Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

On Serenade & Blues, Von Freeman eases his Chicago tenor into an after‑hours glow, trading the swagger of Have No Fear for late‑night ballads and slow blues that stretch time without ever losing their bite.

On Have No Fear, Von Freeman turns a 1975 marathon session into a fiercely personal manifesto, his elastic Chicago tenor pouring blues, bravado and vulnerability into performances that sound both off‑the‑cuff and obsessively shaped.

On Air Time, Air - Henry Threadgill, Fred Hopkins and Steve McCall - hit their 1977 stride, stretching from tightly coiled themes to wide-open improvisation, turning the sax-bass-drums trio into a restless, three-way imagination engine.

On this meeting with the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Bobby Bradford steps into John Stevens’ London laboratory and, alongside Trevor Watts, Julie Tippetts, Bob Norden and Ron Herman, turns free improvisation into a fiercely alert, shape‑shifting chamber music.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

On Numbers 1 & 2, Lester Bowie joins Malachi Favors, Joseph Jarman and Roscoe Mitchell in a pre‑Art Ensemble crucible where AACM discipline, raw timbral play and open‑form swing coalesce into a blueprint for the Chicago future.

On Early Combinations, Art Ensemble history is still in wet cement: Roscoe Mitchell’s proto‑Ensemble and Joseph Jarman’s quartet collide in two long 1967 tapes where themes for cancelled gigs and failed auditions already sound like future classics.

On Saga of the Outlaws, Charles Tyler turns his Albert Ayler-honed fire into a single, 36‑minute “polyphonic sonic tale,” driving a rough-riding Rivbea band through chants, stampedes and long, wind-scarred horizons of sound.

On Signaling, Nick Mazzarella and Tomeka Reid compress a wide slice of Chicago’s creative music history into intimate alto–cello dialogues, tracing a clear line from Hemphill/Wadud’s 1970s duets to a present tense that feels urgent and newly carved.

On Silver Cornet, Bobby Bradford and Frode Gjerstad turn a one‑night Baltimore stop into a fiercely conversational blowout, their quartet with Ingebrigt Håker Flaten and Frank Rosaly mapping free jazz as living, mobile history.

On 6 Duos (Wesleyan) 2006, Anthony Braxton and John McDonough turn a teacher–student bond into a finely wired brass–reeds colloquy, shuttling between Braxton systems, McDonough themes, open improvisation and Sousa with disarming clarity and wit.

On Indian Summer, Eddie Johnson lets his late‑era Chicago tenor glow with undimmed warmth, spinning swing‑era lyricism and speech‑like nuance over a veteran quartet that treats time as something to lean into, not chase.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Opening with the 18+ minute track of the same name, Archie Shepp’s ‘The Magic of Ju-Ju’ takes on a fevered pace as the centrepiece of this date from 1968. Shepp lets loose from the beginning as he’s joined by Beaver Harris, Norman Connor, Ed Blackwell, Frank Charles and Dennis Charles, all on percussion. The initial pace never dissipates throughout the title-track’s run. The additional tracks on Magic of Ju-Ju are a departure from the first, sitting more in a traditional realm. The album is a va…

Terrific session just released in 1974 on influential independent Muse. A modal masterpiece verging on spiritual jazz with a series of excellent players: from Richard Davis and Cecil McBee on bass to Ray Mantilla on congas and percussion, through Harold Vick distinctive flute and tenor sax. The major voice on this record belongs to the traps of Joe Chambers. The enormous potency combined with complete authority and tonal clarity that Chambers brings to the drums has made him one of the more dist…

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…

*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 …

In response to the arguably self-righteous pronouncements made in the 1990s as to what jazz is and isn’t, Julius Hemphill (1938–1995) spoke up as he had done throughout his career. “Well, you often hear people nowadays talking about the tradition, tradition, tradition. But they have tunnel vision in this tradition. Because tradition in African-American music is wide as all outdoors.” This collection of music, this celebration of artistic collaborations that engaged Julius Hemphill throughout his…

On Independent / Interdependent, Savina Yannatou, Gonçalo Almeida and Costis Drygianakis turn a live trio into a dark, hovering organism, where voice, double bass and electronics circle each other in tense, shifting proximity, testing how far independence can stretch without breaking connection.

On Mushin, Susana Santos Silva and Vasco Trilla strip trumpet and percussion down to pure responsiveness, letting sound arise and vanish like breath in a Zen exercise, where every gesture feels both unpremeditated and utterly focused.

From the viral Severance TV dance party to spiritual jazz explorations, this vinyl compilation spans five decades of the Poughkeepsie legend's most electrifying moments. Funky grooves, cosmic transcendence, and raw improvisation collide.

Tip! Tip! Tip! New funky soul record of FNR! All music written, recorded & mixed by Pavel Grachav.

Having found support from tastemakers including Gilles Peterson, Deb Grant, Jyoty and Tony Minvielle for last year’s EP ‘The Changing Tides Of Dreams’, SHOLTO returns with his forthcoming album ‘Letting Go of Forever’ – a 26-track expansive double LP, scheduled to drop later this year on DeepMatter Records / Funk Night Records. Drawing inspiration from Mozart’s ‘Lacrimosa’ and the work of David Axelrod, the album’s first offering ‘For The Love Of Stripes’ combines moving strings and choral orche…

2025 stock "Schematics For A Blank Stare - Volume Three" is a meticulously crafted album that explores organic grooves with a strong funk and soul influence. Released in 2021 under the Funk Night label, this LP vinyl captures Jeffery Scott Greer's signature lo-fi funk sound, recording straight to cassette tape for an authentic vintage feel. The album showcases a blend of groovy, soulful tracks that offer a rich auditory journey for fans of instrumental funk and soul music. It's a perfect additio…

2025 stock "Schematics For A Blank Stare - Volume One" by Jeffery Scott Greer is a collection of lo-fi funk tracks, released in 2021 under Funk Night Records. It features a distinctive organic grooves style with influences from funk and soul genres. The album was recorded on a 4-track cassette between January and June 2017, showcasing a raw and authentic sound. Key tracks include "Gorilla Funk 1," "Orange September," "Hazy Lazy," "Druid Soul," "Night Of The Fox," and "Space Debris." The project …

Time To Get On Board A New Black Universal Express. With each new recording Anthony Joseph presents an imaginative, personal vision of contemporary black culture, and The Ark is yet another compelling album by the award-winning Trinidadian poet and musician. This second part of a sequence of two albums launched with last year’s Rowing Up River To Get Our Names Back, finds Joseph giving full vent to his desire to explore many thought-provoking themes. However, there is a specific thread running t…

*50 copies limited edition* The boundary-defying percussion ensemble Onilu debuts on 577 Records with a work of striking scope, depth, and creative fire: Jakutá’s Dance. The group delivers a sonic vision that is at once elemental and exploratory—rooted in tradition yet unbound by it. Founding members Kevin Diehl and Joe Chambers are joined by Craig McIver and Daniel Villarreal, forming a dynamic quartet whose collective experience spans generations and geographies. Together, they draw from an ex…