Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

*200 copies limited edition* "In a somewhat inconspicuous passage in Ursula K. Le Guin’s sci-fi classic The Dispossessed, its main character — the brilliant physicist Shevek — meets a composer who has translated Shevek’s revolutionary theories into music: ‘I’m writing a piece of chamber music. Thought I might call it The Simultaneity Principle. [Several] instruments each playing an independent cyclic theme; no melodic causality; the forward process entirely in the relationship of the parts. It m…

*300 copies limited edition* In October 2024, g a b b r o travels from Brussels to the mysterious village of Gabbro in Italy. Together with drumming virtuoso Casper Van De Velde, Hanne De Backer invites musical friends along the way to record in places that have personal significance for them. The quest to Gabbro takes them through five countries in seven days: Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland and Italy. The diverse landscapes and numerous encounters leave a deep impression. The pace of …

Błoto has never cared much for dominant aesthetics. Instead, the band has consistently chosen paths less travelled, unexplored territories and uncharted routes where experimentation is not so much a conscious decision as a natural state of being. After years of a rather hermetic approach to recording their albums, the time for change has come. A trip to Bucharest and the opportunity to collaborate with the community of musicians associated with the underground label Future Nuggets, led by Ion D,…

*100 copies limited edition* Trombe's fourth album, 'Bête Noire' (2026), is a tribute to all those wild boars that tear up the countryside, slaughter sheep, and are chased and killed by bizarrely clad figures in orange vests, armed with rifles... Beware of the line of cars parked in a herd along country roads, because they're there, prowling. Don't meet their gaze, or you'll be petrified... In fact, I know some people who had to change their mode of transport after a collision with the beast... …

"These three artists don’t need volume or soloing to get their message across. Their message is inscribed in elegant lower-case and rarely used aural fonts. You will find yourself leaning forward because not a note or whisper should be missed..." - Brian Morton

The telepathy and intuition that flows between these three musicians is one that has developed over many years of playing together in different combinations, and on a permanent regular basis at NYC's Nublu, searching and creating together in the moment. What they have come up with has evolved steadily over that time and its current form can be heard to brilliant effect on their new EP "Your Head You. Know". The exploratory instrumental space-jazz these gentlemen purvey has many antecedents and i…

In between being one of the most recorded studio drummers of all time, the beat-maestro extraordinaire Bernard Purdie squeezed in a few sessions of his own. Purdie Good! was recorded early in 1971 by legendary engineer and audio obsessive Rudy Van Gelder, at his bespoke studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, and has all the quality hallmarks of that esteemed locale. Three Purdie-penned originals are balanced by three covers of hits-du-jour, utmost among them a blazing romp through James Brown’s…

Genie Of The Keys: The Best of Korla Pandit collects 16 choice cuts from this era—all featuring Pandit’s inspired blend of Eastern, Latin, and South Pacific musical traditions. Among the artist’s original compositions is his famous “Magnetic Theme,” which opened Korla Pandit’s Adventures in Music. Genie of the Keys also includes a variety of pop covers, including “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” “Polka Dots and Moon Beams” and “Speak to Me of Love.” This collection—which not only celebrates Pandit’…

Hatka performed at Telakka Jazz on the first Friday night of January 2025. The following Sunday the trio visited the studio to record a session - music captured in the festival afterglow, fuelled by a shared commitment to free expression. The album is titled Quartet for a reason. A fourth voice, saxophonist Jone Takamäki, was originally meant to join the group for both the live performance and the studio recording. Quartet is what was planned and what remains. Jone couldn’t make it, so he never …

*2023 repress* Out of print and hotly pursued on the secondary market, we’re thrilled to announce a much needed reissue initiative, dedicated to Ictus’ back catalog, beginning with four LPs, Steve Lacy and Andrea Centazzo’s Clangs, originally issued in 1976, Derek Bailey and Andrea Centazzo’s Drops, originally issued in 1977, Steve Lacy, Andrea Centazzo, and Kent Carter’s Trio Live, also from 1977, and John Zorn, Andrea Centazzo, Eugene Chadbourne, Tom Cora, Toshinori Kondo, and Polly Bradfield’…

The Tokyo Sessions, the dazzling new album project by Dutch alt sax icon Benjamin Herman, oozes a deep affinity for the Land of the Rising Sun. In 2024 and 2025,  Herman – along with bassist Thomas Pol and drummer and The Tokyo Sessions album producer Jimmi Jo Hueting – found themselves knee-deep in Tokyo’s hyper-eclectic musical underbelly – districts like Shimokitazawa and Koenji where underground scenes in the city continue to flourish. Minds were ceaselessly and consistently blown: noise art…

On Actionreaction 2, Pippo Lionni, Sergio Corbini and Stefano Franceschini turn the studio into a single, improvising organism, where spackle knives and rollers become percussion, free‑jazz piano and sax tangle with electronics, and each canvas is written twice – in sound and in paint.

2013 release, outstanding edition. "This marvelously produced four-LP box on 180g vinyl (with accompanying digital download) documents three days of concerts in Berlin from October 2011, features sixteen British improvisers in differing combinations—duos, trios, quartets, and quintets. The meticulous presentation includes two essays, one historical by Brian Morton and another contextual by Wolfgang Seidel. The elaborate booklet also contains plenty of photographs, artist bios, and a lengthy inte…

"These are not musicians trading licks or showing off individual virtuosity - they are six voices engaged in genuine conversation, responding to each other with the kind of intuitive understanding that only comes from years of shared musical history. The music breathes, shifts, transforms. Moments of delicate interplay give way to passages of ferocious intensity; dense textures dissolve into sudden clarity. Nothing is predictable, yet everything feels inevitable." - Mark T., Third Millennium

bastille musique presents its twenty-first release »Stefanovich, Dell, Lillinger, Westergaard: SDLW« featuring world premiere recordings by Tamara Stefanovich (piano), Christopher Dell (vibraphone), Christian Lillinger (drums, percussion) and Jonas Westergaard (double bass). Produced at the Teldex Studio Berlin, the album documents the collaboration between Dell-Lillinger-Westergaard and Tamara Stefanovich for the first time.

The charming, thoughtfoul Oracle conveys the familiarity and empathy of partners who have worked together for years – light touch, intricacy and sensitivity pervade the session. Oracle wins you over with its warmth and melodicism.

The trio-debut of pianist, composer and 2025 MacArthur Fellow Craig Taborn with Tomeka Reid and Ches Smith has been eagerly awaited. In its review of the group’s live show from Fall 2025 the German daily Hamburger Abendblatt found nothing put praise for their performance, calling it “unpredictable, exhilarating”. The trio’s approach on Dream Archives is full of complexities, and as the title suggests, a wide musical spectrum is covered as multitudes of idioms seem to be pulled from history and r…

With Convergence, his second solo album, Swedish-born bassist Björn Meyer further develops music on the blueprint established with his recording Provenance (2017), making use of the technical potential of the bass guitar to establish striking sonorities and grained textures while also being acutely aware of the acoustic space in which his sounds emerge. In its review of Björn’s previous solo statement, London Jazz News found the bassist demonstrating “that melodic high-jinks and emotional intens…

Panamá 77 – a vibrant and verdant suite of multi-textural, jazz-laced psychedelic instrumental folk-funk – is the debut album by Panamá-born, Chicago-based drummer and DJ Daniel Villarreal.

Tip! Tip! Tip! On their self-titled second album, The Cosmic Tones Research Trio—featuring Roman Norfleet, Harlan Silverman, and Kennedy Verrett—dives deeper into the spiritual soundscapes that first defined their genre-defying approach. Based in Portland, Oregon, the trio crafts a transcendent listening experience rooted in both meditative stillness and rhythmic propulsion. Blending cello, alto sax, piano, flutes, and an eclectic palette of textures and percussions, the album channels a sacred …

Book / 2xCD set documenting Paal Nilssen-Love's Large Unit 2105 tours. Features two hours of music, 100 photos, interview and liner notes. Limited edition of 500 copies"2015 is a beautiful limited-edition gem, not only because of the great music, but also thanks to the insightful photos of of bass player Christian Meaas Svendsen and Peter Gannushkin, taken on-and-off-stage and the amusing notes of all the Large Unit musicians and the interview with Nilssen-Love.  The first disc was recorded at t…

Huge Tip! 200 copies limited edition  - While most musicians spend years developing chemistry, Exotic Sin and Julian Sartorius achieved something close to musical telepathy in a single afternoon at BBC Broadcasting House. What started as a radio session for BBC Radio 3's Late Junction became something far more significant—a masterclass in how three minds can think as one organism when the conditions are exactly right. In Session documents this first studio encounter between the London-based duo …

Big tip! Spiritmuse Records is proud to present Journey To Nabta Playa, a new album from composer and multi-instrumentalist Angel Bat Dawid and multidisciplinary artist and musician Naima Nefertari (aka Karlsson), releasing May 2, 2025. A powerful meditation on memory, mythology, and ancestral science, the record draws deep inspiration from the ancient astrological stone circle of Nabta Playa, nestled in the remote deserts of Nubia. Journey To Nabta Playa is grounded in a shared inquiry between …

Late-night improvisation captured on a stormy November evening in an old church during the 2006 Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. John Butcher's soprano and tenor saxophones intertwine with Xavier Charles' clarinet and Axel Dörner's trumpet across 51 minutes of remarkable sustained exploration that stands as one of the defining documents of contemporary European improvised music. Tempestuous moves between the poles of calm and urgency that the setting might suggest, with the trio navigat…

Bayeté Umbra Zindiko’s Seeking Other Beauty is a visionary statement from keyboardist and composer Bayeté, also known as Todd Cochran, newly available in a definitive all‑analog reissue that brings its futuristic spiritual jazz into sharp contemporary focus. Recorded in 1973 for Prestige, Seeking Other Beauty channels the electricity of early‑70s Miles Davis while drawing on the cosmic funk of Parliament‑Funkadelic and the astral explorations of Lonnie Liston Smith—only with a fuzzed‑out clavine…

On John Zorn’s Bagatelles Vol. 6, John Zorn hands a fresh batch of his angular miniatures to the Brian Marsella Trio, who render them as a volatile, deeply melodic piano‑trio songbook where Monkish heads, free detonations and elusive “exotic” moods feel entirely at home.

On Exotica, Sun Ra is recast as an unlikely lounge visionary, folding the lush fantasy worlds of Les Baxter and Hollywood mood music into raw, off‑kilter Saturn tapes that turn easy listening into uneasy, Afrofuturist escape.

**2nd pressing, screen printed cover, risoprinted obi, letterpressed insert edition of 200**  Free Jazz band with a psychedelic touch, Phardah, is set to release their debut album Humans and Beings on the 2nd of May, 2025. The band features veterans of the Finnish experimental music and Free Jazz scene: saxophonist Sami Pekkola, double bassist Eero Tikkanen, and electric guitarist Topias Tiheäsalo, along with the younger generation drummer Veeti Hietala. The album was recorded and mixed by Teemu…

300 copies. Rural psych-jazz improvisations by Finnish bastard sons of Arbete & Fritid! This sextet - featuring Toni Laakso, Janne Martinkauppi, Sami Pekkola, Daniel Stolle, Erno Taipale and Ilkka Vekka - delivers some serious countryside free music madness. If you know Pekkola, Taipale and Vekka from their brutal Ho Chi Moon trio (also on Ultraääni), you know what to expect: freedom music with no compromises! But here it gets even wilder - six heads exploring the zones where Swedish progg, Finn…

Matata were formed in Kenya in 1963, laying down their grooves in Nairobi's Brilliant Club before going on to record two albums in London in the early 70s. Both Air Fiesta and Independence are perfect nuggets of Afro-funk, but alas Matata were reportedly homesick and they disbanded to return home. Their short-lived legacy lives on though, and now Dynamites Cuts have turned to their second album to present two of the hottest joints on a cool and deadly 7". 'I Feel Funky' is one of the band's bigg…

*2026 repress* "One of the most important records ever made, John Coltrane's A Love Supreme was his pinnacle studio outing, that at once compiled all of the innovations from his past, spoke to the current of deep spirituality that liberated him from addictions to drugs and alcohol, and glimpsed at the future innovations of his final two and a half years. Recorded over two days in December 1964, Trane's classic quartet-- Elvin Jones, McCoy Tyner, and Jimmy Garrison -- stepped into the studio and …

Originally released in 1972, bassist Miroslav Vitouš’s acclaimed album Mountain in the Clouds returns to the spotlight as a remixed, expanded edition of his influential 1970 debut, Infinite Search. Widely celebrated as a seminal document in the birth of jazz-fusion, this recording chronicles the early, creative explosion of a new musical era. With Mountain in the Clouds, Vitouš pushes the limits of jazz bass, blending lyrical improvisation and experimental technique to striking effect. The album…

Jazz fans rejoice: Curtis Fuller's seminal debut album, New Trombone, originally released on Prestige in 1957, is back in the spotlight. At just 23 years old, the Detroit-born trombonist arrived on the scene with a fluent, innovative style that marked a bold evolution for the trombone in jazz. Backed by an all-star quintet – Sonny Red on alto sax, Hank Jones on piano, Doug Watkins on bass, and Louis Hayes on drums – Fuller delivers a powerhouse hard-bop session. The album bursts open with three …

*2025 repress* Universal Consciousness is the fifth solo album by Alice Coltrane, released in 1971 on Impulse! Records. Universal Consciousness builds nicely on albums that came before it. It grows out of the unbridled celebration of her late husband's life on A Monastic Trio and the soulful wanderings of her most well-known record, Journey in Satchadananda.In The Wire's "100 Records That Set the World on Fire," David Toop writes, "[Universal Consciousness] clearly connects to other dyspeptic ja…

Super Tip! An outstanding yet obscure 1981 release by two Art Ensemble of Chicago members, multi reeds player Joseph Jarman and drummer Don Moye along with legendary bassist Rafael Garret (mostly remembered for his presence on John Coltrane's masterpiece "Kulu se Mama") and young lion Craig Harris on trombone. Four great individuals digging deep between ancient African rituals and modern urban multidimensional grooves. A tribal ecstatic sound based on a multitude of instruments: reeds, bamboo fl…

“Killer spiritual jazz album from Denmark, superb repress” - Gilles Peterson, BBC Radio 6

A true exploration in spiritual jazz that follows A transcendental journey that takes in meditative musical mantras, sprawling tenor sax improvisation and mesmeric percussion, the new album by Work Money Death (the group that backed ATA artist Tony Burkill on his 2017 debut record of the same name) seeks to reinterpret the sound of artists such as Pharoah Sanders & Alice Coltrane over two tracks: the brooding tension of A-Side “Dusk” and the sanguine & uplifting “Dawn” on the B-Side. Titled “The…

Ethiopiques 32: Nalbandian The Ethiopian resurrects Nalbandian The Ethiopian & Either/Orchestra as a blazing big‑band bridge between 1950s Addis and 21st‑century Boston, restoring Nerses Nalbandian’s forgotten Ethio‑jazz charts with cinematic force.

On Lola, Zbigniew Namysłowski Modern Jazz Quartet fuse blazing post‑bop with Polish highlander melodies, cutting a 1964 London session that became both a historic first outside the Iron Curtain and a cult artefact of fiercely local modern jazz.

"This is special for me. Evan Parker and Paul Rogers have given their permission for this release. I asked Evan if he would write some notes but he wants me to do it – my memory of the gig. That was 33 years ago (1992), so I don’t remember much. It was at the old Vortex on Stoke Newington Church Street; I must have been sitting with Candy on a little table in front of the low stage. A Marantz cassette recorder in front of me and a cheap mic stand with a single stereo mic in front of that. The ma…