★577 Records
Bagman Live At Cafe Oto
Bagman, an imaginary character dreamt up by this experimental jazz trio, roams around in the figurative soundscape, collecting sonic debris. From a piano played on the inside and outside, electronics, saxophones, drums and junk objects shape a frenetic musical environment. Captured live at Cafe Oto in London, Pat Thomas (Piano, Electronics), Raymond Strid (Drums) and Sture Ericson (Tenor, Soprano Saxophones) assemble fragmented sounds in haphazard, creative and thrilling directions. After years …
Easter Monday Music
*In process of stocking. 200 copies limited release, CDr format* On Easter Monday of 2019, friends and colleagues reunited at London’s iconic improvisational space Café Oto. The four, Ken Ikeda (Synthesizer), Massimo Magee (Electronics, Saxophone), Joshua Weitzel (Shamisen), Eddie Prévost (Percussion) had met and played together many times in the years prior—usually in the context of Eddie Prévost’s London Improvisation Workshop—but had never performed a public concert together. The group's avan…
Motions Vol. 1
*In process of stocking* In Motions, Vol. 1, Francisco Mela and Shinya Lin create an album of improvised textures and thrilling exploratory sounds. Using drum sets and prepared piano, they create a lush soundscape of textures, imagining a scene reminiscent of a jungle, full of life, resources, and possibility. “It was a huge pleasure to have Mela’s presence and his mentorship was amazing, free of selves, the music came out just naturally from our souls,” says Shinya about their first collaborati…
Volume 1
*In process of stocking* Super groups are not a riskless endeavor—but when they’re made up of longtime friends and master improvisers, they tend to work. On their collaboration, simply titled Volume 1, up-and-coming American saxophonist John Dikeman (When The Time Is Right, 577 Records, 2021) is accompanied by a group of UK-based music masters: pianist Pat Thomas, a 577 Records mainstay (Shifa Live at Cafe Oto 2019, BleySchool 2019, Shifa Live in Oslo 2020, Educated Guess 2021), bassist John Edw…
Educated Guess Vol. 2
*In process of stocking* Following their first album, Dave Tucker (Guitar, Electronics), Pat Thomas (Piano & Keys), Thurston Moore (Guitar), and Mark Sanders (Drums & Percussion) decided to “guess again.” In March 2020, Tucker organized this group of musicians for an improvised performance at London’s Cafe Oto on a successful “educated guess.” Organized around a shared appreciation for improvisation and experimentation, that show resulted in the release of a two volume set.
The first volume is a…
Welcome Adventure! Vol. 2
*In process of stocking* How do you welcome adventure? Longtime comrades, legendary Daniel Carter, Matthew Shipp, William Parker and Gerald Cleaver investigated this in their first album, Welcome Adventure, Vol. 1, resulting in 577 Records’ best-selling release in the 20 years we’ve been operating. Now, the group is trying the question again with their second astonishing volume, taken from the same historical recording session. Daniel Carter (Saxophone, Clarinet) has been collaborating with Will…
LeAutoRoiOgraphy
'Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) spoke the truth (and the truth under his tongue was sometimes a hammer, sometimes an anvil, sometimes a sickle, sometimes just a breath or a blast). Baraka had no tongue in cheek. Sometimes he drew his language (his thought) and in the barrel of his language (his thought), there was the cartridge of criticism, the cartridge of ranting, the cartridge of analysis, the cartridge of sedition, the cartridge of poetry, the cartridge of music. Heroes Are Gang Leaders have th…
Telepatica
If 577 Records had a house-band, this would be it—a group of longtime friends, collaborators and established jazz musicians who are mainstays of the 577 Records’ catalog, here playing together. The Telepathic Band named themselves after the sort of improvisational style that can only be accomplished with a decade or two of collaboration, playing a signature, boundary-pushing music between friends. Now, with their fifth album, Daniel Carter (Saxophone, Clarinet, Trumpet), Patrick Holmes (Clarinet…
Toneflower
*200 copies limited edition, CDr format* As an artist and a thinker, Massimo Magee has been consistently drawn towards patterns: traditions, lines of influence, schools and the unexpected intersections of each. This album, Toneflower, presents a solo programme, meditating on many of those concepts. As an entirely improvised set of pieces, it is also inspired by Anthony Braxton’s solo alto tradition and the larger solo saxophone canon. Similarly, it draws from Magee’s prior percussive experimenta…
The Uproar in Bursts of Sound and Silence
'The Uproar in Bursts of Sound and Silence is a sort of emergent collage that came together over four years of composition, improvisation, and production. The foundations for this album were initially recorded in 2018 by producer/engineer Jack Endino (Nirvana, Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Skinyard) at Soundhouse in Seattle, WA with myself (Evan Strauss, electric bass and upright bass), 5-Track (Guitar) and Sheridan Riley (Drums). The initial foundations of this music consisted of my long-form graphica…
O Life, O Light Vol. 1
Originally from Kingsport, Tennessee, New York-based Zoh Amba is a notable rising star in the avant-garde music scene. Growing up in the Appalachian mountains, Amba practiced saxophone to the forest that surrounded her home before she later traveled to study with David Murray in New York, and also at the San Francisco Conservatory Of Music & New England Conservatory in Boston. Today, her music is full of folk melodies, mesmerizing refrains, repeated incantations and powerfully executed Free Jazz…
Fauces
Invoking imagery of a narrow, perhaps perilous passage, or its dual meaning, the back of the throat, musicians Amanda Irarrázabal and Miriam Ben Boer Salmón named their collaborative 10-track album, Fauces. In this recording, the duo plays with both concepts in a process of improvisation, creating fiercely lush landscapes, layered with texture, ragged hazy wood against strings. The soundscapes are sometimes imperceptible, shadowy horizons emerging from dim light, and rising, something threatenin…
In Flower, In Song
In Flower, In Song is the debut album from Trio Xolo, an improvising group composed of Mexican-American bassist Zachary Swanson, Baltimore-based saxophonist Derrick Michaels, and Lithuanian percussionist Dalius Naujo. With a telepathic ear toward musical interplay, Trio Xolo performs free-flowing stream of consciousness improvisations. The result is true, in the moment composition. The trio moves together dynamically as their voices simultaneously overlap and converge into one. In Flower, In Son…