★Discus Music
Star Quality - Speculations for Guitar and Voice
Star Quality – Speculations for Guitar and Voice is a highly original album of experimental music that transcends the categories of free improvisation, jazz, electro-acoustic art, and the opera aria
Private View
A meticulously crafted set of songs, instrumentals and abstracts recorded over a couple of years by Orchestra Of The Upper Atmosphere’s principal composer / arranger / multi instrumentalists Archer and Todd.
Veer
*2024 stock* "The emotional level through compositions is capable of sudden and passionate outbursts, moments of profound tension and restlessness, as well as unexpected sweetness in evoking confused, distant emotions. Fantastic album." - Goran Čabrajić"For those of you who are still searching for contemporary progressive instrumental music, this is a fine treasure chest of delights." - Bruce Lee Gallanter, Downtown Music Gallery NYC "Working as a quartet adds further strength to an already impr…
This Celestial Engine
This Celestial Engine, an exciting new project that fuses the talents of three remarkable musicians from diverse musical backgrounds, announce the release of their debut album in January 2024. Featuring the extraordinary lineup of drummer Ted Parsons (Swans, Prong, Godflesh, Killing Joke, Jesu), bassist Dave Sturt (Gong, Steve Hillage Band, Bill Nelson), and keyboardist Roy Powell (InterStatic, Anthony Braxton, Mumpbeak with Bill Laswell), the album delivers a unique blend of experimental ambien…
Fanfares and Freedom
A live recording from a piece premiered at the 2023 Cheltenham Jazz Festival, and later recorded at The Vortex. Laura Jurd was commissioned to write this piece for scored ensemble plus improvising quartet, and the resulting piece balances the composed and improvised elements beautifully in the fast moving 45 minute work which is very much in the tradition of the best British jazz.
Laura writes - "I don’t think I’ll ever forget hearing Paul Dunmall play for the first time. Whilst aware of his gra…
Truth Is Not The Enemy
A set of high intensity free jazz interactions captured live at The Vortex, London in early 2024. Brackenbury and Bianco have worked together as a duo for a number of years and this is their third Discus Music release, following their opening fire music statement Rising Up (112CD) and the mystical Hildegard von Bingen + Coltrane inspired Wayward Mystic (140CD). The addition of Pope and O’Gallagher expands the duo into a formidable improvising quartet. Tony Bianco writes: “In this world overwhel…
Practical Dreamers
This fifth AXIS recording once again brings in a different approach to the music. With the exception of the group’s first album, Les Oiseaux De Matisse, which was largely recorded live in the studio, subsequent albums (Dream Feathers, Port Of Saints, Blutopia) have been built from Ron upwards – Ron recording with a small core of players and then arranged for larger groups via subsequent overdubs. This time round, Ron requested that he respond to completed tracks as the last player to record – to…
Biyartabiyu
"Because I make records in a number of different styles, I often filter and change my saxophone playing to match the style of the record I’m making. But when I make a work like this, you hear my playing in my natural, unfiltered style, and that style is determined by the many AACM records which were most influential in forming my own playing. That’s especially true in this duo setting with Walt Shaw, where the music is stripped down to its essence of blues + abstraction. It’s really simple - I’m…
Harpsichords
Tip! "Three harpsichords in various states of disrepair were kindly offered to me by Leeds Conservatoire. I accepted, and a memorandum of understanding was swiftly drawn up. The offer was made under the condition that I might make some music from them, given my penchant for infirm instruments, and their conventional worthlessness to anyone wishing to use them for their intended purpose. There seemed to be an auspiciousness surrounding these harpsichords, the stories they might reveal, and more i…
The Act Of Noticing
The Act Of Noticing is an invitation to enter a sound world rich in sonic imagery, evocative atmosphere, and finely wrought detail. This album takes listeners on a journey, at one moment guiding them through changing musical landscapes at high speed, at another inviting them to simply stop and stare. Espial emerged from a discussion between David Beebee and myself about how to develop and extend the musical language we had established on our duo album for Discus, “Ripples”. David felt that expan…
Now we are Here
This second volume of solo piano from Grew comes hot on the heels of his 2023 Discus Music release “Chasm”, also for solo piano. For all the brilliance of that earlier work, Grew was keen to push himself even further and engage with a piano and a space with which he was already very familiar – at Lancaster Baptist Church, close to his home in the North West. Grew writes in the sleeve notes: “I have found this instrument a real challenge to play, its action is particularly unyielding, so my effor…
Threnodies and Ad hocs
Threnodies and Ad hocs“My music flows from the paintbox I've assembled over the years from Steel City rehearsals in abandoned little mester warrens to Motor City gospel studios still echoing with the soundtrack of my youth.”
Invocation“A Blood Red Prayer’’
ThrenodiesA song cycle featuring the force of naturę that is Sylwia Anna Drwal “..you shone like diamond studded sin ’’..She compels the listener ‘listen!‘
Ad hocsA prosaic Ulyssean voyage through the influences that shaped iconoclast Adi New…
Bee Reiki
Bee Reiki gestated within the regular lockdown zoom meetings Steve and Paul were holding in 2020 and 2021. Steve being based in London and Paul just outside Brighton, in these online meetings, like many musicians at that time, they mostly chatted and caught up with news and analysed the lack of live performance opportunities created by the pandemic.
In the odd fifteen minutes or so they weren’t doing that, they attempted to improvise together using the Zoom platform. Steve would balance his iPad…
Shiver Meets Matthew Bourne Volume Two
On July 16 and 17 2021, Shiver met up with Pianist Matthew Bourne at his house in Airedale, Yorkshire. Hungry to make music following various lockdowns, cancellations and disappointments, the quartet embarked on a ferocious two-day journey of exploratory music-making. The weather was good, the connection was immediate. There was much laughing, tea-drinking and storytelling. In the evening, the stove was lit and we listened to music: Stanley Clarke, Paul Simon, Sarah Vaughan, Scott Walker, Eugene…
A Story Like Fire
For their first release, Uroboro play nakedly romantic, passionate music which can also travel strange and disturbing territories. Keith Jafrate's compositions are designed to be completed through improvisation, so in a way they are never finished. But they are far from random, creating focused, narrative music that is lyrical, beautiful and fierce, passing through a range of moods, from balladry to abstraction, via sinuous, funky rhythms and outstanding solo work.
Uroboro is Italian for ourobor…
Bright Light A Joyous Celebration
For his third Discus Music, towering free jazz saxophonist Paul Dunmall has brought together an absolutely incredible group of musicians, including saxophonists Soweto Kinch and Xhosa Cole, vibraphonist Corey Mwamba and drummer Hamid Drake. Four punchy compositions and one group improvisation allow everyone maximum space for expression and exciting interaction.
Recording session sponsor Tony Dudley-Evans writes: "The music was magnificent, full of energy and the name of the session, Bright Light…
Bars Without Measures
Eclectic Maybe Band is the creation of Guy Segers, a player / composer / producer first prominent as bassist with legendary band Univers Zero, and subsequently active in many live and studio projects.
“Bars Without Measures” continues the band's established tradition which brings together detailed studio work with the creativity of real time improvisation. Using different groupings from within a large ensemble cast, which includes many well-known names, Guy has created an album where tracks are …
Alive! In The Studio
For her second Discus Music release, Charlotte Keeffe has convened her regular working quartet to explore open ended versions of her compositions which form the basis of their live set. Captured with energy and clarity in the studio, here we have 60 minutes of real group interaction where the music from each player is balanced equally within the total group sound.
Charlotte writes: "Charlotte Keeffe’s Right Here, Right Now Quartet featuring Ashley John Long, Ben Handysides and Moss Freed, is a b…
Pi
Siapiau is Welsh for 'Shapes', as the four members of the band create shapes in the air out of apparently nothing. The beauty of improvisation is that, at its best, it creates something perfectly fitted to the moment it was created in. Siapiau is a new project from four improvisers who have been playing together in different formats for over twenty years. It's a band who aren't afraid of the experimental but aren't afraid of a good groove either. It's improvised music that you could, at times, d…
ithyphall.brel.gory is not like you
Murmurists is a group of artists which convenes periodically to perform large-scale multi-media events using texts and graphic-scores composed and directed by Anthony Donovan. This CD, recorded over a significant span of time, draws upon such live and studio performances, channelling these years of diverse activity into a brand new work. Call it music theatre, sound design, documentary – as you will.
I like slow work. This is the third, and I think concluding, iteration in album form of an inten…