Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

In some ways, Commitment was typical of many bands of their time. Between 1978 and 1984, they enjoyed a modest success by the subterranean standards of the Lower East Side. They struggled for gigs during the waning years of the New York loft scene, enjoyed higher profile gigs at several Kool Jazz Festivals, made one short European tour, and recorded one LP. But their music is more significant than this story might indicate. Hwang was among the first improvisers to emerge out of the Asian …

“Prism” is the result of the collaboration between upright bassist William Parker and Italian guitarist Ninni Morgia. William Parker needs no introduction; a master player of his instrument, Derek Bailey described him as “one of the few ones left who play pure Free Jazz”. Ninni Morgia, after proving his talent and versatility on his previous works (Control Unit with Daniel Carter, The Right Moves, Quivers…) here reaches the top-level of avant guitar, his sounds ranging from Stockhausen’s ta…

Drivan is a new band project from Norwegian electronica star and graphic designer, Kim Hiorthoy, featuring a line-up of pan-Scandinavian pals: Swedes Lisa Ostberg and Louise Peterhoff and Kristiina Viiala of Finland. The group met while working on a dance piece titled The Potato Country in 2007, and the three girls in the band all come from different corners of the performing arts spectrum, yet everyone involved in Drivan contributed lyrics and melodies for the album, working off the bac…

For a decade jazz cornetist Josh Berman has been a mainstay of the post-Vandermark generation of Chicago improvisers, a wide circle of ambitious musos who meet up in varied ad hoc or fixed settings: a circle including all the players in Josh's group Old Idea. He's already recorded some--as, say, part of a quartet on Chicago-Luzern Exchange alongside tenor saxophonist Keefe Jackson, with Jackson's big and small bands Project Project and Fast Citizens, wit…

A duo improvisation between French trombonist Mathias Forge and Brussels-based improviser Olivier Toulemonde, recorded live in Sheffield in January 2010, with and without audience. Pie'n'mash – its title playfully referencing the traditional London working-class dish – documents the meeting of two remarkable musicians who were relative unknowns at the time but who have since been recognized as significant voices within post-reductionist improvisation. Forge, a virtuosic young trombonist, demonst…

An improbable yet utterly compelling duo pairing tuba and spinet – two instruments rarely heard together in musical history, brought into dialogue by German tubaist Carl Ludwig Hübsch and Swiss spinet player Christoph Schiller. Recorded in Cologne in November 2009, Giles U. documents seven pieces that explore the sonic possibilities of this unconventional combination, creating what one critic aptly described as "the kind of thing you might hear if a steampunk novel became sound." Hübsch, a major…

A duo encounter between two of the most distinctive voices in European improvised music: Welsh violinist Angharad Davies and German trumpeter Axel Dörner. Recorded in December 2008 at a West London house, A.D. documents an intimate meeting between two musicians who share a profound commitment to extended technique and sonic exploration, creating music that transcends the conventional boundaries of their instruments. Dörner has long been recognized as one of the most consistently innovative trump…

A sequence of six duo improvisations on tenor saxophone & church organ recorded at St Peter’s, Whitstable in 2009.

Aki Takase's visit to the North East of England resulted in two new fruitful encounters which Chris Trent was on hand to document. The duo with alto saxophonist John Tchicai and the trios with John Edwards (double bass) and Tony Levin (drums) are augmented by solo pieces all taken from the Music Outside Festival of 2008."Creating an arc from disparate, spontaneously generated materials; positing authenticity that recognises the dynamic between jazz and improvised music, A WEEK WENT BY confirms A…

Too often, critics make an automatic separation between ‘emotion’ and ‘intellect’, a framework which will get one nowhere with FURT. Instead, their music shows graphically how fused, how inseparable are the two. As Richard Barrett puts it: "The music is motivated by emotional and sensual considerations as much as by anything else. Without wishing to sound too pretentious I think it’s concerned with finding and exploring (musical) states of consciousness to which the word ‘ecstasy’ might well be …

The Bohman Brothers (Adam and Jonathan) team up with Leonard Aspen and Roger Boulding to form Ischio Romantico Ð the result is this album called From The Hip which is a combination of the Bohmans' amplified objects and raw electronics and the smooth hypnotic loops and turntable inventions of Aspen and Boulding (who have collaborated extensively with Xentos Jones and Lepke B of Die Trip Computer Die). Urbane Deserts vs Sylphides' is a ballet in four parts. Leonard's libretto (undisclosed) describ…

Tracklisting: "Circe," "The Nile," "Brazilian Sun," "We Travel the Spaceways," "Calling Planet Earth," "Dancing Shadows," "The Rainmaker," "When Sun Comes Out." First two tracks probably made during the same session at the Choreographers' Workshop, late 1962 or 1963. Remaining tracks recorded during different sessions around the same period. The master tape of side B is in stereo; all known pressings of the album are in mono, however. The master tape also includes a rejected take of an unidentif…

Following the stream of time and the dances of Kâli, the successive incarnations of Bindu, more a crew, sailing, outward bound, an elective community of musicians, than a defined group of people, divulge the logbook of navigation by Hamid Drake. A logbook of boarding sounds, which is not written but delimits and unlimits the narrative space where the drummer and percussionist freely circulate......The third Bindu, dedicated to a rapprochement between “jazz” and “reggae” – neither a recording of …

The NNCK are a mysterious bunch. Their ethos seem to be staunchly anti-corporate (or at least, not at all sales driven) as they have no website, low, hard to find pressings of their records, cryptic cover art, and well, cryptic everything. I have no idea who plays on the 6 records of theirs I have (though I assume all the naked men played on the Ken's Electric Lake 2xLP). Aside from that unnecessarily revealing picture, NNCK are a faceless collective of strange, otherworldly, free, avant noise w…

Ground breaking reissue: numbered and limited lavishly packaged 2 X LP + 18 Page Booklet + Hand Written Liner Notes from Bobby Beausoleil + Unreleased Material. "The tales of Charles Manson and his family have been recounted from those who lived it, those who witnessed it, and those who were victimized by it. Deep within the sociopathic tendencies of a man who was abandoned by his blood family and left to rot on the streets and within the U.S. prison system during his youth, there laid a child f…

CONTACT  is made of a DVD filmed during the October 20th 2004 concert at IRCAM (Paris, France) and of a CD recorded in Berkeley (California, USA) on October 13th and 14th 2002. "David Wessel, despite whatever label on can attach to his music, is very familiar with the musical object commonly called jazz (never mind the name we give to this music which is both one and multiple, pushing the limits of its frontiers, the importance being that it exists, whatever the label). He has also played with G…

Back in stock. 'It is an album that Otomo Yoshihide arrange & produce the tune of hachidai nakamura who is the great composer (he made the base of popsong of Japan.) The vocalist is Yuki Saga. Backing musicians are the member of the ONJO etc 'All songs composed by Hachidai Nakamura. Lyrics by Rokusuke Ei, Hachidai Nakamura, Naomi Kodaira, Rokuro Yanai, Michio Yamagami and Tokiko Iwatani. Yuki Saga: vocals, mellophone, field recording. Otomo Yoshihide: electric guitar, banjo-guitar, sound collage…

"Sonore (Brotzmann/Gustafsson/Vandermark) release their 3rd album, a double cd for Okka. Recorded at the Loft in Cologne both in concert and "in the studio" during December 2008, this album contains 22 pieces of Improvised Music that run the gamut of expressive energy and melodic power, as well as a composition by Brötzmann and Jimmy Giuffre. A thorough and exciting statement about where this trio was then and is heading now."-Ken Vandermark website

To achieve the age of 80 is an accomplishment. To achieve the age of 80 as a saxophone player, still at the top of the game, is something else again. In march of 2009, Chicago legend Fred Anderson finished up a week of celebration in honor of his 80th at his own Velvet Lounge with this special quintet, and Delmark records was there to record it. Fred was joined by longtime bassist Harrison Bankhead, Chad Taylor on drums (Hamid Drake was unable to get back to Chicago in time), Jeff Parker on guit…

TRANSATLANTIC VISIONS is the live recording of the Vision Festival XIII concert (New-York, June 2008), which has been awarded "Best Performance of the Year" by the monthly magazine All About Jazz NY. 

Recorded at The Teatro Cilak, 1/23//1978, Milan Italy - Sun Ra: piano, organ, Moog, Crumar Mainman, vocals - John Gilmore: tenor sax, drums, vocals - Luqman Ali: drums, vocals - Michael Ray: trumpet, vocals. In the winter months of 1977-1978, philosopher, pianist and bandleader Sun Ra was in Italy. The Italian tour resulted in releases on Sun Ra's own Saturn label, all of which have long been out of print and all but impossible to find. With the re-release of Disco 3000, one of the most celebrat…

TANKJ is a studio project from the drummer Jean-Noël Cognard. He try to gather musicians from different musical origins. Serge Adam on trumpet. Jérome Noetinger on electroacoustic devices and tape recorder. Titus Oppmann on doublebass. Jean-Noël Cognard on drums. Free, dynamic and full of accidents ! Recorded and mixed by Thierry Müller. Cover art by Jörg Morning. Limited to 300 copies.

In the album notes to Trespass Trio's "...was there to illuminate the night sky...", saxophonist Martin Kÿchen provides a colorful yet somewhat fragmented essay, regarding the evisceration of society, partly tied into the Iraq war and the everlasting Israel-Palestine conflict. He sets the stage for a life force panorama, iterated through the power of music that casts a dour or ominous state of affairs. Recorded in Norway, the Scandinavian trio exercises some bloodletting here. The injustices of …

Unreleased free jazz from Japan in its prime, recorded live in Tokyo in 1971. Mototeru Takagi already released two beautiful duo LPs back then with master Japanese drummers like Masahiko Togashi (Isolation) and Toshi Tsuchitori (Origination), so this last DLP is complete in a sense the set of duo recorded with the best, 1st generation, free music drummers from Japan. On the other side it's complete also, the duo recorded by Sabu with the greatest reeds player from Japan (still of the 1st generat…

A Meeting in Chicago finds Ken Vandermark teamed up with one of his early personal influences, brass and reedsman Joe McPhee, with frequent Vandermark collaborator, bassist Kent Kessler, rounding out the date. The recording took place on Valentine's Day, 1996 and was originally issued on 8th Day Musics in the summer of 1997; Chicago jazz and improvised music label Okkadisk reissued it the following year. Both McPhee and Vandermark use a number of instruments from the reed and brass famili…

This is a new trio featuring Peter Broetzmann (A-clarinet/tarogato-alto/tenor & bass saxophone), Mats Gustafsson (tenor & baritone saxophone), Ken Vandermark (B-flat-clarinet - tenor & baritone Saxophone). Recorded live at the LOFT in Köln Oct. '03. 7 improvised pieces.

Baritone player Steve Baczkoski hails from Buffalo, rides his bike to gigs with his horn on his back (it's a baritone for Christ's sake!), and wails harder than most sax players either 1/2 or double his age or anywhere in between. This is a live recording of a this trio's first show, May 31st, 2003.

The first documentation of this important free improvising group, featuring Roger Baird, Billy Bang, Malik Baraka, Daniel Carter, William Parker, and Herb Kahn. Existing during the heyday of NYC's Loft Scene, their name has often been cited as a crucial stage in the development of its members -- the seeds of such current ensembles as Other Dimensions In Music and Test can be found here -- but their singular music has gone largely unheard, save by those who were present at their concerts. This CD…

The duo is back with a mini album, 4 tracks and 20 minutes of music recorded live when Smalltown celebrated its 10 year anniversary in Oslo in February 2004. As with their debut album Gustafsson & Nilssen-Love`s punkrock roots are highly visible & the musical expression is an explosion of energy created by breath & muscles. ÒSplatterÓ is raw power that brings to mind the the wild & beautiful days of Albert Ayler and Peter Brotzmann`s Machine Gun session.

Personnel includes: Fela Kuti (vocals, soprano saxophone, electric piano, organ); Laspalmer Ojeah (guitar); Femi Kuti (alto saxophone); Oyinade Adeniran (tenor saxiphone); Tajudeen Amimashaun, Achampong (baritone saxophone); Moses Sobo Wale, Akameah (trumpet); Dele Soshimi (keyboards); Lamtey (drums); Benjamin (congas). Producer: Fela Kuti. Reissue producer: Jean-Pierre Haie. Recorded live in Amsterdam, The Netherlands on November 28, 1983. Includes liner notes by Jacqueline Grandchamp-Thiam, Ri…

Few albums have been more accurately titled. Though Kyle Bruckmann (oboe, English horn) and Ernst Karel (trumpet) come from acoustic backgrounds, analogue electronics dominate these five pieces, creating what Gino Robair termed "voltage made audible." The duo manages their modular synthesizers the old-school way—"by twisting knobs, flipping switches, yanking patch cords in and out, and sometimes using their own fingers as conductors between cables and instruments," as Bill Meyer describes in Dus…

This recording is from a concert during the early 1970's. there is no further informaiton on this recording except that the original reel tape was labeled "Spacemaster Concert." June Tyson recites "The Shadows Took Shape" a Sun Ra poem never heard or seen until now.

Vol. One in Transparency's new audio series of super-high-quality live performances. This one is 3 solid hrs of the Arkestra live at Myron's Ballroom in downtown Los Angeles, April 2 1981. They hadn't played in L.A. for ten years & therefore are FIRED UP!

Lost Reel Collection Vol. 4. Recently discovered rehearsal tapes believed to have been recorded in the San Francisco area in December 1974. Identified (by ear) in the session are Sun Ra, John Gilmore, Marshall Allen, Danny Ray Thompson, James Jacson, Damon Choice, Akh Tal Ebah, Eloe Omoe, Clifford Jarvis, Dale Williams, and others.

Vol.1 in a new series entitled "The Lost Reel Collection." 2-CD set of the Arkestra playing live in a SF warehouse in '71, & a lecture by Ra from his legendary residency at UC Berkeley. This is a Sun Ra album like no other!

As with the transformations brought about by recording facilities,this CD features a shift of emphasis from real time performance to the consideration of various stages and assorted sources in sound  production as valid ingredients. The use of synthetic or processed fibers, thus prompts new behaviours -give, grain/counter grain- in the fabrics obtained.

Electroacoustic trio weaving sampled and live sounds as part of a single continuum, encompassing a rich range of sonorities. The outlook, featuring oriental timbres and recalling contemporary music conceptions, unfolds in slow circular sequences that, nevertheless, create a narrative thread. Their poetics proposes a deceiving play on mirrors, the instrumental roles dismantled through that very multiplying of reflections, the sound quality creating an endless kaleidoscopic impression of elusive d…

This 1998 date featured British saxophone and improvisation deity Evan Parker with Copenhagen's Ghost-in-the-Machine trio and Martin Klapper on electronics. This traditional quartet -- saxophones, bass, drums, and piano -- added Klapper to extend the sonic possibilities of all the instruments, which were amplified by microphones. The results are studies more in texture, atmospherics, and sonic constructions than they are in spontaneous composition.

49 minutes of gooey new goodness spread over just three tracks! From the same tattered coven of piss drinkers who alternately refer to themselves as ANAKSIMANDROS comes this. These fumbling Finns conjure a smoky, shit-drunk forest of noise, folk & unsurpassable tribal improv.. a delicious Ya ho wha 13 soup with a spicy, burnt Amon Duul crust. Oh so highly recommended. Gueast vocals via TARA BURKE aka FURSAXA.

First release on Second Layer Records. Real-time improvisations to be played at maximum volume. Recorded at Eastcote Studios, London May 2008. Mastered by Tommi Keranen. Evan Parker : tenor, soprano saxophone. John Wiese : electronics, tape, MSP. First edition of 1000 copies.