New Arrivals / Last 4 weeks
Klotski
On Klotski, Lao Dan Quartet throws tenor, bamboo flute and suona into a Chicago crucible, where Mabel Kwan, Joshua Abrams and Michael Zerang keep reshaping time and texture until free jazz feels like a sliding puzzle in permanent motion.
Open Sky Unit
Open Sky Unit capture a warm‑blooded corner of 1970s Belgian jazz where a family of musicians stretches soul songs into jazz‑funk sermons, turning a small Liège club into a glowing, rough‑edged sanctuary.
Air Time
On Air Time, Air - Henry Threadgill, Fred Hopkins and Steve McCall - hit their 1977 stride, stretching from tightly coiled themes to wide-open improvisation, turning the sax-bass-drums trio into a restless, three-way imagination engine.
Spontaneous Music Ensemble
On this meeting with the Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Bobby Bradford steps into John Stevens’ London laboratory and, alongside Trevor Watts, Julie Tippetts, Bob Norden and Ron Herman, turns free improvisation into a fiercely alert, shape‑shifting chamber music.
Congliptious
On Congliptious, Roscoe Mitchell strips the Art Ensemble idea to its bones, pairing stark solo showcases with a fierce quartet blowout that makes freedom feel both methodical and combustible.
Nonaah
On Nonaah, Roscoe Mitchell turns the alto saxophone into a fault line, setting stark solos, prickly duets and dense small‑group pieces against one another to test how far a single composition and a single sound can be stretched.
L-R-G / The Maze / S II Examples
On LRG/The Maze/S II Examples, Roscoe Mitchell frames three radically different constructions - a lucid brass-and-reeds trio, a labyrinthine percussion octet and a stark soprano solo - as parallel studies in space, timbre and compositional intelligence.
Old / Quartet Sessions
On Old/Quartet Sessions, Roscoe Mitchell’s 1967 Art Ensemble - with Lester Bowie, Malachi Favors and Phillip Wilson - appears in raw formation, sketching the grammar that would soon detonate as one of free music’s most inventive bands.
Before There Was Sound
On Before There Was Sound, Roscoe Mitchell’s 1965 quartet with Fred Berry, Malachi Favors and Alvin Fielder captures the AACM language in embryo: sharp themes, free rhythm and a restless sense of form already pushing past hard‑bop borders.
Celebrating Fred Anderson
On Celebrating Fred Anderson, Roscoe Mitchell honors a fellow Chicago giant with a live quartet that turns remembrance into motion, weaving Fred’s themes and Mitchell’s originals into long, tensile arcs of chant, swing and open-form ritual.
Numbers 1&2
On Numbers 1 & 2, Lester Bowie joins Malachi Favors, Joseph Jarman and Roscoe Mitchell in a pre‑Art Ensemble crucible where AACM discipline, raw timbral play and open‑form swing coalesce into a blueprint for the Chicago future.
All the Numbers
On All the Numbers, Lester Bowie’s first sessions as a leader catch the future Art Ensemble core in 1967 workshop mode, running multiple takes of two pieces that keep splintering into different shapes, energies and internal logics.
Early Combinations
On Early Combinations, Art Ensemble history is still in wet cement: Roscoe Mitchell’s proto‑Ensemble and Joseph Jarman’s quartet collide in two long 1967 tapes where themes for cancelled gigs and failed auditions already sound like future classics.
Saga of the Outlaws
On Saga of the Outlaws, Charles Tyler turns his Albert Ayler-honed fire into a single, 36‑minute “polyphonic sonic tale,” driving a rough-riding Rivbea band through chants, stampedes and long, wind-scarred horizons of sound.
Four Ways
On Four Ways, Roscoe Mitchell joins Stephen Rush’s shape-shifting Yuganaut trio for an electrically unstable encounter, where reeds, synths and oddball acoustics melt into one long, multi-hued improvising organism.
Spirit Catcher
On Spirit Catcher, Wadada Leo Smith moves between luminous small‑group ritual and radical chamber experiment, setting airy trumpet-and-vibes lyricism against the austere blaze of a muted horn surrounded by three harps.
Valtakunta
Black Vinyl. Eero Koivistoinen is one of the foundational figures of Finnish jazz - a saxophonist, composer and arranger whose career spans six decades and whose influence on the Nordic scene is impossible to overstate. Valtakunta, originally released in 1967 on Otavan Kirjalliset Äänilevyt (a book publisher, of all places), was his very first album, and it has remained one of the most elusive and sought-after records in the Finnish discography ever since - available only through a scarce CD rei…
Vol.1
Two masked creatures from Saguenay, Quebec, who communicate only in guttural alien grunts, have managed to become the most talked-about band on the planet - and the funniest part is that nobody can explain exactly why. Maybe because Angine De Poitrine - Khn de Poitrine on a custom-built double-neck microtonal guitar/bass with loop pedals, Klek de Poitrine on drums and percussion - are simply too good to ignore. Behind the papier-mâché masks, the polka-dot costumes and the pyramid hand signs lies…
Vol. II
If Vol. 1 was the secret handshake, Vol. II is the full initiation rite. The anonymous Quebec duo's sophomore album landed in April 2026 with the weight of near-impossible expectations - sold-out tours across two continents, a viral KEXP session with millions of views, Pitchfork and Fantano circling the wagons - and the remarkable thing is that Angine De Poitrine didn't flinch. Six new tracks, same formula on paper - Khn's microtonal double-neck and loop pedals, Klek's ferocious yet calculated d…
N.Y.C.
One of the most distinctive and influential instrumental ensembles of the 1980s, Steps Ahead injected urgently needed vitality into a stagnating fusion landscape with their own brand of intelligent, living jazz. With N.Y.C., their debut for Intuition, the group returned in an electrifying new incarnation and with a dynamically reimagined sound.
Co-founder Mike Mainieri assembled a constellation of seasoned virtuosos for this session: drummer Steve Smith (known for his work with Journey and his o…
