277 pages. 196 x 268 mm. Open NOW JAZZ NOW and you're not just looking at a book - you're entering the minds of three lifelong obsessives. Byron Coley (music writer and critic), Mats Gustafsson (saxophonist, The Thing, Fire!), and Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth founder, solo artist) have spent decades accumulating, discussing, debating, and above all listening to free jazz and free improvisation. This book is the result of that shared mania. What they've created isn't a conventional history or a ranked list. It's something more interesting: a chronological journey through more than one hundred essential recordings, presented as equals - "preternaturally noncompetitive, non-hierarchical, and of equal value." This is crucial. Free music, by its nature, resists hierarchy and competition. The authors understand this deeply.

The format is perfect for what it needs to be: images of albums, singles, and cassettes pulled directly from the authors' personal archives, complete with "loving wear and tear." These aren't pristine collector's items sealed in plastic - they're working copies, played copies, lived-with copies. The wear is part of the story. Alongside these, Philippe Gras' exquisite photographs of free music legends add visual documentation of the humans behind these radical sounds. This is where record collecting transcends mere accumulation and becomes something else - a form of devotion, a practice of deep listening, a way of mapping creative lineage. Coley, Gustafsson, and Moore aren't just showing off rare records. They're sharing the fruits of decades spent following threads through the sprawling, decentralized, often deliberately obscure history of free improvisation. The book features contributions from legendary musicians Neneh Cherry and Joe McPhee - voices that add crucial perspective from inside the music itself. Their words, combined with the authors' "enthralled streams of appreciation, perception, and, most importantly, unbridled respect," create a document that works on multiple levels: visual archive, critical history, personal memoir, and passionate argument for why this music matters.

Who is this book for? "All adventurous lovers of creative sound" - record collectors, yes, but also avant-garde jazz enthusiasts, students of radical culture, curiosity-seekers wondering about this music's "illustrious history and lineage." The target audience is anyone willing to enter the space where beauty meets struggle, where orthodoxy gets challenged, where inspiration exists in its purest essence. NOW JAZZ NOW arrives at a moment when free jazz and free improvisation are experiencing renewed interest - younger listeners discovering Ayler and Coltrane, contemporary musicians building on the foundation laid by previous generations, reissue labels making rare recordings available again. The book serves as both introduction and deep dive, accessible to newcomers while offering plenty for longtime devotees.

The chronological approach reveals patterns and connections that might otherwise remain hidden. You see how ideas spread, how musicians influenced each other across continents and decades, how a music defined by spontaneity and freedom actually has deep historical roots and careful lineage. From early pioneers to contemporary practitioners, the thread remains unbroken.

What Gustafsson, Moore, and Coley have compiled is more than a book about records - it's a testament to "a universe of music devoted to the dignity of freedom and the holistic vibrations of spiritual unity." In an era when algorithm-driven listening fragments our attention and commodifies our taste, NOW JAZZ NOW offers something rare: the passionate perspective of three people who've spent their lives listening deeply, collecting obsessively, and thinking seriously about music that challenges, advances, and occasionally polarizes.