Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

Double album with unreleased live recordings from the German Jazz Festival 1966 featuring all the big German names of the time - Albert Mangelsdorff, Horst Jankowski, Hans Koller, Rolf Kühn, Klaus Doldinger etc! Listen to Mangelsdorff's "Plakate" or Kühn/Doldinger's "Gemini Waltz". Limited edition release (500 copies) with spectacular sound quality! "We are very excited to announce what we think is one of the most exciting jazz albums that have been issued in recent years. It includes the most b…

CD version. BE! JAZZ is happy to come up with a true “holy” modern/free jazz gems of the late 1960s. The original double LP was issued by Meno Liechtenstein’s CB Records – he was also the organizer of the “International Holy Hill Jazz Meeting” in Heidelberg/Germany. The sound quality on the original album was not really bad – but it certainly was not really good as well. We spent a lot of work on a proper restoration of the live tapes. The result is truly amazing – after almost 50 years we are n…

Edition of 500. Rare LP with Hans Koller, Albert & Emil Mangelsdorff, Joki Freund, Pepsi Auer and more of the German jazz elite. One of the long forgotten masterpieces of European -especially German- Modern Jazz is the legendary 'Rhein Main Jump' album! The original version was issued in 1958 by the JAZZTONE label. If you are in any way familiar with jazz, just check the line-up and you will have an idea of the music's quality. As far as we know the music has never been re-issued anywhere.N…

Wolf Escher turned to Modern Jazz while studying music in Dortmund. He played in the Peter Heidemann Quintet, and performed with Ingfried Hoffmann's big band at the Kölner Jazz Festival in 1967. In 1969 he recorded his first single with the Wolf Escher Quintet for the legendary JG label. This single is a much coveted collector's item today. He subsequently toured with the Big Bands of Johannes Fehring and Dusko Goykovich. In 1972 he formed the fusion band Time In Space, which was successful in c…

The few recordings made by the Modern Jazz Group, based in Freiburg, Germany, are scarcely documented. The MJGF was founded around 1954 by pianist Ewald "Waldi" Heidepriem, one of the pioneers of modern jazz in Germany in the 1950s. The music of the Modern Jazz Group Freiburg was truly excellent. Even today it sounds incredibly modern and energetic. This release documents a wonderful chapter of German jazz history. European modern jazz at its finest! Vinyl-edition.

One of the long forgotten masterpieces of European -especially German- Modern Jazz is the legendary 'Rhein Main Jump' album! The original version was issued in 1958 by the Jazztone label. If you are in any way familiar with jazz, just check the line-up and you will have an idea of the music's quality. As far as we know the music has never been re-issued anywhere. With Hans Koller, Albert & Emil Mangelsdorff, Joki Freund, Pepsi Auer and more of the German jazz eliteNow this reissue appears with f…

**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…

Reuben Wilson's second Blue Note album, a soul jazz quintet with Lee Morgan, George Coleman, Grant Green and Leo Morris (Idris Muhammad), recorded at Van Gelder Studio on 21 March 1969 and released that year. Japanese UHQCD, UCCQ-9683.

“Brand” is the new trio of Gary Smith (guitar), Silvia Kastel (voice and synth), Ninni Morgia (guitar). On this recording Gary Smith produces the playing for which he’s considered a master of avant guitar: multiple layering, complex grainy textures, dense counterpoint, influences of birdsong. Fused with the guitar of Ninni Morgia, which floats between minimal movements of primordial electronics, pre-war slide blues and Hendrix-esque feedback. Over, and blending with them, Silvia Kastel’s moaning…

Guitarist Ninni Morgia, after playing with countless improvisers such as Peter Evans, Daniel Carter, William Parker and lots others, is here in a duo together with master Italian drummer and percussionist Marcello Magliocchi. Marcello Magliocchi has been active since the early 70s and has played and recorded with amazing artists like Steve Lacy, Evan Parker, Peter Kowald, Mal Waldron, John Tchicai, Joelle Leandre and countless others. He also put out his work on Andrea Centazzo’s Ictus label and…

With all the projects Peter Brötzmann is currently working on, Full Blast -- with the precise and dynamic Swiss rhythm section of Marino Pliakas and Michael Wertmüller -- is the most consistent and the longest-running. Their fifth album finds the band in a studio again, with time and the desire to try something new. Seven compositions in the distinctive, strong Full Blast nature get an exciting electronic treatment by Michael Wertmüller (with electronics by Gerd Rische, recorded months before hi…

CD digipack incl.24-page booklet. Unreleased live recordings from the 9th German Jazz Festival 1964 in Frankfurt am Main! Apart from well-known bands such as the Jazzensemble des Hessischen Rundfunks and the Klaus Doldinger Quartet, the German Jazz Festival 1964 focussed on jazz from our Eastern neighbouring countries, here represented by the Zagreb Jazz Quartet from Jugoslavia. Saxophonists Karl Drevo, Emil Mangelsdorff and Joki Freund also played an important part and are featured in this com…

A great counterpart to some of Archie Shepp's studio albums for Impulse – a live date recorded in San Francisco, with a slightly freer, sharper edge! The sound is almost free at times, but always with that strong sense of focus that Archie brought to his brilliant work of the time – and the group's a well-honed ensemble who really understand each others motivations and inspirations – Roswell Rudd on trombone, Donald Garrett and Lewis Worrell on bass, and Beaver Harris on drums – all almost worki…

A fiery, raw burst of fusion jazz played by a large group with incendiary energy, Eero Koivistoinen’s commanding saxophone controlling the chaos! Don't be put off by the long name, or the overuse of vowels in the title – because this album's a killer batch of free jazz, filled with loads of choppy sax riffs, sweet Fender Rhodes licks, and plenty of heavy drums. The record's got a hard fusion groove – and all the tracks are long instrumentals served up with plenty of power, and plenty of ferocity…

Sold out, last copies: 'Beautiful duo set from these two European improvisors which is a deal more removed from any established notions of intuitive post-SME thought than you might initially suspect. Davies plays harp throughout, but right from the first track he steers away from both the scrabbly string attack favoured by most post-Derek Bailey strategists and the Heavy Metal assault of instrumental pioneers like Zeena Parkins, opting instead for a slow blur of droning notes that flare like fiz…

Recorded in 1978, In The Midst Of Chaos is this western CT free-jazz group's only release. It would become improv jazz sax player Paul Flaherty's 1st record, who, as a youth, was smitten by the world, it's creator and Pharoah Sanders. Chaos is also the only release of legendary guitarist Barry Greika, who, along with bassist Bob Laramie and drummer Glen 'Hobbit' Peterson, remain the most under - recorded trio in history. A screamin', howlin', blisterin', slap of a record that defies categorizati…

The jazz violin tradition in Poland is dominated by two Giants: Michał Urbaniak, who pioneered highly non-trivial use of electric violin in fusion music of 1970s and Zbigniew Seifert, who combined free and modal jazz à la Coltrane with fusion. Amazingly, this tradition is present even today, listen to the winners of the first two Seifert Competitions: Bartosz Dworak or Mateusz Smoczyński. An exception that support this rule is Adam Bałdych, who records for the ACT label and whose music has a Sca…

"On June 15th 2016 the website jazzarium.pl celebrated its fifth anniversary. It wasn't turning 18, but in the virtual reality time flows a bit differently, you count it not the same way as outside the Internet. On such occasion we wanted to hear music that was unheard before. Music, that gives you no chance to prepare for or to anticipate its perception; music that is full of risk on one hand, and that can open new horizons for both listeners and musicians on the other.Therefore, we decided to …

Sundogs are the international improvising trio of Mateusz Rybicki, Samuel Hall and Zbigniew Kozera. The group explores a deep sonic universe through interactive music making that draws from the collective life of its three members. With Influences ranging from Free Jazz, Minimalism and the Berlin Echtzeitmusik Scene, Sundogs approach their music with open ears and a search for deeply connected music.Since 2015 Sundogs have been collaborating and performing their music. A regular feature of the J…

Recorded in Liverpool back in 2003, this improvised performance unites two of the UK's foremost improv exponents (Tony Bevan and Paul Hession) with two pioneers of modern free music, the multi-talented guitarist, turntablist and noise artist Otomo Yoshihide and the late, great Derek Bailey.The performance shuffles into first gear during the speculative, tentative first throes of "No Hiding Place/Softly Softly", establishing a ruthlessly abstract sound world from the outset, only to tighten up sl…

The Pipeline group begins as a trio, with Gianmaria Aprile and Simone Fratti. After a short period of free improvisation I suggested to face some compositions of mine, following a path that I’d been testing here and there for a while. In spite of the pieces being written quite traditionally, with a bass line, internal voices and in some cases even chord guidelines, I didn’t give Gianmaria and Simone the full score but I just played each piece repeatedly, leaving them free to improvise and slowly…

Limited, exclusive, extended reissue of Hot Lotta, one of the rarest items in Peter Brötzmann’s oeuvre. Hot Lotta was a special cultural event, the meeting of the brightest free jazz talent from Germany and Finland. Peter Brötzmann and Peter Kowald were joined by Edward Vesala and Juhani Aaltonen for the studio session that resulted in the album but also toured Finland and recorded a radio session. That radio session has now been unearthed and is presented as an added bonus in this official reis…

Following on from the re-issue of Topography of the Lungs, Otoroku is proud to follow up with another legendary free-improvised document, this one from the duo of Derek Bailey and Evan Parker, originally released on the INCUS label in 1975. "The London Concert is one of those rare recordings that capture musicians at a special moment of confluence, a moment when procedures are proving fruitful and before practice has hardened into dogma, when different visions are not yet turned into position pa…

Late great alto screamer Kaoru Abe is the lost wild legend of '70s Japanese free jazz. This was the very last recordings he has leftIn the short space of his tempestuous life, he burnt a path which has served as a map for a whole generation of Japanese artists to follow who would call themselves 'free' in any sense of the word whatsoever. Though he performed live frequently in his day, his releases were sporadic, many of them emerging after his untimely death in 1978, and on a string of Japanese…

“The debut record of Luft (the duo comprised of Mats Gustafsson and Erwan Keravec) - is a two volume album of exceptional explorations within the bagpipe and reed universe ——unknown music of poetic beauty and high energy cascades. Fast moving changes in texture and layers vs static repetitions and alternatives densities and melody treatments! Vol 1 - is focusing on the interaction between the two persons/ instruments - with a huge variety in extended techniques and various ways of treating the i…

**ltd/numbered 1/50, with paste-on cover** unique formation/one of a kind Doyle LP with one long track each side, deep spiritual dimension . “Music to me [is] the universal language, the universal way of communicating.” For Arthur Doyle, saxophonist, flautist and vocalist, music was the life force, and Doyle’s dedication to the music had him playing fast and free jazz for most of his life. “That was my first love,” he once said to Patrick Marley, in an interview from Muckraker: “playing free and…

2017 repress - remastered; Originally released in 2006. Egyptian Jazz represents The Cairo Jazz Band responding to the American jazz scene of the '60s and '70s with influences from Mongo Santamaria to Randy Weston and Sun Ra. These tracks were first presented by The Ministry Of Culture in Cairo as a Prism Music Production and released with an additional disc by the composer Soliman Gamil. This release marks the first time Salah Ragab and The Cairo Jazz Band's definitive works are presented to…

Three early recordings by the long lasting duo of Milo Fine (clarinet, percussion and piano) and Steve Gnitka (electric guitar). The first two sessions, HAH! from 1976 and The Constant Extension of Inescapable Tradition from 1977, were issued on two hat Hut LPs (with two tracks missing). The third, When I was five years old, I predicted your whole life from 1978, was scheduled to appear on Horo, but that label went bust before it happened, so this material is now making a very belated first …

Unreleased material by Paul Rutherford, one of the greatest trombone improvisers in jazz – heard here on four very long tracks pulled from the vaults of Emanem Records! As label founder Martin Davidson says in the notes, the music of Rutherford was one of the reasons he created the company – and hearing him here, there's no doubt that even lesser-known work by the trombonist is still every bit as great as the rest of his legacy – and only serves to cement his reputation for one of the most creat…

Fabrice Favriou : electric guitar, objects. Jean-Luc Petit : contrabass clarinet, alto and sopranino saxophones. Julien Touéry : piano, objects. Recorded by Michaël Goupillaud at Carré Bleu in Poitiers, 2017.

This Fall, Strut is proud to present the first full career retrospective release for Ghanaian highlife master and “The Golden Voice Of Africa,” Pat Thomas, covering his late ‘60s big band highlife recordings through to the “burger highlife” movement of the early ‘80s. With Thomas currently wowing audiences on the road in support of last year’s incredible album with Kwishibu Area Band, Coming Home offers listeners a chance to get to know Thomas’ singular career. One of Thomas’ earliest tracks, wi…

Alto Saxophone – Trevor WattsBass – Barry GuyDrums – John StevensRecorded at Riverside Studios, London, May 1977. Previously unissued.

Roger Turner, drums. Witold Oleszak, piano. Recorded in 2012.'Both players are equally skilled in anticipating the moment at which exposed, entwined resonances will peak and yield their richest fold of textures. They can also both intuit, superbly, whether a given sound should be enhanced or, favouring momentary silence, they should cancel it out. Their closely-considered duets on this album make for a detailed, absorbing experience, every moment yielding the anticipated unexpected.'

I first met Mark sometime in the early 90’s when we were both working in Chelmsford. He was running Soundworld Records above the musical instrument shop of the same name, I was over the other side of town in an insurance brokers. I’d played quite a bit of free improvisation at that point, mostly at the old LMC in a quartet called Make Shift together with Peter Urpeth, Stuart Wilding and long-time colleague and playing partner Geoff Collins. But had been away from it for a few years and wa…

Great improvisers reveal a lifetime of experience and artistry in every note. For both pianist Satoko Fujii and bassist Joe Fonda, that brings to bear an estimable history of collaboration with some of the music’s greatest practitioners and travel that spans the globe. It also means that despite the fact that their winding paths had never previously crossed, they immediately tapped a rich vein of musical understanding during their first-ever performances together. On Duet, a live recording of th…

It all started on “Brothers And Sisters”. Actually, the process began prior to that, with my discovering the Blues through John Mayall’s records, but that’s a different story…Seeing the picture of that “super-extended family” on the inside cover with musicians, roadies, friends, women and kids, and listening to the Bluesy flavor of Gregg Allman’s voice and Dicky Betts’ guitar just hit me really deep, and in my dreams I wished I could have been there, stopping the clock to stay….in some sort of a…

Two political fueled Soul Jazz cuts out of California in the early 1980. Black Panther related. Featuring the vocals of the late Somayah 'Peaches' Moore Khaliq. She lays down a serious message over the great, sligthly reggae tingled 'Brotherman' The highlight is the jazz funky 'Geronimo Pratt' telling the story of the imprisoned Black Panther member who was released in the 90s on false charges. Rare limited replica reissue from the very hard to find 1983 original 7inch.

Bengt Berger and Kjell Westling did a live radio broadcast in 1977 and released it on vinyl. This is a cd rerelease. The music we played is improvised, restless and of very high density (many notes in short time). Ett Minne för Livet (A Memory for Life) was a muscian’s collective in Stockholm during the seventies, part of the progressive music movement in Sweden. Iskra, Spjärnsvallet, Vargavinter, Archimedes Badkar, Bitter Funeral Beer Band and Bolon Bata were some of the bands taking part…

This very rare British jazz album from 1968 gets the Jazzaggression reissue treatment with improved sound, new liner-notes and additional CD and digital download inside. Comes with new pictures and new liner notes from the band members. The Bird Curtis Quintet which consisted of Ian Bird (Tenor Sax) John Curtis (Trumpet) Raymond Shea (Piano) Daryl Runswick (Bass) and Tim Woolley (Drums) released the 5-track masterpiece in 1968 with only 100 copies pressed. The release also comes with new picture…

Gatefold sleeve. Esoteric, modal, and progressive jazz, inspired by Islam and recorded between 1957-1988. Songs ancient and divine - the seventh volume of Jazzman Records' acclaimed Spiritual Jazz series examines the influence and impact of Islam on four decades of jazz innovation. Through Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali, the civil rights era in America saw African American liberation politics famously associated with Islamic belief. This was not the first time that radical developments in Afric…