New Arrivals / Last 2 weeks

Matthew Shipp on piano and William Parker on bass in only their fourth duo album, the fruit of a four-decade friendship that began in the David S. Ware Quartet. Recorded in Brooklyn in June 2025, CD on Tao Forms.

Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore's score for Threshold, the documentary on cross-country ski champion Jessie Diggins: sixteen cues with an open palette of harp, voice and more, after their duo album Tragic Magic.

The final concert of Swans' Big Sound era, recorded in Berlin on 28 November 2025: over two and a half hours of mostly unrecorded material by the line-up Michael Gira reconvened in 2010, with a DVD of the whole show. On Young God.

William Parker as composer and lyricist: songs sung by Andrea Wolper with an inter-generational band, a title suite with tap dancer Melissa Almaguer, pieces for Chantal Akerman and Joseph Jarman. CD limited to 500 copies on Centering.

Debut of Trio Imagination, the group that grew out of Trio 3: David Virelles on piano with the legendary rhythm section of Reggie Workman and Andrew Cyrille, recorded at the Van Gelder Studio. On Pi Recordings.

James Brandon Lewis's third Red Lily album turns to Antonín Dvořák: original pieces that vary, echo or answer the Czech composer, with Kirk Knuffke, Melanie Dyer, Tomeka Reid, Joshua Abrams and Chad Taylor. On Tao Forms.

Devra Hoff alone with her acoustic double basses, sometimes layered: original pieces and arrangements of traditional songs, a meditative companion to her Anne Briggs album, with Tara Jane O'Neil and Julia Holter on two tracks. Edition of 500 CDs.

A solo piano journey through spontaneity, intimacy and the unexpected. On Undress & Fly, pianist and improviser Josep-Maria Balanyà invites the listener into a world where sound takes shape in the moment. Across nine solo pieces, he moves fluidly between agile, energetic playing and passages of striking delicacy, letting intuition guide the music toward unexpected destinations. Balanyà treats the piano as both instrument and terrain for discovery. In “Relaxed Discussion” and “Jump And Fly Away,”…

A visceral encounter of electric guitar, saxophones, bass clarinet and drums—where free improvisation cuts close to the nerve. On Ecorchure, Jérémy Baysse, Jean-Luc Petit and Fabrice Favriou create music that is raw, restless and alive to the moment. The trio’s second album brings electric guitar, sopranino and tenor saxophones, contrabass clarinet and drums into an uncompromising dialogue—one that moves from uneasy quiet to bursts of abrasive intensity. Across seven pieces, the musicians build …

"Vasco Trilla continues to be prolific through these turbulent times, including a recent release with Swedish improvisors on Creative Sources, Up North, after electroacoustic trio Behenii II  following as well trumpet trio Choreography Of Fractures (reviewed in October...) on Sluchaj. The latter was a continuation of various Polish collaborations for Trilla, including now In the no time — released on Canadian label Tour de bras, recorded November 2023 — with Pawel Doskocz (electric guitar) & Zof…

This recording documents a first encounter. For his 60th birthday, Stefan invited two musicians he had previously met only online. We stepped into the same room, the same air, the same sound. By the end of the night, the trio had already begun. Thanks to Barbara and Norbert at BLOCK7, Bernd and all the birthday guests who supported this concert.

"Suspensão (Suspension in Portuguese ) is one of the many free improvised ensembles that prolific violist Ernesto Rodrigues leads. A Question Asked by the Empty Horizon is the thirteenth album of this ensemble that has been operating since 2016 with a rotating line-up of local musicians coming from different backgrounds, with different instrumentation.  The current version of Suspensão features a nonet with violinist Inês Ferreira, double bass player Hernâni Faustino, trumpeter João Silva, melod…

"With a total of three members, Imprints of Experiences captures the largest unit of the releases reviewed here, and its sound is correspondingly (and comparatively) full. Schindler deploys a range of instruments, some heard before (clarinets, cornet, saxophone) and one (b-flat tubax) unique to this recording. Harald Kimmig meanwhile contributes an energetic violin and Eric Zwang Eriksson, an array of prattling percussion. Playing live over two nights in Munich in 2024, the trio offers quite a …

"Recorded live in Lisbon, violist Ernesto Rodrigues joins vocalist Maria Radich and violinist Maria do Mar in a free improv trio where close-range string interplay and crackle box electronics create high-register tension, while voice moves within the texture through whispers and cries, shaping an intimate, spatially focused performance balancing density, restraint, and evolving interaction." - Squidco

"Framed as a shifting, dreamlike improvisation, this electroacoustic quartet led by violist Ernesto Rodrigues, with cellist Guilherme Rodrigues, Carlos Santos on electronics, and percussionist Monsieur Trinité, unfolds a fluid free improv session that dissolves into evolving textures, balancing tension, restraint, and collective interplay within an immersive sonic landscape." - Squidco

Violinist Carlos Zíngaro, violist Ernesto Rodrigues and cellist Guilherme Rodrigues come together on 'Pataphysique, a new album of free improvisation that places close listening and adventurous sound-making at its heart. Across six pieces—“I” through “VI”—the trio explores the expressive range of its string instruments, shaping an open-ended musical conversation in real time. Rather than follow a fixed path, the music unfolds through shifts in texture, gesture and intensity, inviting listeners i…

"A Berlin-recorded trio of violin, viola, and cello with voice, where Gerhard Uebele, Ernesto Rodrigues, and Guilherme Rodrigues shape twelve concise movements of hushed, textural free improv, blending extended string techniques and subtle vocalizations into a fragile, reductionist sound world of intimate interplay, suspended time, and finely detailed sonic nuance." - Squidco

Released by Creative Sources Recordings, Livingry captures a vivid live encounter between Lawrence Casserley, Dominic Lash, Massimo Magee and Phillip Marks. Recorded at London’s Hundred Years Gallery on 4 October 2025, the album brings together Casserley’s Signal Processing Instrument, Lash’s double bass and electric guitar, Magee’s alto saxophone and clarinet, and Marks’s percussion in a set of six freely improvised pieces.  Across just over an hour, the quartet shapes music that feels alive to…

"Fragments of the Unseen suggests a completely different kind of free improvisation. It is the second album of the chamber, acoustic, free improvising quartet of violist Ernesto Rodrigues, cellist Guilherme Rodrigues, their frequent collaborator, Korean, Berlin-based tenor sax player Jung-Jae Kim, and German guitarist Andreas Willers, following the live recording of Points of Dichotomy (Creative Sources, 2025). But the studio recording of Fragments of the Unseen was captured seven months before …

In Energy Center, Ed Hazell tells the essential story of Studio Rivbea, the Lower Manhattan loft where Sam Rivers and Bea Rivers made radical music possible on its own terms. Drawing on new research, photographs, posters and an unrivalled sessionography, the book restores 24 Bond Street as a home, school, rehearsal room and self-determined cultural engine.