Jazz /
I Love It When You Snore
Mats Gustafsson is perhaps the pre-eminent saxophonist of this post-free jazz/improv era. A perfect combination of Peter Brotzmann's fiery passion, Evan Parker's extended technique and Ken Vandermark's willingness to explode genre boundaries, Gustafsson's discography spans over two decades and sports numerous must-hear recordings with a long laundry list of collaborators, including such luminaries as Brotzmann, Vandermark, Joe McPhee, Jim O'Rourke, Derek Bailey, Sonic Youth and The Ex. Illustrio…
New Sights, Old Sounds
A much-needed reissue of Derek Bailey's 1978 2-CD Japanese release on the Morgue label, the first disc a series of studio improvisations and the second presenting two live performances in Nagoya and Kalavinka.Recorded and originally issued in Japan in 1978, the contents of this two-disc set quickly became something of a collector's item as the album quickly went out of print. Happily, the master tapes were reacquired for release on Incus in 2002, providing further documentation of a rich portion…
The sacrifice for the music became our lifestyle
Chris Abrahams, upright piano. Kai Fagaschinski, b-flat clarinet. Cover painting & sleeve design by Zev Langer. How do you run a duo when both of its protagonists are living at two opposite ends of the planet ? Well, it's not that dramatic. For many years Chris has used his European tours as a springboard for extended stays in Kai's hometown of choice, Berlin. After appreciating each other's work for quite a while they began collaborating at a friend's piano-armed kitchen in 2007. While C…
The Nearer the Bone, the Sweeter the Meat
180 gram vinyl, originally released in 1979 on the FMP label. Peter Brötzmann on soprano, alto, tenor saxophone, clarinet, bass clarinet; Harry Miller on double bass, and Louis Moholo on drums. Recorded by Jost Gebers on August 27th, 1979 at the FMP-Studio in Berlin. Produced by Peter Brötzmann and Jost Gebers.
"Brötzmann is a musician of character, who has been blazing his own trail for several years now, and it's true to say that he and his companions have created their own musical environment…
Schwarzwaldfahrt
180 gram vinyl reissue of this LP, originally released by FMP in 1977. Peter Brötzmann and Han Bennink -- e-flat clarinet, b-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, soprano saxophone, alto saxophone, birdcalls, viola, banjo, cymbals, wood, trees, sand, land, water, air. Recorded open air on a Stellavox recorder by Peter Brötzmann and Han Bennink from May 9th to 11th, 1977 in the Black Forest near Aufen and the Schwarzenbach Talsperre. Produced by Peter Brötzmann and Jost Gebers.
Hunting the Snake
2012 repress, originally issued pre-9/11. "Astounding 1975 Radio Bremen session from Germany -- never before released, by one of the greatest working bands in the history of European improvised music is offered for your consideration on Hunting The Snake. How can you lose? This all-star ensemble features Alexander von Schlippenbach on piano, Evan Parker on saxophones, Peter Kowald on bass, and Paul Lovens on drums and singing saw. A brilliant, previously unreleased 77 minute program fr…
Waterkil
After meeting for the first time in Beirut during the Irtijal Festival 2006, Axel Dörner and Jassem Hindi had their first musical collaborationin Switzerland two years later in 2008. From that time on they have regularly performed as a duo on different occasions.The music of the duo is electroacoustic music with trumpet and electronics, both musicians using their musical equipment and systems in an unusual way, developing their own techniques of sound creation.They are interested in explorin…
Real Time One
This CD presents a live recording by three outstanding musicians recorded in 1977. Centazzo had collaborated both with Alvin Curran in duo and with Evan Parker in duo, trio and sextet before this recording.
Alvin Curran, American composer living in Rome, member of the Ensemble Musica Elettronica Viva (along with Fredrick Rzewski, Steve Lacy, Richard Teitelbaum a.o.) was related to the post-cagean school and to the improvised music.
Evan Parker, English, coming from the tradition of jazz, …
Moonish
The tempered tonalities of Abraham's piano mesh with the atonalities of Brown's prepared guitar and utensils. Through concentrated listening and the implementation of conventional and extended instrumental techniques the resultant tones and textures pull at and morph into each other creating a mysterious sonic world, half here, half there. With combined extensive histories in jazz, improvisation, pop and rock music Chris Abrahams and David Brown together are: 'culture of un'.
Outwash
Angharad Davies (violin), Tisha Mukarji (inside piano) & Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga (zither). Three great trio improvisations recorded in December 2011 at a church in the City of London. Beautiful, spacious, yet at times tense music.
Unbalanced In (Unbalanced Out)
Unbalanced Out (Unbalanced In)'. A powerful, challenging 50-minute collaborative piece constructed over a year through file-sharing by a sextet of leading musicians across the world, with Barry Chabala (USA, guitar), Bonnie Jones (USA/Korea, electronics), Louisa Martin (UK, laptop), Tisha Mukarji (Germany, piano), Toshi Nakamura (Japan, no-input mixing board) and Gabriel Paiuk (Argentina, piano)
Improvisation
The godfather of improvisational guitar, Derek Bailey’s praises have been sung far and wide by everyone from Pat Metheny to Karlheinz Stockhausen for having revolutionized the way the instrument was played over the last half of the twentieth century. Although fans are often frustrated by the low-fidelity of his earlier recordings, this 1975 LP (originally released on the Italian avant-garde label, Cramps), stands out in that regard. Recorded in an actual studio (unlike most of his early work) in…
Stockholm, Berlin 1966
Hard to believe that this far down the line there would still be unreleased recordings of Albert Ayler, never mind a full live set from the apex of his reign, the glorious 1966 tour of Europe, so I nearly did a double take when I first saw this title listed. The Berlin set which the CD is bundled with turned up in lesser fidelity and in the incorrect order on Revenant’s disputed Ayler box, but the Stockholm set has never even been booted and both receive their first release fully authorised by t…
It's Not A Fear Of Falling, It's A Fear Of Landing
restocked, sold out at source....Astonishing debut LP by percussionist Ben Hall (Graveyards/Broken Research) and violinist Mike Khoury (Graveyards, Faruq Z. Bey Northwood Improvisers). 'It's not a fear of falling, it's a fear of landing' is simply one of the wildest works of free music we got the chance to experience in recent times.Khoury emits ribbons of lyrical, stream of-consciousness violin playing, alternately letting his notes really hang, or focusing on small, scratchy sounds or di…
Echtzeitmusik Berlin
This compilation of Echtzeitmusik Berlin has been assembled and designed to become a companion to the book of the same title published in 2011 by Wolke Verlag, which reflects on a multilayered phenomenon within Berlin's musical culture, a phenomenon whose influence and meaning has effects that extend far beyond Berlin itself. Having emerged in the open spaces of the city's east side after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and rooted in a cultural coordinate system made up of squats and free im…
Chantier 1
An extraordinary document of an experiment in which three improvisers - Pascal Battus (rotating surfaces and found objects), Bertrand Gauguet (saxophones) and Eric La Casa (microphones) - played at a working building site in Paris, adapting their playing to integrate the sounds and gestures of the workers at the site.
In The Mouth - A Hand
Rune Grammofon presents the third album from Swedish trio Fire! -- something of a supergroup with members from already well-known projects. And again, it's a collaboration, this time with the extraordinary and prolific guitarist Oren Ambarchi. With their heavy, hypnotic, psychedelic rock'n'jazz explorations, they have carved out a different sound than any of the groups they are normally associated with. Sax player, improviser, composer and fervent record collector Mats Gustafsson is proba…
Father of Origin
Deep archeology into a long buried and previously undocumented chapter in the history of the early '70s loft era brings forth the revelatory Father of Origin, Eremite's box set retrospective of percussionist/bassist Juma Sultan's Aboriginal Music Society. Drawn from Sultan's mammoth private archive of recordings, this ground-breaking set includes two audiophile LPs and a CD, a 28 page 12x12' book featuring previously unpublished photographs and ephemera and a detailed historical essay by jazz sc…
Real Time Two
Recorded live in concert. Rome, Italy December 12-13, 1977 by Nicola Bernardini and at Teatro Comunale, Pistoia, Italy December 14, 1977 by Carla Lugli Originally released as Real Time – ICTUS LP 006 and as CD on Ictus Reissue Series #4 including never released before tracks and Real Time Two ICTUS Reissue Series #8 CD except #6 * un-issued All Tracks Digitally Re-Mastered and Edited By Andrea Centazzo 2005 About: It has been a pleasure finding recently in the ICTUS archive two tracks from…
Freedom Of Speech
The second album of the Phantom Band is quite different to the predecessor. The line-up features the spoken word performer Sheldon Ancel on the microphone instead of bass player Rosko Gee. Whilst the debut album revealed many Caribbean or African influences and a generally positive frame of mind, "Freedom of Speech" is a somewhat darker avant-garde rock manifesto, interspersed with individual dub or reggae pieces. All they have in common are Jaki Liebezeit's inimitable monotone polyrhythm…