★Discus Music
It's A Matter Of Fact
Paul Dunnall’s dynamic Birmingham quintet’s release Yes Tomorrow was a Discus highlight of 2022. We enjoyed the release so much that we took the unusual step of suggesting he add Julie Tippetts and Charlotte Keeffe to the group to make a second release. Paul embraced the idea with enthusiasm, and came up with this suite for the expanded group. The result is a freewheeling set with a great “live gig” feel, which gives plenty of space for each player to shine, and which mixes some tight compositio…
Theta 6
Theta Six – OUA’s sixth album – is an ever morphing tapestry of new sounds arriving via wormhole direct from the left field progressive sound universe. It evolved from a studio session of bass driven rhythms followed next day by a marathon free-improvisation session. These sessions were amalgamated through a high impact collision which made extensive use of chance procedures, and then carefully sculpted and arranged for horns and voices by Martin and Jan.
The music is heard as a single continuou…
Couple In Spirit
"During 2019 Keith, Julie and myself had discussed the idea of a new Couple In Spirit album for Discus Music. Rather than choosing one of the many possible live recordings of the duo, Keith and Julie were keen to make a new multi tracked studio recording, something they had not done for 30 years since their EG release. The studio was booked for spring 2020, and the project was opened for advance subscriptions. The New Year arrived, lockdown kicked in, Keith’s already fragile health deteriorat…
String And Grid
*In process of stocking* "Sting And Grid is an album of great joy and great sensitivity which bears repeated listening due to its relatively calm nature. A real delight for any improv lovers." – Mr Olivetti, FREQ
Two world class players from the Manchester UK free improvisation scene deliver here a beautifully recorded set of pieces founded on pure instrumental skill. Hanslip's elegant, singing lines are delivered with calm and precision, driven by Cheetham's multi-textural percussion.
Obscurer Subjectivity
*In process of stocking* "Wild, wooly, wet, wacky, and quite wonderful new outing from Discus’s primo sound-warping sextet, led by arch poet/spoken word maven Bo Meson. Eccentric is but one mild way to describe the spontaneous wordplay, improvisational acrobatics, and general weirdness to be found percolating across this bafflingly odd disc. Behind Meson’s stream-of-consciousness phrasing lurks guitarist Andy McAuley, synthesist Jez Creek, saxophonist Martin Archer, bassist Peter Rophone, and ce…
Ripples
*In process of stocking* "Ostensibly ‘jazz’, but you’d be hard-pressed to adopt that term here, as the duo stretch the definition of such pat categorizations to the point where genre effectively becomes meaningless. Just gorgeous, pure music. Softly, as in a morning sunrise." - Darren Bergstein
Music the listener can sink into, immersing themselves in lush textures, and bathing in the richly varied harmonies and sonorities. Ripples began life with an experimental session designed to explore the …
Family Band
Family Band is the eponymously titled 3rd release from this quartet of like-minded friends and collaborators. This is a band in the truest sense, with no leader contributions come equally from Kim Macari on trumpet, Riley Stone-Lonergan on tenor saxophone, Tom Rivière on double bass and Steve Hanley on drums. The group met while studying at Leeds College of Music in 2008, founding the band in 2015.
The album was recorded over two days in early February 2020 by Tim Thomas in an old farm outbuildi…
Micromotives
Six years in the making, Micromotives represents a dynamic and empowering vision of real-time collective composition, created by composer Moss Freed and showcased by large ensemble Union Division. With improvisation and sociality at its core, this is dazzling and surprising music that shifts nimbly between materials and structural events, encouraging synchronicity and collaboration while giving unusually high levels of creative control to individual performers.
The aim of the project was to engi…
Meets Matthew Bourne Volume 1
On July 16 2021, Shiver (Guitarist Chris Sharkey, Bassist Andy Champion and Drummer Joost Hendrickx) 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 …
ZZAJ: Jazz From the 23rd Century
*In process of stocking* ZZAJ: Jazz from the 23rd Century, is a thrilling new collection of music featuring 34 new songs – all previously unreleased – from artists from all over the world. The brainchild of producers/multi-instrumentalists Jerry King (Cloud Over Jupiter, Moon X, John Shirley & Jerry King) and Dave Newhouse (The Muffins, Manna Mirage, Moon X), ZZAJ asked musicians to interpret jazz from various conceptual viewpoints, particularly avoiding traditional jazz sounds. Says King, “It’s…
Green Money
Steve Day, poet, writer, percussionist has been around Discus Records for several years contributing sleeve notes for Keith Tippett recordings as well as reviews and other wordplay. Although he and comrades Peter Evans, Julian Dale, Mark Langford, have recorded for other labels, the Day Evans Dale Ensemble is a completely new venture with regular live dates in a range of venues. This seemed like an appropriate time to bring their 'new thing' to Discus Music; a mix of spoken word and spontaneous …
Wayward Mystic
About a year ago I handed Tony a CD of Saint Hildegard von Bingen's spiritual songs to listen to, and the next thing I know he has played an entire hour long drum track alongside the recording, in one sitting- and that it was so right. The sounds of his rolling-thunder-in-the-distance drumming and the ethereal monophonic vocal lines perfectly complimented, and my inspiration to try singing some, then add violin/viola layers with pedals and improvise, was ignited. In learning some of these beauti…
JakTar
A new trio from three master improvisers in the great sax / bass / drums tradition. This suite of compact pieces sees the players move between pure jazz skill and areas where extended techniques on all three instruments take the music into more textural and abstract areas. Paul Hession has played percussion with a wide range of improvising musicians from around the world including Derek Bailey, Peter Brotzmann and Marshall Allen. Bassist Michael Bardon featured in the Nat Birchall Quartet and S…
Heartless
'An investigation into some smaller sounds and interactions from this new trio, plus a few excursions into more expansive territory. All of the music was improvised and performed as heard, apart from the coda of the closing track Rotten Star which is a collage. Heartless, Heartless…… / Rotten State edits together, in alternation, parts of two separate longer improvisations. Pat plays grand piano interior and keyboard simultaneously for much of the album, while Johnny responds with sounds from a …
Unreleased 1974 - 2016
Available for the first time on CD, this is another collection of essential pieces from one of the originators and masters of this style. These recordings were selected from the personal collection of Tony Oxley and were mastered for this release with superb sound by Karsten Lehl under Tony’s supervision. Some of the pieces were edited into their final composed form many years after the original recording was made. Performed by a who’s who of European improvised music, this new release is an e…
Everything is always at once
Powerful and multi textured electronic music beautifully recorded and produced by in a way which captures the visceral spirit within these boxes and wires.
Yes Tomorrow
Paul Dunmall the composer is to the fore here, delving deep into his musical history by providing a range of material that celebrates the breadth of his experience including aspects of jazz, funk and soul. The flexible ostinato based pieces are constructed around the unique musical personalities of the players; the first soloist on each track being the only preordained performance decision. Dunmall has always actively encouraged younger players and many of us have benefitted from Paul’s personal…
Garden Of Secrets
"Garden of Secrets is a very successful and varied disc with electronic-folk-jazz-progressive soundscapes, and thus another remarkable album from the Discus, which is highly recommended for friends of electronic sound journeys around the world." – Achim Breiling
An electroacoustic work by Hervé Perez taking the form of a suite of compositions which combine Hervé's software based sounds with a host of beautiful and unusual sounds from a wide range of instruments played by Hervé and collaborator …
Spirits Of Absent Dancers - Music For Solo Vibraphone And Percussion
Created out of adversity and artistic longing, this is a wondrous, evocative diversion.
February Papers
For Avant-Garde / Improvised Music enthusiasts, this is a Holy Grail!