Jazz /
Mysteries:Untitled
*2023 stock* 'The chief attraction of this album is an almost 50 minute, previously unreleased solo performance by Taylor given at New York University in November 1976 as part of the Bösendorfer Festival, a benefit series for the Kitchen performance centre. His previous solo recital that year had been in August at Moosham Castle in the Lungau region of Salzburg during an open-air festival, subsequently released as Air Above Mountains (Buildings Within) (Enja, 1977). Taylor had come across a Böse…
Indent
*2023 stock* In 1973, Indent marked a new direction for one of the founders and masters of what was to be called »free jazz«; yet it turned out to have defined styles and highly sophisticated rules of its own. It was radically new and initially difficult to tune into for some. Cecil Taylor was composing in fractions of seconds. He was free to decide what to compose but in the end intelligent structures can be perceived with a multitude of »cells« being introduced, developed and layered one upon …
Silent Tongues
*2023 stock* 'If you had to pick three architects of modern jazz piano, you could just about cover everything with Bill Evans, McCoy Tyner and Cecil Taylor. Despite his phenomenal talent, Taylor may have seemed like the lesser influence at first, as most of his followers were relegated to the avant-garde end of things, but over the years his influence has grown and these days you are liable to hear Taylor type assaults on the piano from guys like Craig Taborn, Jason Moran or others, while they p…
Poschiavo
*2023 stock* In the life of every artist comes the time when toward the end of his existence, he will create a monument to his ever-lasting artistic efforts. It is the Swan-Song for which he wishes to remain being known; for centuries, this has crossed the borderlines between cultures and arts. Poschiavo was recorded when Cecil Taylor was sixty-nine years old, very much at the height of his musical and poetic powers. Recorded in Europe on a fine Bösendorfer grand piano in perfect digital clarity…
Snooze
American pianist and composer Joanne Brackeen has been called the "Picasso of jazz piano" for her unique style and complex improvisations. Her work is at the forefront of what avant-garde jazz can be and she has long been one of the giants of modal, post-pop piano.
Snooze from 1975 is Brackeen's extraordinary debut album. Featuring four outstanding Brackeen compositions, along with her take on Wayne Shorter's "Nefertiti," Miles Davis' "Circles," and the standard "Old Devil Moon."
A child prodigy…
City Lights
Sowing Records present a reissue of Lee Morgan's City Lights, originally released on Blue Note in 1957. City Lights is the result of a fine session recorded at the legendary Rudi Van Gelder studio by an all-star sextet featuring the 19 years old trumpet genius Lee Morgan plus an impressive coalition of jazz stylists such as Curtis Fuller on trombone, George Coleman on tenor sax, Ray Bryant on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Art Taylor on drums. All great players caught here in top form while d…
Try And Love
New from Strut, a fresh reissue of the classic debut album Try And Love from one of Nigeria’s most celebrated Afro-rock bands, Ofege. Formed by guitarist Melvin Ukachi and bassist Paul Alade while young students at St Gregory’s school in Lagos, Ofege first found their feet borrowing instruments and supporting school band The Groove Makers. Discovering drummer Mike Meme by chance at a school dance and adding Dapo Olumide on keys and Felix Inneh on rhythm guitar, they met EMI’s resident producer /…
Prends le temps d'écouter: Tape Music, Sound Experiments and Free Folk Songs from Freinet Classes 1962-1982
Big Tip! LP version. Includes 20-page booklet. France, early sixties: the Mouvement de l'École moderne is in full bloom. Relying on the experiments and writings of its founder, the educationist Célestin Freinet, this consortium of teachers is about to give empirical evidence proving that another approach to music in school can be fruitful. With its pragmatic, anti-authoritarian tack, the method that Freinet was already developing in the 1920s held children in respect, giving them confidence and …
Ancient Africa
Ancient Africa represents Nat Birchall’s official follow-up to last year’s universally acclaimed Mysticism of Sound. Nat once again plays all the instruments here, tenor and soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, bass, drums and percussion. But this time around the Korg synth is replaced by piano as Nat wanted to utilise a more “classic” Jazz sound to express his musical visions. He has also arranged the songs for multiple horns, with melodies and harmonies played by up to five different instruments …
The Infinite
2023 much-need repress. Nat Birchall continues apace with his “one-semble” recording projects, this album being the fourth one to feature only Nat himself playing all the instruments. The Infinite presents seven original compositions loosely based around various mystical aspects of the universe. The recording demonstrates Nat’s belief in the music having its own life outside of any human input, and also that it has its own laws and innate sense of balance and form, as does the universe itself. A…
Crashin' From Passion
Red Vinyl Edition. 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 paved th…
They Say I'm Different
Bomb! Black Vinyl edition. One can hardly imagine the genre-busting, culture-crossing musical magic of Outkast, Prince, Erykah Badu, Rick James, The Roots, or even the early Red Hot Chili Peppers without the influence of R&B pioneer Betty Davis. Her style of raw and revelatory punk-funk defies any notions that women can’t be visionaries in the worlds of rock and pop. In recent years, rappers from Ice Cube to Talib Kweli to Ludacris have rhymed over her intensely strong but sensual music.
There i…
Betty Davis
Bottle Clear Vinyl Edition. Betty Davis was a musical maverick with vision. Image, substance, sex, and grit combined with a badass band that could deliver the funk bed backbone to the sultry music between the sheets. After cutting two notorious discs for the Just Sunshine label (Betty Davis, and They Say I’m Different), and Nasty Gal for Island Records, Davis went to work on her most personal and expressive record yet. After capturing 10 hard-hitting tracks in 1976 at the remote Studio In The Co…
Is It Love Or Desire
Gold Vinyl. Betty Davis was a musical maverick with vision. Image, substance, sex, and grit combined with a badass band that could deliver the funk bed backbone to the sultry music between the sheets. After cutting two notorious discs for the Just Sunshine label (Betty Davis, and They Say I’m Different), and Nasty Gal for Island Records, Davis went to work on her most personal and expressive record yet. After capturing 10 hard-hitting tracks in 1976 at the remote Studio In The Country (Louisiana…
Okay Temiz's Oriental Wind Live At Montreux Jazz Festival 1982
*2023 repress* Caz Plak İstanbul proudly presents Okay Temiz's Oriental Wind - Live at Montreux Jazz Festival 1982 LP. A fantastic cocktail of Turkish Jazz which has unique rhythm sections like 9/8 , 7/8 , Anatolian Rock and Funk. Okay Temiz perfectly demonstrates the immersive layers of Turkish music. Never before released until now, a Turkish Jazz Magnum Opus is unearthed in collaboration between Istanbul-based Caz Plak and Montreux Jazz Festival. The performance by Okay Temiz's "Oriental Wind…
Pharoah Box Edition
Deluxe 2CD boxset with 70-page booklet. Alongside a remastered version of Pharoah, his seminal record from 1977, are two previously unreleased live performances of his masterpiece, “Harvest Time.” Includes a 24-page booklet with rarely seen photographs and ephemera, as well as interviews with many of the participants and a conversation with Pharoah himself. With Pharoah Sanders’ blessing, we present the definitive, remastered version of Pharoah, his seminal record from 1977, in an embossed 2 L…
Jazz Al Folkstudio
Back in 2021, we bore witness to the reissue, by Dialogo, of the Rome based ensemble Spirale’s lone 1974 self-titled LP, a towering obscurity of 1970s Italian jazz. Made of up Gaetano Delfini (wind instruments, vocals, percussion), Giancarlo Maurino (saxophone, flute, percussion), Corrado Nofri (piano, marimba, mbira, siren, Jew’s harp), Giuseppe Caporello (contrabass, guitar, percussion) and Giampaolo Ascolese (drums), the band ranks among the most sinfully neglected outfits of its moment, 1970…
Deeds, Not Words
A pioneer of bebop, Max Roach went on to work on many other styles of music and is generally considered alongside the most important drummers in history having worked with such musicians as Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Stan Getz and more! A seminal set, stretching out towards the directions Max would explore fully on the Candid, Impulse, and Fantasy labels in the 60s. Group members include Booker Little on trumpet, George Coleman on tenor, Ray Dr…
Free Form
Reissue, originally released in 1961. The West Indian-born alto saxophonist Joe Harriott was one of the most convincing boppers outside of the USA, though by the end of the 1950s he was exploring freer musical pastures, and the quintet with which he undertook the exploration was an outgrowth of the hard bop band with which he'd made a name on the British scene. Often in the past the group's music, in which trumpet and flugelhorn player Shake Keane figured alongside Harriott in the front line, ha…
It Is Revealed
Flutist Prince Lasha and alto saxophonist Sonny Simmons were one of the great teams in the "New Thing" era. Recorded in New York in May 1963 these early studio sessions feature great contributions from trumpeter Don Cherry and tenor sax giant Clifford Jordan, plus the rhythm section of Orville Harrison and Bill Wood on bass, Charles Moffett on drums, and producer Fred Lyman on flugelhorn. This is a great snapshot of the NYC music scene in the 60's, when a bunch of young, creative, uncompromising…