Jazz /
Anna Högberg Attack
Swedish sax player Anna Högberg's all-female sextet Attack's debut album is one of the most expected releases this year. Attack premiered in the 2013 edition of the Stockholm Jazz Festival and since then its performances gained praises all over, including a heartfelt endorsement from Högberg role-model, sax-titan Mats Gustafsson, who promises that Högberg’s Attack will “melt your brain as we know it”. Attack features Högberg (who plays also on Gustafsson’s Fire! Orchestra, guested in The T…
Winged Body
This album is about a way to simply make raw, basic, natural and joyful music. This album is also about and with the Swedish saxophone visionary Bengt Nordström, ”Frippe” who first of all talked to me about making and playing natural music. The legend of Bengt Nordström (1936-2000) tells how he picked up the clarinet and the saxophone after being deeply touched by the music of Tony Scott and Sonny Rollins. Then meeting Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler changed his musical vision; so much tha…
If You Have Time
NY saxophonist and pocket trumpeter Joe McPhee meets Turkish free-improv group KonstruKt, who have collaborated with Evan Parker, Marshall Allen and Peter Brotzmann, for these incredible sessions mixing jazz, traditional instrumentation, and electronics.“Thirty years ago while on a plane waiting for takeoff, the pilot came on the intercom extolling the technical marvels of his new jetliner and reciting a poem about the wonders of fight. I can’t recall the title of the poem or its author but thes…
Steam In The Casa
Frode Gjerstad, alto saxophone, Bb clarinet. Jon Rune Strøm, double bass. Paal Nilssen-Love, drums & percussion. Recorded live in concert at Casa del Popolo, Montreal, Canada on the 27th of November 2015 by Mathieu Bélanger. Mixed and mastered by Frode Gjerstad. Photos by Petra Cvelbar. Cover design by Lasse Marhaug. Produced by Frode Gjerstad Trio.'Frode Gjerstad and Paal Nilssen-Love collaboration goes back to 1992 when Paal joined Frode's Circulasione Totale Orchestra as their second drummer.…
On The Beach
**2016 small repress** Long sought after reissue of this 1967 avant-populist Chicago jazz classic. Includes 2 tracks never before released on vinyl. Phil Cohran is one of America’s resounding jazz survivors. In the late 50s he was introduced into the fold of Sun Ra’s legendary Arkestra, but it is with his own ‘Artistic Heritage Ensemble’ that he really made his name. This record (usually referred to as ‘On the Beach’) is where his virtuoso skill really stands out, and his steadfast desire to cre…
Desert Fairy Princess
One of our favorite records ever on the legendary Nimbus label – a special home to spiritual jazz on the west coast at the end of the 70s – and crucial for giving us some really unique talents like this! Adele Sebastian may have only ever cut this one album as a leader, but she's a hell of a flute player with a very deep, spiritual vibe – these sublime lines that soar and stretch out over modal rhythms – played by a totally hip group that includes Rickey Kelley on vibes, Roberto Miranda on bass,…
Ritual
Gatefold double LP version. Includes CD. Fire! Orchestra follow their acclaimed 2014 album Enter (RCD 2158CD/RLP 3158LP) with Ritual, slimming the ensemble down from 28 of northern Europe's finest jazz and improvisational musicians to a mere 21. Since the release of Enter, this energetic and dynamic mass ensemble has gone from intimate jazz settings to the main hall at the Molde International Jazz Festival and a major stage at the prestigious Roskilde Festival. As brilliant as Enter is, wit…
The Saturn Singles Vol.2: 1954 - 1958
Herman Poole Blount, better known to the world as Sun Ra, lived more musical lives in his 79 years on this planet (and others) than seems possible. In the '30s he was the most rigorous bandleader in Birmingham, heading the Sonny Blount Orchestra and filling every waking moment with music or philosophical discussions; by the '40s he had moved to Chicago and performed with luminaries such as Wynonie Harris, Fletcher Henderson, and Coleman Hawkins. By the '50s he had changed his name to Sun Ra…
Ultraviolet
Nick Mazzarella is a singular voice in a late generation of free jazz formalists. The 31-year-old devotee of the alto saxophone spends days in a shop repairing woodwinds and nights playing gigs at diverse venues across the Chicago jazz and improvised music scene. In less than a decade, working with the likes of Rob Mazurek, Dana Hall, Ken Vandermark and The Eternals, he has quickly established himself as a vital contributor to the city’s creative music lineage. Far from just a sideman, Mazzarell…
Get Dressed
Lead single from Jeff Parker's forthcoming full-length International Anthem release The New Breed. Released digitally and on limited 7" phonograph flexi disc with gold foil titles and glossy photo print of Ernie Parker and friends.
Jeff Parker is an American jazz and rock guitarist based in Los Angeles. Parker is best known as an experimental musician, working with avant-garde electronic, rock, and improvisational groups. Parker currently plays guitar in the post-rock group Tortoise and also was…
In Some Far Place: Roma '77
1977 was a transitional time for jazz enigma and self-proclaimed member of an “angel race“, Sun Ra. During the Summer of 1976, he had stormed Montreux and toured West Africa with one of the greatest of his full-sized Arkestras before embarking on occasional solo concerts for the first time, emphasising his prowess at the piano. Although he had always played the blues within Arkestra sets, he now summoned up the rolling tradition of blues piano, recalling Otis Spann, Avery Parrish, stride and ric…
social insects
Two new releases by Jonas Kocher’s Flexion label, and those releases can be had for the exchange of money, other CDs, books, bottle of wine, postcards etc. The first of these is not by Kocher himself but by two friends, the duo of one Hans Koch on bass clarinet and Gaudenz Badrutt on electronics – whatever that may consist of these days (laptop, stomp boxes, synths, electrical connections) cooking up some radical improvised music. Not radical in the sense of things being very loud or very soft, …
Live At Jazzwerkstatt Peitz
This performance from May 2014 was the opening concert at Jazzwerkstatt 51, given by Charles Gayle (tenor saxophone, piano), William Parker (double bass) and Hamid Drake (drums) in the Stüler Church, Peitz, Germany. The concert was dedicated “In Memoriam Peter Kowald”, the German bassist who died in 2002 and lived in New York for almost the last two decades of his life. Gayle and Parker were among his earliest musical associates in the city, as seen in the film Rising Tones Cross (full of now fa…
Double Trouble Live
One of the highlights of the EFG London Jazz Festival programme at The Vortex was a late night performance by Double Trouble, a quartet led by the Berlin based saxophonist and composer Peter Ehwald. Ehwald is probably best known to UK jazz audiences as a member of the Anglo-German group Paragon featuring Ehwald’s compatriot Matthias Nowak on double bass plus the British contingent of pianist Arthur Lea and drummer Jon Scott. Both of Paragon’s albums “Quarterlife Crisis” (2010) and “Cerca” (2014)…
Pink Elephant
"Don't think of the pink elephant! One is aware of this phenomenon, the 'pink elephant effect': If one makes an effort not to think of it, he will undoubtedly appear in one's head. This 'ban to think' is doomed to fail. Whenever we play this tune, he immediately pops up in my head. He looks a bit like Dumbo - a surreal, friendly free jazz-elephant, transparent like a soap bubble, happily hooting about, sporting big ears. And he can fly. In a multi-dimensional space a pink elephant is dancing alo…
Songlines
Peter Brotzmann, Tenor Saxophone, Alto Saxophone, Tarogato. Fred Hopkins, Double Bass. Rashied Ali, Drums. Recorded by Holger Scheuermann, Jost Gebers, October 30th and 31st, in Berlin, 1991. First released on FMP as FMP CD 53.'In perhaps the most understated performance of his entire career, German saxophone giant Peter Brötzmann played in a trio with American free jazz legends Fred Hopkins and Rashied Ali back in 1991 at the now mythical Total Music Meeting. () Brötzmann appears to have been i…
Free and Loose
*2022 stock* A rare bit of 'early' free jazz from Italy – featuring a group led by soprano/tenor sax player Eraldo Volontè, and featuring trumpet, trombone, drums, and a piano-less double-bass rhythm team that gives the record a really unique sound! At some level, the feeling of the material is like ESP avant jamming – except for the fact that the freedom of the players is also firmly tethered to an ability to swing, as one of the bassists always seems to be working the rhythm, even when the oth…
The Saturn Single Vol.1: 1954 - 1958
Herman Poole Blount, better known to the world as Sun Ra, lived more musical lives in his 79 years on this planet (and others) than seems possible. In the 30s he was the most rigorous bandleader in Birmingham, heading the Sonny Blount Orchestra and filling every waking moment with music or philosophical discussions, by the 40s he had moved to Chicago and performed with luminaries such as Wynonie Harris, Fletcher Henderson, and Coleman Hawkins. By the 50s he had changed his name to Sun Ra …
Pianology
Masahiko Satoh’s fourth album is a duet with German pianist and composer Wolfgang Dauner. Dauner is one of very early European avant-garde jazz pianists, and he recorded the first free jazz album in Germany back in 1964. Dauner played with Eberhard Weber and Jean-Luc Ponty, and in the late 60s, he experimented with choral music. Being a passionate innovator and experimenter, in 1970 he discovered electronic devices and started using them in his music. He experimented with ring-modulated Hohner c…
Stan's Hat Flapping in the Wind
"Stan's Hat Flapping In The Wind features work from one of the jazz avant-garde's most heralded figures, presented in one of the most traditional of forms. 19 new songs composed by William Parker, and performed by singer Lisa Sokolov & pianist Cooper-Moore. Parker is -- among his many great talents -- a master of evocative song-craft, as readily evidenced on Corn Meal Dance (AUM043, 2007), and the very recently released Great Spirit (AUM098, 2015), by his Raining On The Moon ensemble. The compos…