Jazz /
Klotski
On Klotski, Lao Dan Quartet throws tenor, bamboo flute and suona into a Chicago crucible, where Mabel Kwan, Joshua Abrams and Michael Zerang keep reshaping time and texture until free jazz feels like a sliding puzzle in permanent motion.
Open Sky Unit
Open Sky Unit capture a warm‑blooded corner of 1970s Belgian jazz where a family of musicians stretches soul songs into jazz‑funk sermons, turning a small Liège club into a glowing, rough‑edged sanctuary.
Circumstantial
On Circumstantial, Ira Sullivan returns to Chicago after fourteen years away, sounding both relaxed and razor‑sharp as he trades easy, hard‑won wisdom with a seasoned hometown rhythm section and a fiery young guitarist at his side.
Procession of the Great Ancestry
On Procession of the Great Ancestry, Wadada Leo Smith threads trumpet history and civil rights struggle into a lean, glowing suite where dedications to Davis, Gillespie, Little and Eldridge sit alongside blues testifying and a closing hymn for Martin Luther King Jr.
Spirit Catcher
On Spirit Catcher, Wadada Leo Smith moves between luminous small‑group ritual and radical chamber experiment, setting airy trumpet-and-vibes lyricism against the austere blaze of a muted horn surrounded by three harps.
Generation
On Generation, Hal Russell’s NRG Ensemble collides with Charles Tyler to turbo‑charge its already volatile chemistry, turning multi‑author charts into a raucous, shape‑shifting suite of free‑jazz blowouts, sly grooves and side‑eyed melody.
Hal Russell NRG Ensemble
On their 1981 debut, NRG Ensemble, Hal Russell and his much younger bandmates detonate a joyous, combustible mix of free jazz, skewed swing and dada humour, turning multi-instrumental chaos into a sharply etched group identity.
Ride The Wind
On Ride The Wind, Roscoe Mitchell scales up the chamber‑like intensity of his Conversations work, setting it inside a 20‑piece Montreal–Toronto ensemble that treats his textures as weather systems to move through, reshape and suddenly ignite.
Four Ways
On Four Ways, Roscoe Mitchell joins Stephen Rush’s shape-shifting Yuganaut trio for an electrically unstable encounter, where reeds, synths and oddball acoustics melt into one long, multi-hued improvising organism.
Celebrating Fred Anderson
On Celebrating Fred Anderson, Roscoe Mitchell honors a fellow Chicago giant with a live quartet that turns remembrance into motion, weaving Fred’s themes and Mitchell’s originals into long, tensile arcs of chant, swing and open-form ritual.
Before There Was Sound
On Before There Was Sound, Roscoe Mitchell’s 1965 quartet with Fred Berry, Malachi Favors and Alvin Fielder captures the AACM language in embryo: sharp themes, free rhythm and a restless sense of form already pushing past hard‑bop borders.
Old / Quartet Sessions
On Old/Quartet Sessions, Roscoe Mitchell’s 1967 Art Ensemble - with Lester Bowie, Malachi Favors and Phillip Wilson - appears in raw formation, sketching the grammar that would soon detonate as one of free music’s most inventive bands.
N.Y.C.
One of the most distinctive and influential instrumental ensembles of the 1980s, Steps Ahead injected urgently needed vitality into a stagnating fusion landscape with their own brand of intelligent, living jazz. With N.Y.C., their debut for Intuition, the group returned in an electrifying new incarnation and with a dynamically reimagined sound.
Co-founder Mike Mainieri assembled a constellation of seasoned virtuosos for this session: drummer Steve Smith (known for his work with Journey and his o…
Sueño
Eddie Palmieri stands among the most influential pianists and arrangers in salsa and Latin jazz history. His singular voice fuses the rhythmic urgency of his Puerto Rican roots with the harmonic sophistication of jazz visionaries like Thelonious Monk, Herbie Hancock, and McCoy Tyner. Since founding La Perfecta in 1961 - a radical ensemble built on trombones rather than trumpets - Palmieri has consistently redefined the boundaries between jazz and Afro-Caribbean music.
Released in 1989 and produc…
Snurdy McGurdy And Her Dancin' Shoes
On Snurdy McGur dy and Her Dancin’ Shoes, Roscoe Mitchell launches the Sound Ensemble with a volatile mix of abstraction and groove, folding AACM rigor into slyly funky frameworks that keep tilting from tight forms into open risk.
L-R-G / The Maze / S II Examples
On LRG/The Maze/S II Examples, Roscoe Mitchell frames three radically different constructions - a lucid brass-and-reeds trio, a labyrinthine percussion octet and a stark soprano solo - as parallel studies in space, timbre and compositional intelligence.
Nonaah
On Nonaah, Roscoe Mitchell turns the alto saxophone into a fault line, setting stark solos, prickly duets and dense small‑group pieces against one another to test how far a single composition and a single sound can be stretched.
Congliptious
On Congliptious, Roscoe Mitchell strips the Art Ensemble idea to its bones, pairing stark solo showcases with a fierce quartet blowout that makes freedom feel both methodical and combustible.
All Music
Recorded in Chicago in 1976, All Music catches Warne Marsh in lucid, late-middle form: a cool-toned tenor moving with dry wit and quiet daring through Tristano-school material, buoyed by Lou Levy, Fred Atwood and Jake Hanna’s alert swing.
Searching
*2026 repress* Searching was self-recorded in Ronald’s living room on a 4-Track Tape Recorder in 1984. The recordings symbolise his engagement to cross-over everything that was known to him musically at that time. Most importantly, all recordings reflect his personal way of searching; searching for his own characteristic sound. Rhythmical patterns meet well balanced distortion, shaping the music into a mirror of his character. He was part of several Dutch Latin and Jazz bands, including Cascada …