Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

Carried by a blast of pure joy comes Black Sweat’s latest LP, the self-titled debut by the mysterious Milan based ensemble Fusione. Channeling free and spiritual jazz, funk, and a globally minded ear, all carried by heavy dose of druggy psychedelic experimentalism, it’s one of the most exciting sonic journeys that we’ve taken all year.

At age 19, guitarist John D. Thomas was enlisted as a sideman by both Jimmy McGriff and Joe Henderson for recordings and concerts. In the following years he worked with some of the greatest names in jazz, including the AACM Big Band, Stanton Davis, Carter Jefferson, Andrew Cyrille, Kenny Drew, John Lewis, Harold Ousley, and Chet Baker. After his 1977 move to Europe, he toured the Middle East, Africa, and the Far East, performing extensively with Charles Tolliver (1980-90), Joe Henderson, Art Tay…

Horace Silver's 1963 Blue Note album of five originals, recorded May 7-8, 1963, at Van Gelder Studio with Blue Mitchell (trumpet), Junior Cook (tenor saxophone), Gene Taylor (bass) and Roy Brooks (drums).

John D. Thomas's band of the 1980s, Serious Business (heard on Serious Business (ESPDISK 5006CD)), focused on his fusion and "free funk" compositions played with an electric sound. Extremely Serious Business marked a turning point, a return to a more acoustic setting while remaining true to the pioneering spirit of "improvisation along the edges." Extremely Serious Business showcases Thomas's unique compositional skills and style while carrying on the long lineage of cutting-edge soloing "outsid…

*Original masters licensed by Nippon Columbia for the first ever reissue. Includes OBI and insert.* 'Tapestry: Koto' is a 3-album series produced by Nippon Columbia in the mid-1970s dedicated to one of the main instruments of Japanese traditional music: Koto. The beauty of the trilogy curated by composer Kiyoshi Yamaya, whose chapters are respectively dedicated to Sea, Hillside and Country, lies in the fact that they are a modern translation of tradition using newer and more avant-garde sound id…

Another legendary Lateef session cut in 1960 for the New Jazz imprint. The co-leader - bassist Doug Watkins - died tragically in a car accident in 1962 at the age of 27. However, prior to his early demise, he recorded dozens of wonderful sessions with some of the greatest jazzmen of his time, among them Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and the Horace Silver Quintet. Imagination ! marked his second and final album as a leader, and features Watkins on cello instead of bass. The use of c…

Bomb! Sourced from the master tapes. First-time vinyl reissue Black vinyl single LP version. The late percussionist Milford Graves was one of the most unique artists the world has ever seen. Born in Jamaica, Queens in 1941, he began his career in the early '60s as a part of New York's vibrant Latin jazz scene. His focus quickly turned inward, shifting towards a practice that explored the very nature of self. From his work in the New York Art Quartet and collaborations with Albert Ayler, Sonny …

Recorded in Royal Alzheimer Hall, Thessaloniki, Greece, January 2015, Limited release of 500 unique record covers for the 500 hand-numbered copies of the Basenezmen music project. Two of the most important musicians in Greece are currently together for the first time to present ‘basenezmen’ project. They improvise under rythmic structures in form of jazz, rock, ambient and folk music.

This is the first collaboration by the two Nurse With Wound collaborators - Paris-based Quentin Rollet and Melbourne-based James Worse. Quentin has played with many musicians including the Red Krayola, the Legendary Pink Dots, and Nurse With Wound. He plays the alto sax and the sopranino, the smallest saxophone in the original saxophone family. James Worse has also worked with Nurse With Wound, Andrew Liles, Expose Your Eyes, and more. He plays percussion and spoken word on some of the tracks he…

Horace Silver Quintet album drawn from an October 1963 session with Blue Mitchell and Junior Cook and an October 1964 session with Carmell Jones, Joe Henderson, Teddy Smith and Roger Humphries. Blue Note Essentials 140g LP.

*300 copies limited edition* "This is the first LP (following a cassette) released under Drew Gardner’s name and it’s a doozy. Drew is a guitarist, probably best known as a founding member of Elkhorn (although his musical partnerships with Jesse Shepard go back way further than that), and his recent work with Jeffrey Alexander’s Heavy Lidders has also been noteworthy as hell. The band here is a trio with Andy Cush (Garcia Peoples) on bass, and the extremely well documented Ryan Jewell on drums. …

Jimmy Smith on organ with Stanley Turrentine, Kenny Burrell and Donald Bailey, recorded for Blue Note on 25 April 1960 and released in 1963. Japanese UHQCD reissue, UCCQ-9717.

Killing Time by Massacre—the trio comprised of Fred Frith, Bill Laswell, and Fred Maher—is a molten collision of avant-punk velocity and improvisational deconstruction. With Frith's wiry guitar, Laswell's brutal bass, and Maher's manic percussion, every track lunges between catastrophe and comic relief.​

*Limited edition of 500 copies.*Her name was Anna Maria Assunta Andreassi. She composed and arranged the entirety of what would become one of the rarest documents in Italian library music, filed it under the alias Mandrassi, pressed it on the micro-label Ludo Record in 1973, and then watched it disappear almost entirely - so completely that for decades collectors weren't certain the record had ever existed. Sonor Music Editions' reissue of Rhythm And Sound, limited to 500 copies, is the first ti…

Recorded directly to two-track digital Mitsubishi X-80 tape recorder at Rudy Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ on June 4th & 5th, 1987.

A great live Cd by drummer giant Roy Haynes. Roy Haynes's very active and his different approach to drumming comes out very well - hard swinging and with a lot of joy and very spontaneous.

Evan Parker's followup to The Snake Decides is this live recording of saxophone solos from 1989 recorded in the Holywell Music Room by Michael Gerzon."Of the many solo soprano recordings by British improviser Evan Parker, few offer as intimate a portrait as this one in terms of his development as an artist. In 1993, Parker had hit a new stride in his playing. He worked -- as he does now -- long hours to find a way through the improvisation barrier imposed by the restrictions of circular and conv…

This is the third album by Wadada Leo Smith’s all-star Golden Quartet. Recorded live, the sound on Tabligh veers from a sound akin to early electric jazz ala "In A Silent Way" and especially 'the lost quintet' of Miles in late 1969/early 1970, to both more sparse and modern jazz fare, all of it informed by the distinctive personalities of these four players and their leader's musical concepts. Wadada Leo Smith is a well-respected trumpeter and composer working in avant-garde jazz and improvisati…

Gisburg's debut release is "imaginary movie music" by an extraordinary young vocalist and composer, including dramtic text and Chinese and African traditional instruments. Gisburg was born in Austria in 1966 and has lived in New York since 1992. In Berlin, she performed in the ensemble of Dieter Schnebel and in the Vocalduo Allii Gaa with Anna Clementi. She has recorded with Anthony Coleman/Roy Nathanson and Michelle Kinney among others.

The great bassist Oscar Pettiford live in Hamburg 1958, second chapter. Fine mélange of modern mainstream, cool jazz and hard bop, with Jimmy Pratt (dr), Hans Koller (ts), Dusko Goykovich (tp), Michel Hausser (vib), Attila Zoller (g), Roger Guerin (tp) and Armin Rusch (p), Comes as carefully mastered longplay-CD and 2-LP vinyl set (gatefold), including photos of the event by Susanne Schapowalow and new liner notes by Arne Reimer, with Goykovich and Hausser sharing their memories of the time. Cer…

Newly unearthed live recordings of jazz bass and cello legend Oscar Pettiford and his quartet from Hamburg in 1958, featuring the great Kenny Clarke (dr), Hans Koller (ts), Attila Zoller (g) & guests in front of an excited audience. Eight tracks full of bluesy modern jazz, with a gloomy version of Friedrich Gulda`s “Dark Glow” or the cheerful “Gertberg Walk”, written by Pettiford especially for the occasion. Excellent sound quality, carefully mastered in 2015, comes with new liner notes and unse…

Jimmy Smith on Hammond organ with Kenny Burrell, Donald Bailey and, on four tracks, Percy France, from Van Gelder sessions of July 15, 1958, May 24 and June 16, 1959. Japanese UHQCD reissue (UCCQ-9637).

Timeless atmospheres, hypnotic sonorities, minimal arrangements. And a composer gifted with a never ending passion for music, experimenter in his genetic code, innovator by vocation, at ease with various instruments in order to forge avant-garde themes. Piero Umiliani was already forward in building completely new sounds in the late Seventies. “Tra Scienza E Fantascienza” finds his alter ego Moggi experimenting with alternative grooves, electronic music, jazz tunes and soundtrack motifs. One of …

** 2022 Stock, very last copies. Edition of 400 copies ** Released in 1974 as a private press LP on Intex Records, this cosmic free jazz improvisation by this legendary trio guided by Hüseyin Ertunç - on drums - with his then-regular partners Michael Cosmic and Phil Musra - on saxophones and additional percussion - reveals the primitive and physical approach of the trio, with Ertunç's massive cymbals drumming building a carpet of trance-driving vibe where the reeds can freely dance without any s…

In Nov. 1987, a three-concert Ed Blackwell Festival was held in Atlanta. The festival served as a good excuse to reunite the members of Old And New Dreams (trumpeter Don Cherry, tenor-saxophonist Dewey Redman, bassist Charlie Haden and drummer Blackwell), a quartet comprised of Ornette Coleman alumni. The unit interprets three rarely-performed Ornette Coleman compositions and a tune apiece by Blackwell and Redman. All of the musicians are in top form on this no-changes music, creating fresh and …

No relation to the sparkling wine of the same name, Cold Duck is instead a series of nine biting improvisations by S4, an ad-hoc, all-star quartet of soprano saxophone innovators – one British, John Butcher, and the others Swiss: Urs Leimgruber, Hans Koch and Christian Kobi, the last of whom is also a member of the all-saxophone Konus Quartett, which interprets notated music.  Designated by Roman numerals, Cold Duck’s tracks, lasting from barely one minute to more than 12, could be the auditory …

The CD contains tracks originally released in the LP "Usa Concerts" issued right after the first American tour of Centazzo in 1978 and three new tracks: one recorded in New York, at Zoo Place with Kondo e Chadbourne; a second in Woodstock in duo with Tom Corra in 1980 and the third one in Bolgna (Italy) in 1985 with the Philadelphia sax player Jack Wright. It was an homogeneous musical view the one that Centazzo found on the arrival in New York in 1978, rich of collaboration between musicians co…

Duos, quartets and quintets of FREE improvisations by Tony Coe (clarinet), John Edwards (bass), Alan Hacker (clarinet), Sylvia Hallett (violin, voice, sarangi), Marcio Mattos (cello), Evan Parker (tenor saxophone), Philipp Wachsmann (violin, electronics), Kenny Wheeler (flugelhorn).

Jimmy Smith's soul jazz quartet album with Stanley Turrentine, Kenny Burrell and Donald Bailey, recorded at Van Gelder Studio on 25 April 1960 and released by Blue Note in 1961. Japanese UHQCD, UCCQ-9656 (2024).

Organ quartet date by Jimmy Smith with Stanley Turrentine, Quentin Warren and Donald Bailey, recorded at Van Gelder Studio on 8 February 1963 and first issued by Blue Note in 1964. Tone Poet 180g LP reissue.

100 copies on Yellow cassette shell. John kolodij - guitar, banjo, etc, anna rg - fiddle, sarah hennies - percussion Mastered by Stephan MathieuArtwork by Myste FrenchLayout by Tiny Little Hammers

Originally released in 1991 this was Henry Threadgil's new band's debut release. That's where Threadgill introduced the unique concept of dual tubas and dual electric guitars. In Very Very Circus's ultra-layered sound world all roles melt equally into an unprecedented sound experience. A big step forward in modern jazz from one of the greatest composers of our time. Henry Threadgill - alto saxophone, flute, Curtis Fowlkes - trombone, Brandon Ross - electric guitar, Marcus Rojas, Edwin Rodriguez …

Vibraphonist Cal Tjader is heard leading five different groups throughout this set, but the identities of the flutists, bassists, and pianists are less important than knowing that Tjader, Willie Bobo (on drums and timbales), and the great conga player Mongo Santamaria are on every selection. The music really cooks, with torrid percussion, inspired ensembles, and occasional solos from the sidemen (which sometimes include pianists Lonnie Hewitt or Vince Guaraldi, bassist Al McKibbon, and flutist P…

*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* A power trio of contemporary masters unlike any other! Miles Okazaki, Trevor Dunn and Dan Weiss are among the very best of a new generation of musicians working in the nexus of jazz, rock, noise, composition, improvisation and more. All dedicated students of the esoteric, they come together here as Hive Mind, a collective trio, to perform some of the wildest freewheeling improvisations around. Three compositional minds weaving bizarre soundscapes through tel…

Singer Petra Haden excels in this beautiful and unique program of songs penned by the songwriting team of Zorn and Harris. Friends for many years, they began working together on “The Song Project” in 2012, and eight years later this LP presents the full fruits of their collaboration: thirteen Zorn compositions with original lyrics by Jesse Harris. Including selections from a wide variety of Zorn projects (and one original that has never appeared before), the melodies are catchy, the lyrics heart…