Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

*2026 stock* Guitarist Sunao Wada spent the seventies as one of the most consistently working figures in Japanese jazz, a player whose tone owed something to Wes Montgomery and Kenny Burrell but whose phrasing carried a particular Japanese weight, more thoughtful than driving. Coco's Blues, an early release on Three Blind Mice, alternates quartet and sextet formations across the programme, and the shift in scale gives the record a real architectural interest. The smaller settings let Wada's line…

*2026 stock* Saxophonist Kenji Mori belongs to the second generation of TBM regulars, a player whose work for the label spans several years and several formats, but whose quartet records have a particularly distilled quality. Firebird fits cleanly into the modal and post-bop tradition that defined the heart of the Three Blind Mice catalogue: heads with real melodic substance, harmonic openness that gives the soloists space without leaving them stranded, and a rhythm section that knows how to kee…

*2026 stock* The pianist Fumio Karashima is best known internationally for his long association with Elvin Jones, having held the piano chair in Jones's working bands for years, a credit that already tells you most of what you need to know about his playing. Gathering, his trio date for Three Blind Mice, is the work of a player who has spent serious time on the bandstand with one of the most demanding drummers in jazz history, and the record's qualities reflect it: a strong rhythmic centre, a le…

*2026 stock* One of the more intimate entries in the Three Blind Mice catalogue: a duo session, with all the exposure and concentrated focus the format implies. Conversation lives up to its title. Two players in close, careful dialogue, with neither voice dominating and neither retreating into accompaniment. The duo format strips a lot of the usual jazz furniture away: there's no rhythm section to lean on, no horn section to fill out the harmony, no place for either player to hide. What's left i…

*2026 stock* A later Sunao Wada session for Three Blind Mice, and one of the more outward-looking records in his TBM run. The quintet-plus-one format brings the saxophonist and flautist Minoru Ikeno alongside Wada's working group, and the addition shifts the music's centre of gravity, opening up the writing to longer tones and more spacious harmonies. There's still plenty of the bluesy swing that runs through Wada's discography, but the textures here are wider: Fender Rhodes lacing through the h…

*2026 stock* An earlier Sunao Wada outing on Three Blind Mice, recorded with both quartet and quintet formations across the programme, and built (as the title suggests) around the blues. But this is blues in the broader, more searching sense the seventies were beginning to articulate: harmonic frames borrowed from soul and modal jazz alongside the standard 12-bar architecture, and an improvising attitude that's more interested in development than display. Wada's guitar carries the writing with t…

The music of Horace Silver is magically presented here by drummer Hideo Shiraki – grooving nicely in the same exotic approach to soul jazz you'd find on Silver's best Blue Note sides of the late 50s! Shiraki's always had a bit of a Jazz Messengers approach in his music – at least at this point in his career – so it's no surprise that he does such a great job with Silver's music – recreating some of the best grooves made famous by Horace at Blue Note, but also bringing a bit of his own flavor to …

On Live at the It Club, Thelonious Monk and his classic quartet - Charlie Rouse, Larry Gales and Ben Riley - burn through two nights of Los Angeles brilliance in 1964, turning familiar originals and standards into angular, swinging explorations now fully restored in a complete edition.

Known for their exhilarating live-to-record albums such as last year's critically acclaimed Wood Blues and Giant Beauty, سماع [Sama'a] (Audition) is the first of two releases that will surface after [Ahmed]’s first studio recording sessions at North London’s The Fish Factory in early 2025. Since 2014, [Ahmed] أحمد have excavated and re-imagined the music of Ahmed Abdul-Malik, in an ever ongoing search for future music. Over a decade on, the group were given the opportunity to set up in the studi…

Sploosh Records presents Monkey Cop by Martín Escalante and Teté Leguía. Suspects: Lolo, Kevin Salkeld, Nicole Remy, Sam Weinberg, Tomas Orrego, Camilo & Alex Ángeles, The Weez. To protect and serve.Martín Escalante: sax violenceTeté Leguía: bass extortionChristian Blandhoel: sketches & coffeeErick Baltodano: mappingJacob Felix Heule: aural schematics

Sploosh presents "Martín Escalante and Eloe Omoe". Art and layout by Ron Regé, Jr. Mastered by John Hegre. Thanks to Skaset. Martín Escalante - SaxSam Rowell - BassTim Leanse - Drums

Sploosh Records presents Ftarri by Riuichi Daijo, Martín Escalante and Yuma Takeshita. Recorded live at Ftarri on 06/08/19. Special thanks to Toshimaru Nakamura. Art and design by Everardo Felipe. Mastered by Skaset. Riuichi Daijo: guitarYuma Takeshita: electro-bassMartín Escalante: sax

Sploosh Records presents Knuttel House by Jun Numata, Martín Esclanate and Yuji Ishihara. Paintings by Aron Briggs Mastered by Skaset. Layout by Nicole Remy. Special thanks to Akira Saito. Recorded live at Knuttel House on 06/07/19. Jun Numata: guitar, electronicsMartín Escalante: saxYuji Ishihara: drums

Huge Tip! Oiro Pena is a Finnish jazz collective helmed by prolific composer Antti Vauhkonen. Their last album, Puna, recorded in bedrooms, studios and other salubrious locations around Helsinki during 2022, is a mix of lo-fi spiritual jazz, experimental, and avant-garde music forms. It includes four vocal tracks recorded with Merikukka Kiviharju, which feature both original lyrics and those sourced from traditional Finnish folk songs. Vauhkonen first attracted attention as saxophonist in the gr…

For approximately 18 months (from the fall of 1961 to June 1963), Archie Shepp and Bill Dixon co-led a group that varied in size between a quartet, quintet and sextet, depending on the gig. They mostly played coffee houses and small theatres in Greenwich Village, and travelled to Scandinavia in July 1962 for a series of concerts at the first International Youth Festival in Helsinki. Already in his late 30s, Bill Dixon seems to have suddenly appeared in 1962, stretching jazz modernism in distinct…

The planets align this October as the mighty Sun Ra Arkestra, under the direction of the maestro Marshall Allen, release their first studio album in over twenty years, ‘Swirling’. Recorded at Rittenhouse Soundworks in Philadelphia, the new recording represents the continuation of a heartfelt rebirth of the Arkestra under Allen’s guidance since Sun Ra left the planet in 1993, gaining new generations of followers from their regular touring across the globe. With a big band line-up featuring long-s…

In the years leading up to 1971, Sun Ra wrote many compositions and poems specifically inspired by the ancient African Kingdoms and many others with associated mythological and heliocentric connotations. As such, a visit to Egypt and the opportunity for the Arkestra to play there was a matter of necessity. Ra’s first ever concerts outside of the US had occurred in late summer and autumn of 1970 with performances in France, Germany and the UK and a second European tour was arranged for late 1971.…

Strut present the final instalment in their series of reissues of Sun Ra’s historic recordings in Egypt with The Sun Ra Arkestra meets Salah Ragab in Egypt plus the Cairo Jazz Band, originally released on Greek label Praxis in 1983.  Salah Ragab first encountered the Arkestra at a concert at the house of Goethe Institut ex-pat Hartmut Geerken during the Arkestra’s first visit to Cairo and Heliopolis in December 1971 and, although Ra and Ragab did not meet in person on that occasion, they did mee…

*2022 stock. In process of stocking* Following 2016's definitive collection of singles released by Sun Ra from across his illustrious career, Strut present the second volume of the vinyl edition on 3LP format which focus on Ra's later 1962-1991 period. Released sporadically during the three decades and primarily on the Saturn label, the 45s offer one-off missives from Ra's prolific cosmic journey, tracing the development of his forwardthinking 'Space-Bop' and his unique take on jazz and blues tr…

In 1968, while he was also the leader of the Military Music Departments in Heliopolis, Salah Ragab formed the first jazz big band in Egypt, The Cairo Jazz Band. Some of the best musicians in Egypt of that time were members – Zaki Osman (trumpet), Saied Salama (tenor sax), Khamis El-Kholy (piano) and Ala Mostafa (piano). On these recordings The Band consists of five saxophones, four trumpets, four trombones, piano, bass, drums and percussion and various other oriental instruments. The opening con…

"The Syd Barrett of the avant-jazz scene" - the comparison is inevitable, tragic, and apt. Mike Taylor, British jazz composer, pianist, songwriter, died tragically young, leaving just two albums and co-writes with Ginger Baker for Cream's Wheels of Fire to his name. A talent that burned bright and brief, gone before most people realized what they'd lost. Under the direction of Neil Ardley - himself a significant figure in British jazz composition - several performers who had worked with Taylor g…

The long-overlooked brilliance of pianist and composer Mike Taylor comes back into the spotlight with the reissue of Trio, the seminal 1967 recording from the Mike Taylor Trio. Originally released on Columbia, this album represents one of the most adventurous statements in British jazz of the 1960s—a work of striking originality that still resonates powerfully today.   Featuring Mike Taylor on piano, Jackie Dougan on drums, and Dave Tomlin on bass, Trio captured an incendiary moment of creativit…

2025 stock 180g virgin vinyl limited edition - the complete LP + 2 bonus track. The only album ever reuniting pianist Cecil Taylor and saxophonist John Coltrane, Stereo Drive was released in 1959. Taylor wanted to use Ted Curson on trumpet, but the recording company insisted on using Kenny Dorham. Relations between Taylor, who favoured a very avant-garde approach, and Dorham, who verbally disapproved of Taylor's "way-out" tendencies, were strained, and the session is a unique tour the force.

Temporary Super Offer! "After Le Nouveau Jazz was released in early 1967, I worked for two years with Bernard Vitet, Beb Guérin and a few other friends on a happening loosely based on Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark. There was a strong element of theater to it and we presented it in playhouses, museums, public places, institutions… It never made it to wax and I gave up on the idea soon after when Sunny Murray and Alan Silva showed up in Paris in late 1968. I had meant to upend the conve…

2024 Stock, reduced price. Remastered edition on British Jazz Explosion series. ‘Le Déjeuner Sur L’Herbe’ features key players in modern British jazz including Henry Lowther, Ian Carr, Michael Gibbs, Derek Wadsworth, Barbara Thompson, Dave Gelly, Dick Heckstall-Smith, Frank Ricotti, Jack Bruce and Jon Hiseman, under the directorship of Neil Ardley. ‘Nardis’ features solos by Ian Carr on flugelhorn, George Smith on tuba and – rarely heard – Jack Bruce on acoustic bass.  Complementing this is what…

The jazz world is set to celebrate one of its most intriguing and visionary figures with the reissue of Pendulum, the groundbreaking album by the Mike Taylor Quartet. Originally released in 1966 on Columbia Records, Pendulum captures the restless creativity and uncompromising spirit of pianist and composer Mike Taylor, whose brief but influential career left an enduring mark on modern jazz in Britain.   Featuring an exceptional lineup with Mike Taylor (piano), Dave Tomlin (soprano saxophone), To…

Jazz bassist Doug Watkins died in a car accident in 1962 at the age of 27. However, prior to his early demise, he recorded dozens of wonderful sessions with some of the greatest jazzmen of his time, among them Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, and the Horace Silver Quintet. Soulnik marked his second and final album as a leader, and features Watkins on cello instead of bass, and in the company of the great Yusef Lateef.

This 2LP bundle includes the two latest Formalibera albums: John Tchicai "Wigmore Hall 1968", and John Tchicai, Peter Kowald "John Tchicai Quintet, John Tchicai Peter Kowald Duo".John Tchicai "Wigmore Hall 1968" (LP)* Edition of 300 copies. High thickness cardboard with opaque laminated cover. Comes with a printed insert.* John Tchicai (1936-2012) was one of the most visionary free jazz saxophonists of the 20th century - a rare artist whose voice stood apart even among giants. Born in Copenhagen…

An Introspective Masterpiece Featuring Bill Evans, Gary Peacock, and Paul Motian.

Originally recorded and released in 1977, the Instant Composers Pool's Tetterettet is the first classic of the band's larger incarnations. Founded in Amsterdam in 1967 by saxophonist Willem Breuker, pianist Misha Mengelberg, and percussionist Han Bennink, Instant Composers Pool (or ICP) was an independent free jazz label and orchestra that would go on to release over fifty albums featuring such pillars of the scene as Derek Bailey, Peter Brötzmann, Evan Parker, Jeanne Lee, John Tchicai, and Stev…

Third all-solo outing from Nat Birchall. This time Nat pays homage to the patron saint of the tenor saxophone, John Coltrane. With a balanced programme of original songs and John Coltrane compositions the album focusses on the more Afrocentric aspects of the music.

Hear and Now's cover depicts a smiling Cherry posing like Buddha, and holding a trumpet with a bent mouthpiece -- an indication of some meditative sounds, but it's really a mishmash of styles with a leaning toward African rhythms. An underlying social message runs through the album of Cherry compositions (except one) produced by Narada Michael Walden. Cherry plays very little trumpet on "Universal Mother"; the African-based excursion is carried by Neil Jason's bass, Sammy Figueroa's congas, and …

*2026 much needed repress!!* "Written and arranged by Hiromasa Suzuki, and originally released in 1975 on Nippon Columbia, this album is incredible, and truly well-named - funky stuff, indeed! Fat bass, a great variety of guitar sounds, horns and organ, and crisp drums: this is an instant favorite! From the end of the 1960s, saxophonist Jiro Inagaki led groups such as The Soul Mates, and His Black Rhythm Machine, blasting down the jazz rock road before forming Soul Media in 1969. The album Funky…

"Bassist Ron Carter had long been Creed Taylor’s first-choice bassist on record dates stretching as far back to the classic Gil Evans recording Out of the Cool in 1960. Carter was the first bass choice for many Creed Taylor productions throughout the 1960s for the Impulse, Verve, MGM and A&M/CTI labels, even while the bassist was recording and touring as part of the Miles Davis Quintet. And it was Ron Carter’s dulcet tones and swinging accompaniment on the double bass that drove nearly every CTI…

The Błoto we knew until now briefly ceased to exist in September 2025, somewhere in the backstreets of Bucharest’s Floreasca district. This was not an ending, though, but a new beginning and a conscious transformation. With their core left intact, the band expanded its lineup to include a pillar of the Romanian alternative scene, Ion D. That move became the catalyst for the most groundbreaking project in their career. The album Atmosfera, set for release in 2026 via Astigmatic Records, unfolds a…

Members… Don’t! is the tour-de-force new release by acclaimed drummer and composer Tyshawn Sorey that offers a bold reinterpretation of Max Roach’s potent album Members, Don’t Git Weary, connecting its message of resilience in the face of struggle to the present day. It follows on a string of albums from Sorey that feature pianist Aaron Diehl, the latest of which – The Susceptible Now (Pi 2024) – received 5-Stars from Downbeat, which describe it as “a garden of sonic ecstasy… Sorey’s trio conjur…

Over two decades guitarist and composer Miles Okazaki has built a body of work marked by rigor and restless curiosity. With Boomtown, his ninth album of original compositions and his fourth as a leader for Pi Recordings, he presents a large-scale, finely wrought, sometimes unruly work that hurtles forward with narrative force. The album continues the themes of Miniature America from 2024, described by pianist Ethan Iverson as “meticulously assembled, absolutely a blast to listen to, and informed…

Originally brought together in September 2015 to perform the Zorn Bagatelles, Julian Lage and Gyan Riley have become two of Zorn’s most trusted and soulful musical collaborators, having recorded over a dozen CDs of his compositions for acoustic guitars both in duo and in trio with Bill Frisell. Seven Sonnets is their sixth CD together as a duo and the music is a lovely series of compositions referencing early music, minimalism, contemporary classical, soundtracks, folk, jazz, and more. Two of th…

*2026 stock* This album is the second release by saxophonist Sachi Hayasaka, following her debut album Free Fight. Most of the music was recorded in Tokyo with members of Stir Up!, capturing the raw energy and spirit of the group. Two additional tracks were recorded in New York at Baby Monster Studio, featuring special guest trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith. These sessions added another dimension to the album, making it an especially rich and memorable work. The album was produced entirely by Sachi an…

*2026 stock* A live document from one of the towering figures in Japanese jazz history. By the early seventies Terumasa Hino had established himself as Japan's most internationally fluent trumpeter, a player whose vocabulary moved easily between Lee Morgan-era hard bop, Miles-influenced modal abstraction, and the harder edges of Coltrane-era extended playing. Live! catches his quintet in concert, working through original material at the high temperature his groups were known for: long forms, fie…