Jazz /
Myriad
Mayas frames her instrument not as 88 keys arranged in tidy scales, but as a sonorous tangle of wood and wire, she produces sounds with a wide dynamic range, playing the whole piano, inside and out, including dramatic percussive effects from banging and scraping the frame of the instrument and the strings. Abdelnour has developed extended techniques and complex patterns of sound production, exploring the microtonal aspects of the saxophone and its high-pitched tones. she employs subtle tonguing…
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…
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'.
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)
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
Chantier 1 documents the first in a series of radical sound investigations by Pascal Battus(rotating surfaces, found objects), Bertrand Gauguet (amplified and acoustic saxophones), and Eric LaCasa (microphones), set directly within buildings under construction. More than conventional performance, their method is intervention: improvising amidst the ongoing labor of construction workers, letting the site dictate form, rhythm, and interruption. Sounds of drilling, hammering, and machinery aren’t f…
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…
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…
Meetings With Remarkable Saxophonists - Volume 1
Meetings with Remarkable Saxophonists - Volume 1. John Edwards, double bass. Evan Parker, tenor saxophone. Eddie Prévost, drums. First of a series of recordings made at The Network Theatre, London on 30th May 2011.
Impossibility In Its Purest Form
Percussionist Eddie Prévost not only co-founded the British improvising collective AMM more than 45 years ago, he is its chief annotator and its sole consistent member. With these dual roles he has both explained the aesthetic, political and ethical dimensions of an enterprise dedicated to constant self-examination and on-stage negotiation, and ensured the music’s immediacy through the agency of his exactingly tuned-in playing. But before he did any of that, he was a fine jazz drummer wit…
Live At The Montreaux / Detroit Jazz Festival, 1983
An overlooked performance from Roy Brooks and his legendary Artistic Truth ensemble – recorded back in Detroit in the early 80s – and smoking with the energy of a lost 70s spiritual jazz session! The group's got a leaner feel here, and even more fire than on some of Brooks' other sessions of the period – especially on the solos, which really stretch out boldly – especially on piano from Geri Allen, and trumpet from Rayse Biggs! Other group members include Vincent Bowens on tenor and flute, Mario…