Jazz /
Live At Blå
First live document and fourth album overall from a band that mixes free jazz ecstasy with garage rock intensity. Even with no electricity, they make a hell of a noise and the album is an explosion of energy. Recorded at the Bla in Oslo.
Garage
Smalltown Supersound's "Superjazz" offshoot delivers this much-discussed darkcore jazz fusion album led by sometime sonic youth collaborator Mats Gustafsson, here rummaging through improvs and cover versions like a garage band picking up trumpets, double bass and drums for their heavily skewed but massively charming workouts. Sticking a hairy a tongue out at the polished slickness of the Bad Plus, The Thing offer up cover versions of tracks by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The White Stripes and Peter Bro…
Action Jazz
The Thing pretty much tore my living room to shreds on the release of their last album 'Garage' with its rock 'n roll take on free jazz. Their rendition of the Yeah Yeah Yeah's 'Art Star' especially defined their sound perfectly with a distinctly punk rock ethic applied to what to most sounds like truly out-there jazz. It's hardly surprising that the band is made up of Norwegians then, the country that has birthed some of the most continuously exciting free jazz to date and continues to with lab…
Masada Anniversary Edition, Vol. 4: Masada Recital
*In process of stocking. 2022 stock.* Masada 10th Anniversary Edition Vol. 4. Performed by: Mark Feldman (violin), Sylvie Courvoisier (piano). Virtuosic fireworks and heartfelt lyricism from two of the most amazing musicians in new music. Performing a dozen compositions from the vast Masada repertory, including the world premiere of a piece never before performed, Masada Recital is another new interpretation of the now classic book of compositions expanding on the Jewish tradition.
More Nipples
One of the great archaeological finds of recent years: Three lost tracks from the Nipples sessions. Dateline: Germany, 1969. The legendary lineup: Peter Brötzmann and Evan Parker (saxophones), Derek Bailey (guitar), Fred Van Hove (piano), Buschi Niebergall (bass), Han Bennink (drums). Over the course of two long studio sessions, Peter Brötzmann assembled one of the masterpieces of free jazz from Europe, Nipples, which was reissued by the Unheard Music Series in 2000. Brötzmann has always mention…
Fragments
180-gram vinyl limited edition LP. This LP was recorded live Dec. 2 1989 at the Elbo Room in Chicago. Numbered limited edition of 1000 copies. Guitar/sax duets.
Brewery Tap
Brewery Tap is the duo of free jazz saxophonist Evan Parker & Norwegian bassist Ingebrigt Haker Flaten. The recordings on this disc was recorded live at Oslo Jazzfestival the 13th of August 2007 at the Belleville venue.
Tomorrow Came Today
Tenor saxophonist (and occasional trumpeter) Joe McPhee has been a firebrand presence on the American and European avant-garde jazz scenes since the 1970's, while Paal Nilssen-Love is a free jazz drummer from Norway, about half McPhee's age. Yet each is perfectly in tune with the other on Tomorrow Came Today, a high-energy session of freely improvised jazz. Tomorrow Came Today is less about theme-solos-theme, and more about spontaneity, unfettered freedom, and collective interplay. It's likely t…
1984
New CD issue of this classic album, with bonus track and improved sound (previously issued by Mantra). Upon it's original release, 1984, with it's unusual combination of lengthy abstract sound-journeys and short, weirdly devolved James Brown-inspired pieces, gained much critical acclaim. 1984 was an extremely unusual release for 1973 and an extremely unusual project for CBS Records, who first released it. Like the groundbreaking novel after which it was named, Hopper's record was truly ahead of …
On The Beach
A re-reissue of this classic recording of Philip Cohran and the Artistic Heritage Ensemble. This record has only been previously available in limited quantities and is back in print now due to the collaborative efforts of Kelan Zulu productions and Katalyst Entertainment. This historic recording is the definitive representation of one of the most significant groups of this era in jazz history. With several legendary musicians including guitarist Pete Cosey, percussionist Henry Gibson, Louis Satt…
The Young Cricketer
The Young Cricketer is Chris Corsano's debut of Frankenstein-gamelan skin detail. It's a monster and a babe all wrapped under the guise of The Solo Drum Album. Corsano's flea-market kit of cast-iron pot lids, super-bouncy-balls on sticks, butter knives, and even a sax mouth-piece jammed-in-a-hose conjures a part rhythmic maelstrom, like a Milford Graves drip painting, and the sweet metallic ice drones of Tony Conrad and Keiji Haino rubbing sticks together until end days. Globally known for a doz…
Farmers By Nature
A fully improvised communion of 3 of America's masters of music. The manifest intent: sowing seeds of sound & bringing them to full blossom. Abstract, organic, & fully inviting. Recorded live at NYC's The Stone in June of 2008, this was the 3rd meeting of drummer GERALD CLEAVER, bassist WILLIAM PARKER, & pianist CRAIG TABORN. An immersive experience yielding magic & inducing a calming mystical ambience. Improvising in long, fluid ideas, Mr. Taborn's solos were housewreckers.
Sweetsweat
EXCLUSIVE! Recorded live at Sting Jazzklubb in Norway during the Maijazz Festival in 2006. The godfather of European free-jazz, Peter Brotzmann, is joined by respected Scandinavian percussionist Paal Nilssen-Love to form a musical partnership of rare & beautiful balance.
And Now...
The release of a new album by the Revolutionary Ensemble should come as a shock to many. From their start in the 70's they were a mysterious band. They were one of the first string bands to record free jazz. Graceful yet cutting, the album sounds matured in a way that their output from the 70s didn't. Perhaps it is the improved sound quality, or the time & experience that have filled their playing, but somehow the time apart seems to have cemented the group's focus & direction.
Full Bottle
"It's not a church anymore, it's an ex-church, it's used now for cultural purpose, not for praying and religious madness anymore", those are the exact words some random anxious pedestrian yelled at Chris Corsano and Paul Flaherty, trying to stop them from putting the St. John Renaissance Theater in Louisville, Kentucky on fire, Paul Flaherty used his long grey beard to start the fire and blew as high as he could with a rusted tenor and alto saxophone, the flames went high, but not high enough fo…
Snuff Jazz
The maestros of improv noise (with a big N) with their ferocious album for Agaric from 1988. Some call it jazz, some call it improv, some call it noise. Two saxes (Jim Sauter & Don Dietrich) and one guitar (Donald Miller). Great intensity.
Tarot
This English vibes-player, living in France, recorded in 1971 and 1973 this record with guests like Steve Potts on saxophone, Ken Carter on double-bass and Gilbert Artman on drums. Robert plays an improvised music, close to free-jazz, with a succession of crystalline notes, without melody, or rhythms. Saxophone, drum and bass participate in this maelstrom of sounds. Magnificent album
Cholagogues
Here is an extraordinary excavation from the buried history of improvised music, “Cholagogues” is a re-issue of the LP released by the musicians’ collective label Bead in 1977 and, since then, out of stock. The re-mastered album is composed of a single long rack based on a performance at Action Space in London, 1st of April 1977. The performance, reported to be the first and possibly the last of this trio, was recorded by David Toop on a Sony TC164A cassette tape machine and was created with a v…
Janus
This compilation of rare material from the Sun Ra Arkestra draws from tapes recorded between 1963 and 1970, and the space-age jazz shaman conjures up a variety of styles and moods along the way. A balmy tropical vibe greets the ears with the opener ("Island in the Sun"), but it doesn't take long for Ra to set his controls for the stratosphere, and soon, distorted gongs, haunted house organ, and homemade instruments are exploring African mysticism on the title track. "Velvet" is a more traditiona…
In Egypt
The real gems of this prized reissue from Leo Records's Golden Years vault imprint are two previously unreleased tracks. The first features Sun Ra and his Arkestra on an 18-minute "Watusa" from 1984, and the second features a 13-minute piece by Saleh Ragab's Cairo Free Jazz Ensemble, "Music for Angela Davis," from 1971. It's no surprise Sun Ra loved going to Egypt, what with all the astro-mythology he used in the Arkestra. This love shows brightly on "Egypt Strut" and "Dawn," two Ragab tunes pla…