Jazz & Improvisation / All styles

Ajomasé marks the influential debut of Gasper Lawal, legendary Nigerian percussionist, now presented in a vibrant reissue by Strut Records. Originally released in 1980, the album bridges Yoruba traditions and Western funk, propelled by layered drumming and energetic ensemble playing. Each track is infused with rhythmic invention and charismatic flair.​

Orbital is the debut album from Orbital Ensemble, a Toronto-based jazz fusion group melding psychedelic grooves, Brazilian MPB influences, and intricate improvisation. The resulting LP weaves together melodic openness, vintage moods, and crisp ensemble playing, offering an immersive sonic experience that feels both exploratory and deeply rooted.​

*300 copies limited edition* Magnificent meditative / shamanistic / ambient / improvisational offering from Liran Donin on double bass and shakers, and Idris Rahman on bass clarinet, tenor sax, shells, and Tibetan singing bowl — both members of the acclaimed ensemble Ill Considered. Original artwork by Vincent de Boer. Despite how governments and multinational corporations try to isolate us from one another, we can’t make it alone without our shoal. To truly have a shoal, we need to accept each …

Fred Moten & Brandon López’s duo debut explores cultural innovation, virtuosity, and confronting institutional madness while preserving humanity.

1990 release **

This is the fourth, and until now, unreleased album by Kapingbdi, a six-piece band from West Africa, which billed itself as “African Jazz-Funk-Rock from Liberia”. It is a skilful mix of African and Western elements, with a spiritual heart and dynamic grooves. In January 1985 and shortly before the group disbanded, they recorded nine tracks for an aborted LP project at Masterpiece studio in Detroit, U.S.A. In 2019 the music was carefully remastered from the original 24-track master tape. For Kapi…

Recorded live in one session at age 18, this album helped launch Tania Maria's career as an acclaimed Brazilian jazz artist, celebrated for her virtuoso combination of piano and vocals. Produced by Romeo Nunes (Meirelles e Os Copa 5, Rio 65 Trio, Elis Regina, Elza Soares), the album features the pioneering Edison Machado, who transformed samba and was instrumental in the development of Bossa Nova through his groundbreaking "samba no prato" (samba on the cymbals) technique. His work helped shape …

** With a 12-page 11x11" insert booklet (new for IA11, with unpublished photos and new liner notes by Alabaster DePlume), IARC 2025 obi strip and printed poly-lined printed inner-sleeve. ** In the words of Emma Warren:  Alabaster DePlume is not doing things properly, and this makes him very happy.  DePlume is a Manchester-born, London-based bandleader, composer, saxophonist, activist and orator. He’s a resident at the legendary London creative hub Total Refreshment Centre, a recording artist for…

**2025 Stock** Ebalunga!!! is coming back with a new long-awaited reissue of LP by the famous Hungarian guitarist, originally released in 1969.  Gabor Szabo exploded onto the American jazz scene in the early sixties. His unusual approach and unique sound brought something startling and new to jazz. With Chico Hamilton, Charles Lloyd and Gary McFarland, Szabo offered something few in jazz had ever heard before: guitarist as enchanter and conjurer and musician as storyteller and mesmerist. Once Sz…

"Hungarian guitarist Gabor Szabo (1936-82) issued only three live recordings during his lifetime. Significantly, the first of these, The Sorcerer (1967), remains the most popular album in the guitarist’s all-too abbreviated discography. But there were also More Sorcery (1968) and Gabor Szabo Live with Charles Lloyd (1974), offering Szabo totally in his element and at his bewitching best. Several more of Szabo’s concert recordings have surfaced in the intervening years, including this one, superb…

With The Bliss of Bliss, Pat Thomas distills four decades of radical pianism into a transcendent live improvisation. Recorded in Geneva in 2024, the album transforms the solo piano into a realm of shifting densities and ecstatic form, where each note seems to create and erase the space it inhabits.

*2025 stock* Setting the stage for The Zebra Paradox requires building anticipation and intrigue on the inside of the listener before they even hear the first notes. To accomplish this an imagined transference of information must bloom like a deep inhalation of sonic spores. If categories can be applied to explore how concepts are played out in this music and throughout the album, perhaps think of displacement, confusion, time distortion and derangement. Otherwise the listener might choose to tr…

Now here we go with a project that can easily be labeled a mammoth. Who remembers Eden Ahbez actually, except for a couple of born too late retro hippies? Well, here we go with the story: It is 1960, Rock’n’Roll has just lost a couple of its protagonists during this and the previous year, the time of the great balladeers has just begun, but soon will run out due to the new and exciting beat invasion. In the US mainstream the tiki culture has reached a certain peak and is about to collapse, but s…

Late Autumn Sunshine by Michael Garrick, released by My Only Desire Records, gathers two rare BBC Maida Vale sessions from 1973 and 1978. With Norma Winstone’s ethereal voice and Henry Lowther’s lyrical trumpet, Garrick’s compositions glow with his characteristic blend of English pastoralism and modal jazz introspection—a rediscovery of autumnal warmth and luminous craft.

"Fantastic debut LP by this severely talented instrumental duo, currently based around Hampshire College unless I am much mistaken. Living Window is comprised of drummer Cameron Mitchell and guitarist Mila Dorji, who have create an album of pile-driving avant garde hunch reminiscent of pre-Mahavishnu McLaughlin’s slow-hand recordings with Tony Williams or Billy Cox. Mitchell drumming mixes rock and jazz attacks in equal measure, either drawing out rhythms or pounding them straight into pumice. A…

**500 copies** Chicago saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi, a touring member of Justin Vernon’s Bon Iver and one-third of the inventive Chicago improvising collective Twin Talk, first encountered the music of Moondog a decade ago, while studying at Indiana University. "Initially, I liked the quirkiness of the music and the lore surrounding him," he says. Until he relocated to Germany in 1974, Kansas-born Louis Hardin Jr. was a genuine New York City fixture —a tall and gangly blind man festooned in a hom…

Abaete by Abaete is a cult classic and one of the rare treasures from the 1970s Bahian scene—a masterfully woven tapestry of jazz-funk samba, built by a mysterious vocal trio whose only full-length album is now finally gaining renewed attention through reissues. Recorded in 1977 and originally veiled by obscurity, the album is celebrated for its supple grooves, innovative synth lines, and a distinctly Northeastern Brazilian flavor.​

Quarteto Novo is the only album from the collective Quarteto Novo, released in 1967. Renowned for fusing northeastern Brazilian baião styles with bebop and folk, the album has earned a reputation as a masterwork that shaped Brazilian jazz’s global evolution. Its acoustic ethos and inventive arrangements forged a bridge between regional tradition and modern jazz, influencing a wide array of subsequent artists and genres.​

Music doesn't have to be self-expression, but for Ryan Power that's the only way it can be. Every note, melody, turn of phrase, and point of view in Power's carefully-crafted songs is intravenously infused with his particular way of moving through the world. It's a curious, probing, never-satisfied mode; he's always searching for the perfect combination of chords, the most precise arrangement of words, the most complete capturing of a mood. As one song on his eighth album Mind the Neighbors puts…

Group Theory: Black Music is a stunning new statement from South African drummer and composer Tumi Mogorosi. Standing in the lineage of South African greats such as Louis Moholo-Moholo, Makaya Ntshoko and Ayanda Sikade, Mogorosi is one of the foremost drummers working anywhere in the world, with a flexible, powerful style that brings a distinctive South African inflection to the polyrhythmic tradition of Elvin Jones, Max Roach and Art Blakey. Since his international debut on Jazzman Records in 2…

Vecchio's Afro-Rock is one big horn-heavy, bass-blasting, Latin groove funk-rock party. Only now, you're all invited because this, ladies and gentleman, is officially...a grail no more. With copies currently starting at 400 Euros for an original, this beautifully presented reissue, part of Be With's fresh campaign with Music De Wolfe, is well overdue. A magnificent and somewhat obscure library set that's just a total, cohesive joy from start to finish, this here is the soundtrack to all your smo…

Ben Stapp Launches Uzmic Ro’Samg — A Visionary Solo Album for Tuba and Sousaphone. Internationally recognized tubist and composer Ben Stapp announces the release of Uzmic Ro’Samg, his first-ever album of unaccompanied tuba and sousaphone. A daring, world-building statement, the recording blends technical mastery with storytelling rooted in Stapp’s original science fiction narrative.  Stapp has long been a distinctive voice in the avant-garde and creative music scenes. He has created and recorded…

Unstoppable Rising Pianist Eva Novoa Reunites with Bassist Drew Gress and Drummer Devin Gray to Bring Us Another Blazing Interplay Banger

Wheelhouse reunites as a trio after a decade apart. Their new work, "House and the Home," reflects years of artistic growth, personal change, and enduring bonds, capturing the essence of shared musical evolution and community.

Sun Ra Arkestra, Live in Japan! Recorded at Shinjuku Pit Inn on August 8, 1988, this recording has undergone fresh remastering from the master tape, marking the first reissue in 36 years

"Hotmosphere" is a 1976 album by iconic Brazilian percussionist and composer Dom Um Romão. Renowned for his contributions to Weather Report and collaborations with legends in the jazz fusion world, Romão brings together the best of Brazilian rhythms, jazz fusion, and funk on this vibrant, electrifying record. On "Hotmosphere," Dom Um Romão showcases his deep roots in samba and Brazilian folk traditions, while also pushing the boundaries of contemporary jazz. Listeners are treated to layers of ri…

* Metallic Gold Wax * In the 1970s, Betty Davis defied genre and gender by pushing her voice to extremes and embracing the erotic. She articulated a kind of pre–punk, funk–blues fusion that had yet to be normalized in mainstream music — a style that few musicians have come close to replicating. As one of the first Black women to write, arrange, and produce her own albums, Betty was a visionary who disregarded industry boundaries and constraints. Raw, unapologetic, and in full control, Betty pave…

2025 Repress. In the pantheon of jazz "holy grails," few albums combine rarity and excellence like this one. Recorded in 1965, this session represents a forceful reminder of the limitations of the "great names" approach to jazz history, capturing Sahib Shihab (Edmund Gregory) at the height of his creative powers with Denmark's finest musicians. Shihab played with many of jazz's finest. Shortly after he became one of the first jazz players to change their names due to an Islamic conversion, he jo…

May 1961. The Concertgebouw - Amsterdam's cathedral of classical music, where symphonies and string quartets had held court for decades - opens its doors to something entirely different. Thelonious Monk, the high priest of bebop, one of the most important and enigmatic figures in modern jazz, walks onto that hallowed stage with his quartet. The audience is packed, expectant. They have no idea what's about to happen. What happened was magic. Pure, uncut, Monkian magic. This isn't Monk as studio p…

Although his main instruments were the tenor saxophone and the flute, Yusef Lateef was known for his innovative blending of jazz with Asian music. In addition to the oboe and bassoon (which are both unusual in jazz), he played various instruments. Lateef began recording as a leader in 1957 for Savoy Records, a non-exclusive association that continued until 1959. The earliest ofhis albums for the Prestige subsidiary New Jazz overlap his Savoy Recordings. Cry!-Tender was one of these early albums …

150 copies only. French saxophonist Sakina Abdou and Philadelphia guitarist Bill Nace present Rinse Cycle, a striking first encounter between two of improvised music's most uncompromising voices. Released October 15, 2025 on Open Mouth Records, this LP captures the duo's incendiary exchange recorded during a U.S. tour that included performances at Philadelphia's legendary Solar Myth. Abdou, whose searing solo work Goodbye Ground (Relative Pitch, 2022) established her as a formidable presence in …

King Of The Tenors is a landmark album by Ben Webster, recorded in 1953 and initially released as The Consummate Artistry of Ben Webster, then retitled for its classic 1957 Verve Records reissue. Webster is joined by jazz icons including the Oscar Peterson Trio throughout, as well as Benny Carter (alto saxophone) and Harry “Sweets” Edison (trumpet) on select tracks, resulting in ensemble interplay that balances lush ballads and blues with joyous swing. The program includes Webster originals like…

Flight To Jordan is a celebrated hard bop album by Duke Jordan, recorded at Van Gelder Studio in 1960 and released on Blue Note in 1961. Featuring a quintet of Duke Jordan (piano), Dizzy Reece (trumpet), Stanley Turrentine (tenor saxophone), Reggie Workman (bass), and Art Taylor (drums), the album stands out for its memorable melodies and dynamic interplay. With compositions reflecting Jordan’s lyricism and Bud Powell-influenced rhythmic sense, tracks like “Flight to Jordan,” “Star Brite,” and “…

By All Means is the new album from Aaron Parks due for release on November 7, 2025 via Blue Note Records, expanding the acclaimed Parks-Street-Hart jazz trio into a luminous acoustic quartet with the addition of tenor saxophonist Ben Solomon. This set of seven original compositions explores Parks’ signature mix of modern jazz innovation and tradition, highlighted by tender dedications to his wife and son and the sly, swinging lead track “Parks Lope”.​

Andrew Barker - drums, percussion William Parker - bass, b flat pocket tuba, gralla Jon Irabagon - tenor saxophone, sopranino saxophone   Recorded by Andrew Barker January 3rd, 2022 at Phantom Ear Studio, Brooklyn, NY.Mixed by Andrew Barker.Mastered by Steve Silverstein.

Three improvisers having fun and taking risks. The classic piano-less jazz trio reinvented by mixing melodies, dirty sounds, noises, extended techniques and references to tradition with a quasi-punk approach.

One of the most politically charged terms of the 20th century, the Iron Curtain was a metaphor for political and cultural division. In a post-war telegram Winston Churchill referred to the fault line that ran through Europe between East and West as "an Iron Curtain is drawn down upon their front. We do not know what is going on behind". In this two-part album, as far as jazz is concerned, we will showcase, describe and celebrate exactly what was 'going on behind'. We see that music is the power …

2024 stock. Valuable of 1975 reissue of Finnish Jazz. Day is Over, an album often credited to Esko Linnavalli Quintet but without any mention of performing group on the cover, was born during a series of Finnish Jazz Music Workshop events, led by Heikki Sarmanto and Esko Linnavalli, out which the New Music Orchestra UMO was born. A UMO-anticipating 14-headed workshop band gathered to rehearse at the rock club Tavastia in 1974. Out of that group emerged a quintet, who took a trip to Stockholm to …

2024 Stock. Atto is one of Vladimir Tarasov's long evolving experimental music projects. Tarasov's percussion merges with the hypnotically repetitive synth sequence into one long piece. All instruments are played by Tarasov himself. Originally dispensed by state label Мелодия (Melodya) in 1989, the 4th ‘Atto’ volume features Vladimir effortless rolling out on a 35 minute piece in two parts built from pranging percussion, hunting horns and electronics. It’s a hypnotic study in sublime tension and…

"Although alto saxophonist Noah Howard never quite managed to garner the reputation that several of his more well-known playing partners did, to those 'in the know', he was every bit as essential and extraordinary as Archie Shepp and Albert Ayler. A player and composer of direct and emotionally charged music, Howard's career saw him bear witness to some of the most tumultuous periods in jazz, giving voice to the cry for freedom – both musical and political – that characterised the late 1960s and…