New Arrivals

Jazz recordings by the Malaysian trumpeter and composer Johari Salleh from the 1970s: modal grooves and jazz funk with Malay folk themes, until now available only on a few dozen locally pressed copies.

Charif Megarbane's follow-up to Marzipan looks outward, to the diaspora and to exile: instrumental grooves built on the idea of hawala, with Somali, Mediterranean and jazz colours and a collaboration with Sven Wunder.

Habibi Funk's third compilation, drawn from the Libyan cassette scene of the late 1980s to early 2000s: reggae, synth disco, pop, house and funk, much of it recovered from the TK7 cassette factory in Sousse.

Compilation of Ara Kekedjian, singer born in 1946 in Bourj Hammoud and a central figure of Beirut's Armenian pop scene in the 1960s and 70s: Armenian rhythms, hard drums, funky guitars and organ, compiled with Darone Sassounian.

Both volumes of James Tenney's Postal Pieces, eleven short compositions written on postcards between 1965 and 1971 and mailed to friends including Pauline Oliveros, La Monte Young, Harold Budd and Max Neuhaus.

Blume returns to James Tenney's "Postal Pieces" with a second volume: three "Swell Pieces" and "Koan", written for Alison Knowles, Pauline Oliveros, La Monte Young and Malcolm Goldstein, on vinyl for the first time from one of the key suites of 20th Century avant-garde music.

Unreleased recordings made in 1988 and 1989 in a small home studio in Amman by the Jordanian trio Nechazz: smooth soul, jazz and synth pop in the spirit of Steely Dan and Bobby Caldwell, recovered from a family cassette.

New collaboration between the Jakarta trio Ali and Lebanese composer and multi-instrumentalist Charif Megarbane: 1970s Indonesian psychedelic funk, Melayu traditions, disco grooves and Arab melodic forms played on Western instruments.

Ten tracks from Lebanon's private press cassette scene of the late 1970s and 1980s, many tied to Ziad Rahbani's Bypass Studio circle: disco, soul, jazz, bossa and AOR, some tapes issued in tiny runs and some never released at all.

Paris, 1969: Grachan Moncur III's second album for BYG, cut with a Brazilian rhythm section and bassist Beb Guerin. Samba sway meets American creative jazz, with Fernando Martins' wordless vocals on the title track.

Big tip! Forty years of cassette releases, pressed for the first time on vinyl. First of two instalments exploring the previously unreleased sonic archives of one of Poland’s most enigmatic living artists - with its first volume focused on his deep listening practice and spiritual reverie (recorded 1990–2013). The last time Andrzej Dudek-Dürer took a banknote bearing the face of the Polish anarchist Jarosław Dąbrowski from his pocket to trade it for a pair of shoes was in 1969. He bought them fo…

*100 copies limited edition* A surprise archival LP collecting scattered recordings from across Juho Toivonen’s recent work. Following Kuun Sininen Rinki, Sekalaisia Äänityksiä brings together pieces previously released on small-run compilations, rare physical editions and limited formats to another limited release presented by New Zealand imprint What Lies Beneath.  Side A includes much loved “Peura”, originally released on the Kashual Plastik’s A Mistake By Mistakes compilation, “Kanava 5” fro…

On their new EP titled “O” we experience the evolution of the multifarious musical journey of drummer/composer Frank Rosaly and multi-instrumentalist Ibelisse Guardia Ferragutti. O finds center in loose polyrhythm, pulse, trance, and longevity, interweaving contemplation of their Latinx backgrounds and vast sonic textures with deft craftsmanship. Fascinated by prodigious sonic spaces that unfold over time, Ferragutti and Rosaly make way for storytelling and rumination. Both authors are adept in …

Tip! *200 copies limited edition* Here at last is another entry in FMOA’s ‘Cozy Mysteries’ series: collaborations between artist duos focusing on acousmatic processes, and sound freed from “conceptual” moorings and imposed meanings. Alan Courtis, who appeared as part of our label’s “Audio Postcards” series, returns here for a set recorded in Nantes with Julien Ottavi. Both are storied veterans of music based in experimentation, “extended” technique and the creative re-use of previously un-creati…

Villingen, 27 and 28 June 1968. Barney Wilen, the tenor of Ascenseur pour l'échafaud, with a young Joachim Kühn on organ and piano, Aldo Romano and Wolfgang Paap on two drum kits, Mimi Lorenzini's guitar and Günter Lenz's bass. Ode to Billie Joe, Respect, Lonely Woman and the Supremes, dedicated to Timothy Leary.

First release on Audible Beauty, Habibi Funk's sister label: eleven jazz pieces by the Malaysian pianist and arranger Alfonso Soliano, recorded for Radio Television Malaysia and pressed in only a few dozen copies.

A spontaneous musical transmission exploring healing, unity, laughter, and limitless possibility.

Maya Ongaku has always been searching for what exists just beyond the edge of perception. Since forming in the seaside towns surrounding Enoshima, the trio has followed a path guided less by intention than intuition, allowing songs, ideas, and experiences to emerge through a process they describe as 自然発生 (shizen hassei), spontaneous occurrence. Nothing Space Music is the deepest expression of that philosophy to date. Written in the aftermath of several years of international touring, the album e…

Twenty sides cut in the Russian Empire between 1889 and 1917, dug up by Gary Sullivan in the Russian shops of Brighton Beach and Forest Hills: music hall satire, drawing-room ballads and convicts' laments from the years before everything changed.

Half-speed master edition of Townes Van Zandt's 1969 second album, cut at StarDelta by Lewis Hopkin. Folk and country songwriting at its most intimate, from 'Be Here To Love Me' to 'Tecumseh Valley', with new clarity and depth.

Berlin Jazz Days, 6 November 1976. Albert Mangelsdorff's trombone, alone at the front, with Jaco Pastorius on electric bass and Alphonse Mouzon on drums, a year after Pastorius's debut. Five long pieces, recorded live, released by MPS in 1977. The trombone multiphonics against a fusion rhythm section.

Walldorf Studio, near Frankfurt, 1 and 2 May 1975. Albert Mangelsdorff on trombone, Palle Danielsson on bass, Elvin Jones on drums. Seven pieces, thirty-nine minutes, released by MPS the same year. Mangelsdorff had recorded with Jones once before, on the 1968 duet album Albert Mangelsdorff and His Friends. The Wide Point is the first of his trombone-bass-drums trio records, the format that would produce Trilogue with Pastorius and Mouzon the following year and the Montreux album in 1980. The ban…

Moonwalker, Aarburg, Switzerland, 29 March 1992. Sun Ra, fourteen months from the end, at synthesizer and piano with a ten-piece Arkestra: Marshall Allen, Michael Ray, Ahmed Abdullah, Tyrone Hill, Buster Smith. Ten pieces in fifty-six minutes, mostly repertoire, groove over improvisation. Released by Enja.

Donaueschingen, 17 October 1970, and Berlin, 7 November: Sun Ra's first German concerts, commissioned by Joachim-Ernst Berendt, with the Black Forest Myth written for the astrological moment and never played again. Berendt cut five hours of tape into forty minutes. Der Spiegel called it cosmic chaos.

MPS studio, Villingen, 14 September 1980. Cecil Taylor alone at the Bösendorfer Imperial the studio had bought for Gulda, after two days of practising. Eight pieces, one of them fifty-three seconds long, the first side running as a suite. Berendt heard Tatum, Bud Powell and boogie in it. Taylor wrote the title in the guest book.

Another of Berendt's meetings, SABA 1967. George Gruntz, the Basel pianist who would later run the Berlin Jazz Festival for twenty years, with Sahib Shihab on saxophones and Jean-Luc Ponty on violin, and a group of Tunisian musicians: a bendir and darbuka drum ensemble and Salah El Mahdi on ney flute. The title turns Dizzy Gillespie's tune on its head. UK Vibe, reviewing the Nicola Conte compilation that includes Djerbi, points out that the famous names are not the point: it is the lesser-known …

Baden-Baden, Südwestfunk studio, 12 to 14 December 1969, the annual Free Jazz Meeting. Steve McCall had persuaded the organisers to invite the Chicago musicians living in Paris: Lester Bowie, Joseph Jarman, Roscoe Mitchell, and the pianist Dave Burrell. They met sixteen Europeans: Albert Mangelsdorff, Kenny Wheeler, John Surman, Willem Breuker, Terje Rypdal, Tony Oxley, Alan Skidmore, Heinz Sauer, Gerd Dudek, Eje Thelin, Bernt Rosengren, Hugh Steinmetz, Leo Cuypers, Claude Delcloo and Karin Krog…

Ithaca trio of Sarah Hennies, Willie B. and Keir Neuringer, three percussionists reaching into vibraphone, saxophone and piano. Eight studio improvisations, playful and energetic, held against a meditative core.

New York, 21 and 22 October 1969. Leon Thomas's first album under his own name, made months after Karma, with Pharoah Sanders credited as Little Rock, Lonnie Liston Smith, James Spaulding, Cecil McBee, Richard Davis and Roy Haynes. A shorter Creator Has a Master Plan, Echoes, and the Malcolm X elegy Malcolm's Gone.

Paris, Studio Davout, 12 and 23 October 1989. Pharoah Sanders with William Henderson on piano, Stafford James on bass, Eddie Moore on drums and Cheikh Tidiane Fall on percussion. Produced by Wim Wigt for Timeless, released in 1990. The Penguin Guide called it the straightest jazz album Sanders had made for years, and heard what he was after: a hypnotic groove that lets the horn float almost at will. Steve Loewy at AllMusic writes that the results may have disappointed some fans at the time, but …

Cologne, Cornet Studios, January 1975. Rolf Kühn on clarinet with a band that reads like a German jazz roll call: his brother Joachim Kühn on piano and electric piano, Philip Catherine on guitar, Gerd Dudek on tenor and soprano, Albert Mangelsdorff on trombone, Bo Stief on bass, and two drummers, Daniel Humair and Kasper Winding. Kühn chose not to record in the MPS studio in the Black Forest and brought in the engineer Wolfgang Hirschmann instead. In his own account, quoted in MPS's reissue note…

Milan, January 1973. Enrico Rava's second record as a leader, with John Abercrombie on guitar, Bruce Johnson on bass and Chip White on drums, released by MPS/BASF. Rava has called it his breakthrough: the album that got Manfred Eicher's attention. Seven tracks, from Trial N. 5 to the Don Cherry tribute Cheerin' Cherry.

Two days in May 1971, produced by Bob Thiele for Flying Dutchman. Harold Alexander on flute and soprano over Neal Creque's electric piano, Richard Davis's bass, Pretty Purdie's drums and Richard Landrum's congas. Contains Mama Soul, the scat-flute track that got him into DJ sets decades later.

CD eissue of Don Cherry's classic Eternal Rhythm Group, recorded at the Berlin Jazz Festival, 1968. An amazing line up of: Cherry (cornet, gender and saron [gamelan], flutes), Albert Mangelsdorff (trombone), Eje Thelin (trombone), Bernt Rosengren (tenor sax, oboe, clarinet, flute), Sonny Sharrock (guitar), Karl Berger (vibes, piano, gender), Joachim Kühn (piano, prepared piano), Arild Andersen (bass), & Jacques Thollot (drums, saron, gong, bells, voice). Two "side-long" pieces with gamelan under…

Studio 44, Monster, Holland, 11 March 1987. One day. Pharoah Sanders with John Hicks on piano, Curtis Lundy on bass and Idris Muhammad on drums, a band he kept for years. Produced by Wim Wigt for Timeless. The record is built around Coltrane. Loewy at AllMusic writes that most listeners will prefer the originals to Sanders's imitations, but calls Africa a joyous and worthy tribute. AllMusic's survey of the Timeless years is warmer: it hears the title track's highlife melody undercut by Hicks's p…

Donaueschingen, 21 October 1967. Archie Shepp with Roswell Rudd and Grachan Moncur III on trombones, Jimmy Garrison on bass, Beaver Harris on drums. One piece, One for the Trane, forty-three minutes, three months after Coltrane's death, opening with a seven-minute Garrison solo and ending in The Shadow of Your Smile.

1967, SABA. Tony Scott, the clarinettist of Music for Zen Meditation, with Bubi Chen's Indonesian All Stars: Jack Lesmana on guitar, Marjono on saxophone, gamelan gongs under the rhythm section. Jazz standards and Indonesian songs, with Summertime and Djanger Bali. One of the first Jazz Meets records.

December 1966, a month after the premiere at the Berlin Philharmonie: Alexander von Schlippenbach's Globe Unity, fourteen players, Brötzmann, Schoof, Hampel, Mangelsdorff, Dudek, Breuker, Kowald, Niebergall, Liebezeit, Neumeier. Two pieces, Globe Unity and Sun. European free jazz declaring itself.

Two years after Free Action, a different record. The Oimels, MPS 1969, is the Wolfgang Dauner Quintet playing pop: Dauner on piano, organ and voice, Eberhard Weber on bass, cello and voice, Siegfried Schwab on guitar and sitar, Pierre Cavalli on guitar, and Roland Wittich on drums and voice, who also did the cover art with Dauner. The programme mixes Dauner originals with a Gershwin tune, a traditional, and a Lennon-McCartney song. A RateYourMusic listener puts it plainly: a different kind of ja…

The twenty-eighth Durutti Column album and the first in sixteen years, produced by Keir Stewart: Vini Reilly's guitar among warm ambient washes, piano and quiet beats, with guest vocals from Caoilfhionn Rose. Deluxe gatefold on transparent bottle green vinyl.