, and this was her favorite Tapscot…

A beautiful, dreamlike expression of spiritual jazz recorded in 1981 at City Recorders - a time when this kind of music was considered completely out of vogue. Yet here is Gary Bias, unspooling a suite of deeply soulful and profoundly far-reaching original compositions that vividly evoke the blue skies of the record's Los Angeles origins. Bias plays alto and soprano saxophone and flute with a tone and sensibility that sits somewhere between the lyricism of early Pharoah Sanders and the bold atta…

The only album ever released under the name of saxophonist, bandleader and composer Jesse Sharps - a major, largely unsung figure in the history of jazz music in Los Angeles. Recorded in 1985 for Tom Albach's legendary Nimbus West imprint, Sharps And Flats lay unreleased until 2004 on CD and never saw a vinyl pressing until 2018. Sharps studied under Cecil Taylor at college, then returned to L.A. and took over band-leading duties from the great altoist Arthur Blythe in Horace Tapscott's Pan-Afri…

The only live recording the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra ever released - and arguably the most complete document of this extraordinary musical community in full flight. Recorded between February and June 1979 at the Immanuel United Church of Christ on 85th & Holmes in Los Angeles, where P.A.P.A. played every second Sunday, developing their sound and building an audience rooted in the community. As a culturally radical, communal big band with a visionary approach to American Black music, the Arke…

A singular, radical entry in the Nimbus West catalogue from one of the true pioneers of the free jazz piano. Burton Greene was there at the very beginning - co-founding the Free Form Improvisation Ensemble with bassist Alan Silva in early-60s New York, recording for ESP-Disk and Columbia, playing the legendary loft sessions at Slugs'. After relocating to Amsterdam in 1969, Greene spent decades exploring the intersections of free jazz, Indian music, klezmer and electronic composition. Solo Orches…

A beautiful, dreamlike expression of spiritual jazz recorded in 1981 at City Recorders - a time when this kind of music was considered completely out of vogue. Yet here is Gary Bias, unspooling a suite of deeply soulful and profoundly far-reaching original compositions that vividly evoke the blue skies of the record's Los Angeles origins. Bias plays alto and soprano saxophone and flute with a tone and sensibility that sits somewhere between the lyricism of early Pharoah Sanders and the bold atta…

Grant Green's Latin jazz album with Johnny Acea, Wendell Marshall, Willie Bobo, Carlos "Patato" Valdes and Garvin Masseaux, recorded at Van Gelder Studio on 26 April 1962 and first issued by Blue Note in 1963. Japanese UHQCD, UCCQ-9716.

Geography lesson: "Riding the San Andreas" - living on a fault line, waiting for the shake. "Southwester Avenue Shuffle" - street-level LA, the neighborhood Tapscott never left. "On the Nile" - Africa, always Africa, even from a piano bench in South Central. Then the portraits: "Amanda's Tone Poem," "Sonnet of Butterfly McQueen" - dedicated to the actress who refused to play maids after Gone with the Wind, who said no when no was dangerous. "Yesterday's Dream" looks back. Thelonious Monk's "'Rou…

October in Los Angeles. Horace Tapscott sits down, plays for 38 minutes, gets up. No audience, no applause. Just Tom Albach and his tape machine. This is how monuments get built - one session at a time, one composition at a time, nobody watching. "Ancestral Echoes" opens - nearly thirteen minutes tracing lineages back through time, the piano as time machine. Then Roy Porter's "Jessica," a beautiful detour into someone else's melody, proof that Tapscott could interpret as powerfully as he compose…

Solo (Steinway) piano. Los Angeles, September 1982. Just read the titles: "A Dress for Renee" - infectious melody, keeps coming back like a persistent thought. "Shades of Soweto" - South Africa seen from South Central. "The Hero's Last Dance" - whoever that hero was. "First Call of the Humming Bird" - nature breaking through concrete. And then "Forgiving" - as a closing statement, as a breath. Horace Tapscott was a fierce critic of racial bigotry, and his music never hid it. But here there's als…

Solo piano. Recorded March 1983, Los Angeles. Five pieces, forty-one minutes. Where Sun Ra meets Erik Satie. This is the third volume in what would become Tapscott's monumental series of solo recordings - over thirty hours captured between 1982 and 1985, documenting his own compositions alongside works by unknown Black composers in the Los Angeles area. Producer Tom Albach considered these the most important music Horace Tapscott ever made. The titles read like chapters from a life: "The Tuus," …

Solo piano. Recorded November 15, 1982 at the Lobero Theater, Santa Barbara. A Steinway piano and one man's soul, nothing else. Producer Tom Albach believed the solo sessions were the most important music Tapscott ever made. Between 1982 and 1985, over thirty hours of solo piano were captured - Albach made it his life's mission to release them all. This is volume two, and it cuts deep. The centerpiece: "Struggle X, An Afro-American Dream" - nearly twenty minutes of Tapscott wrestling with the un…

Recorded live at the Bimhuis, Amsterdam. The debut album of M.O.B. - "My Own Band" - the project that would become the main vehicle for this South African giant in exile. Eight tracks, almost an hour of music, with titles that tell you everything you need to know: "Purtles," "Ice Cream Man," "Tea and Scones," "Monkey Woman," "Beach Balls," "Kids-Trainride." Sean Bergin (1948-2012) left Durban for Amsterdam in 1976, escaping apartheid, carrying South African jazz in his blood. Half Irish, half So…

Live at the Music Academy of the West, Santa Barbara, April 12, 1987. Cello and percussion. Two Europeans conquering California with nothing but strings, drums, bones, bodhran and squeaky toys. This is the duo that gave us Cellotape & Scotchtape in 1982 - now captured live on American soil, over an hour of pure duo improvisation. Reijseger needs no introduction: Dutch cellist extraordinaire, ICP Orchestra veteran, Clusone Trio with Han Bennink and Michael Moore, later Werner Herzog's go-to compo…

Nine rare tracks from the Nimbus West archive, a map of Los Angeles underground jazz the world never heard enough of. Horace Tapscott, Nate Morgan, Jesse Sharps, Dadisi Komolafe, Roberto Miranda - the names that built UGMAA and the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, the movement that kept spiritual jazz alive in South Central for decades while the music industry looked elsewhere. "Desert Fairy Princess," "U.G.M.A.A Ger," "Prayer Of Happiness," "Mrafu," "Calvary" - titles evoking the Pan-African consc…

The Amsterdam String Trio emerges from Europe's most vibrant improvised music scene: Maurice Horsthuis on viola, Ernst Reijseger on cello, Ernst Glerum on double bass. No violin. An unusual configuration that delivers, as Glerum puts it, "a dark sound, a kind of obscurity, and we like that very much." Three instruments exploring music's lower registers, without the violin's brightness to lead. Recorded live at the Academy of Music of the West in Santa Barbara on December 2, 1988, Wild West captu…