The pianist Fumio Karashima is best known internationally for his long association with Elvin Jones, having held the piano chair in Jones's working bands for years, a credit that already tells you most of what you need to know about his playing. Gathering, his trio date for Three Blind Mice, is the work of a player who has spent serious time on the bandstand with one of the most demanding drummers in jazz history, and the record's qualities reflect it: a strong rhythmic centre, a left hand that …
A mighty soulful set—where love songs, modal fire, and freer moments collide. Celebrated bassist Takahashi Mizuhashi delivers a deeply expressive performance captured live at Jazz 1974, released as Live In 5 Days In Jazz 1974 – When A Man Loves A Woman. This remarkable record is driven by the kind of playing that moves with conviction: long-form tracks that unfold like stories, shifting from heartfelt warmth to daring experimentation with effortless momentum.
The album opens with a soulful readi…
The scent of fresh greenery rising into the air. A youthful Hidefumi Toki weaves a vivid and beautiful story through a one-horn quartet. Making his professional debut while still in high school, Hidefumi Toki went on to perform with groups led by New Herd, Isao Suzuki, Terumasa Hino, Ryo Kawasaki, and Fumio Itabashi. From the late 1970s onward, he also collaborated with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Tatsuro Yamashita, contributing broadly to Japan’s music scene across jazz, fusion, and pop.This album, re…
This is both a blueprint and a definitive masterpiece. Effortlessly transcending eras and genres, Terumasa Hino continues to captivate audiences around the world. His sound and presence are truly top of the tops. Long before Japanese jazz was labeled as “Wa-Jazz”, and even before the rare groove movement emerged, Hip Seagull has been shaking dance floors, stimulating listeners, and fascinating collectors alike. Since his debut album Alone, Alone and Alone, Terumasa Hino has remained at the foref…
*2026 repress* 'Persistent Repetition Of Phrases' success comes from the attention it pays to the function of 'the loop', not only as a narrative ordering system in modern music, but as a means by which the brain itself recalls and interprets information; it's as old as recorded sound itself, but in this context the repetition of small shards of auditory information becomes an elegy to fading memory and the worn-out synapses of old age. The track titles offer signposts through Kirby's labyrinth …
Yara Asmar’s new album, “everyone I love is sleeping and I love them so so much”, presents 11 pieces recorded over the past year between the small town of Alfred in upstate New York and Beirut. These sometimes fragile and tentative sound sketches reflect the times as Yara steps out, as if onto ice, into a new life on a new continent. She works with unfamiliar instruments, new materials and new sounds to build on her intimate style; homemade mechanical music boxes and a personal archive of family…
*2026 repress* 1973s brilliant Celestial Ocean, by the legendary Swiss krautrock band Brainticket, is a concept album that details an ancient pharoahs journey into the afterlife (substitute the word "journey" for "trip" and youll get what they were driving at). However, Brainticket were not mere products of their time, they explored some truly compelling musical territory and produced a superlative blanket of sound-featuring a pioneering mix of early synthesizers, flute, zither, sitar, and male …
*2026 repress* Joao Gilberto's self titled third album, is the fruit of the collaboration between Gilberto and the great composer and arranger Antonio Carlos Jobim and Walter Wanderley and his ensemble. This is one of the greatest pieces of work in the field of Brazilian music. Gilberto's delicate singing moves on top of extremely subtle, elegant orchestral arrangements of various songs from the classic repertoire, "Samba da Minha Terra" and "Saudade da Bahia" (Dorival Caymmi), "O Barquinho" (Ro…
*2026 repress* Brazilian singer, poet, guitarist Joao Gilberto made his 1959 debut with the now legendary LP, 'Chega de Saudade', a new sound and acknowledge as the first bossa nova album, a genre that swept the world in popularity and taken up by such artists as Stan Getz, Charly Byrd, Astrud Gilberto, Frank Sinatra, Quincy Jones, and countless others. Presented here is essentially a themed compilation of some of his best songs, including tracks from his acclaimed debut LP, 'Chega de Saudade'.
Mystery Hearsay / Mike Honeycutt was a major node of the 80s cassette culture network, his radio program in Memphis TN being a touchstone for home taping artists of a similar caliber to Don Campau‘s “No Pigeonholes”, RRRadio, or Schimpfluch’s “Psychic Rally”, all of which featured MH as an active participant. He also collaborated and traded extensively with the likes of Zan Hoffman (Larb), Minóy (Life Of Work), Swinebolt 45, and Agog.
Audio and video works by Mystery Hearsay were distributed pri…
Sorry For Laughing is a project by Gordon H. Whitlow who is also a member of legendary US avantgarde collective Biota, formerly Mnemonists or Mnemonist Orchestra. Their music is a mixture of modern classical, experimental sounds, noise, industrial, avangarde, songwriting and free jazz. In 1986 Gordon H. Whitlow released a cassette under the name Sorry For Laughing: "The compositions stem from my beginning days with the avant-garde recording ensemble Biota, shortly after completion of the Bellowi…
Severed Heads are an Australian electronic music group founded in 1979 as Mr. and Mrs. No Smoking Sign. The original members were Richard Fielding and Andrew Wright, who were soon joined by Tom Ellard. Fielding and Wright had both left the band by mid-1981 with Ellard remaining the sole consistent member for the rest of the band's existence. In 1984 the band released Dead Eyes Opened as a single, which was remixed in 1994 and re-released, reaching No. 16 on the ARIA Singles Chart. Two of their s…
Hunting Lodge are an American industrial/experimental band formed by Lon C. Diehl, Richard Skott and Carla Nordstrom (then known as Karl Nordstrom) in Port Huron, Michigan in 1982. Their first live appearance took place in September 1982 at the Harrington Ballroom inside the Harrington Hotel. The event was recorded on a portable cassette player and would become their first release on their own S/M Operations label. Nomad Souls LP was released in the fall of 1984 on S/M Operations in the U.S., an…
Available again for the first time since 1970, Lobo’s melancholy masterpiece epitomizes the experimental evolution of MPB. With new liner notes by Edu Lobo. Released in 1970, Cantiga de Longe is a defining record in the career of Brazilian singer, composer, and guitarist Edu Lobo and a significant contribution to Música Popular Brasileira (MPB). Created during Brazil’s military dictatorship, the album reflects the subtle, poetic strategies that artists use to convey meaning while subject to cens…
"Drift was a relatively short-lived project created by Gabriele Giuliani. Better known through his notorious nom de plume, Dead Body Love. Within the course of only a few short years, Drift released a dozen sought after releases on such legendary imprints as Slaughter, Old Europa Cafe, SSSM, Harmonie, and his own Less Than Zero, before fading behind the curtains Exile was not only the debut release by Drift, but also the beginning to a trilogy of cassettes released on Slaughter Productions. It …
"Second in the trilogy of Drift albums released on SlaughterProductions, The Beyond takes on a minimal yet darker approach, sheding the dense cavernous aspect of the preceding album, Exile. Replaced, is a more introspective Autumnal Dark Ambient style, which will become Drift's trademark on following releases. However, Gabrielle Giuliani never abandons the isolationist atmosphere he previously established. The result is a masterwork in Ambient Industrial Noise.
Winds howl, rain soaked leaves ar…
"On Earthquake, the third and final cassette released on Slaughter Productions, Drift takes on a slightly different angle to the previous two cassettes. Where as The Beyond and Exile were firmly planted in pitch black ambient territory, the desolation on Earthquake is Saharan. Bright, Sirocco, and sun scorched. Afterall, who said Dark Ambient needs to be cold? In a sense, the listener is transported to an abandoned archaeogical dig while faint middle eastern tones waver in and out of the surfac…
On Clandestine Anticipation, Krisma leave Italo-disco behind for a humid, video‑age dystopia, nine songs where synthetic funk, proto‑industrial atmosphere, and tropical mirages collide into one of the strangest Italian pop artefacts of the early 80s.
It seems like it was only a few months ago that Jim O’Rourke changed everything with the release of the incredible Eureka. And if you actually think that, then by George, you’re the Rip van Winkle of 90s rock! It hasn’t even been a few months since Jim’s twin comebacks The Visitor and Simple Songs, his most recent albums in the mold of his classic “pop music” trilogy of Bad Timing, Eureka, and Insignificance. Those two are thirteen and seven years behind us already! O’Rourke freak or not, if you…
Created for the Centre for Fine Arts Brussels, "Sumerian Star Creatures" premiered in 2017 as a part of Spencer Clark (The Skaters / Monopoly Child Star Searchers / Pacific City Sound Visions) and Xavier Garcia Bardon's "Imagineers in the Underworld" Film Series. Typhonian Highlife and Corum made a slithery soundtrack to intersperse between the stories of South Africas former National Laureate, Credo Mutwa; who's early work magically catalogs folk histories of the Zulu people, and later, begins …
3/3 is best known as the precursor to Friction, one of the most influential bands in the history of Japanese rock. Despite the fact that their only album was originally selfproduced in 1975 in an extremely limited run of just ten copies, it has since come to be recognized as one of the most important and legendary recordings in Japanese rock history. For decades, the full scope of the album remained shrouded in mystery until P-Vine reissued it on CD in 2007, finally bringing this elusive recordi…
Arriving right on time for its 20th anniversary, Faun Fables’ musical theatre work The Transit Rider returns in a lovely 2xLP vinyl edition that dimensionally burnishes the bristling performances and elevated chamber/cabaret folk sounds of the original CD-only release. At once a work of theatre, allegory and autobiography, The Transit Rider amplifies Faun Fables’ distinctive electroacoustic wash of Anglo-European folk sounds, shimmering allusively from traditional to Kurt Weill to folk-rock and …
Electric Sandwich were founded in Bonn in 1967 and played sophisticated progressive rock. Their first gigs were in 1968. At a band competition on 16 October 1971, they shared second place with the Scorpions and impressed so much that they immediately received a contract from Metronome/Brain. The LP, recorded by Dieter Dierks, was released at the end of 1972 (Brain 1018) with an olive-green label. After several illegal reissues (on Germanofon, Hiatus, Ear Ass, Icon, etc.), this legitimate edition…
Lindwurm were formed in 1972 in Uelzen and played a somewhat rough-edged progressive rock. The reference to Hanover, which you sometimes come across, is not accurate. Nor should they be confused with the jazz-rock group of the same name from Jork-Moorende on the Lower Elbe (LP Im Windschatten, 1981). In 1976, the much-loved Lindwurm singer and guitarist Klaus Arndt was struck by a car on the motorway and killed. The band dissolved immediately and, in his memory, released an LP that is now pricel…
** Deluxe matte laminate gatefold sleeve and polylined paper inner sleeve ** Paris, August 1969. Sunny Murray books a studio for a single afternoon and walks in with thirteen musicians - among them three members of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, the working sextet built around Archie Shepp, and the singer Jeanne Lee. What they cut that day, Hommage To Africa, is one of the high-water marks of the legendary BYG Actuel catalogue, and one of the warmest and least abrasive records the free jazz moveme…
One of the great small-group dates in the Impulse! book, and a quietly perfect one. Cut February 5 and 8, 1962, produced by Bob Thiele, with an across-the-generations cast: drummer Manne steering with the lightest touch, the mighty Coleman Hawkins in a late-career surge that reminds you exactly why he invented the tenor saxophone as we know it, Eddie Costa and Hank Jones trading the piano chair, George Duvivier anchoring the bass. The whole thing breathes - duet, trio, quartet, the group shrinki…
Released on Polydor in 1972, this is Roy Ayers hitting his stride. The Ubiquity sound has clicked into place: jazz improvisation, funk underneath, soul harmony, spiritual weight, all of it pulling in the same direction. The vibraphonist leans hard into groove without losing the openness, soul-jazz tipping over into the jazz-funk that would carry him through the decade. The band is loaded - Harry Whitaker on electric piano, organ and voice; John Williams on bass with Ron Carter stepping in on "We…
Caught at the exact moment the young trumpeter steps fully into his own. Recorded July 2, 1962, at Rudy Van Gelder's studio, released in 1963 on Impulse!, this is Hubbard with technique to burn but warmth to match - every line sculpted, every phrase rhythmically alive. Around him a ridiculous cast: John Gilmore (yes, the Sun Ra tenor man) shadowing Hubbard's lines with that crooked, unmistakable tone, Curtis Fuller and Tommy Flanagan filling out the harmony, Art Davis and Louis Hayes locking dow…
500 units, deluxe remastered edition. Some records are made in the present tense. The Civil Surface was made in the past perfect - a band returning from its own ending to commit to tape the music it had never quite managed to record. By the time these sessions took place at Worthing's Saturn Studios in the summer of 1974, Egg had already been finished for two years. The trio - organist Dave Stewart, bassist and horn player Mont Campbell, drummer Clive Brooks - had cut two singular albums of orga…
10" coloured vinyl edition. Ten tracks drawn from the 1954-56 Pacific Jazz sessions. Chet Baker Sings is a record that arrived too early for its own audience. In 1954 a twenty-four-year-old trumpet player set down his horn, leaned close to the microphone, and sang as if confiding something he wasn't sure he wanted overheard. What the era received as a flaw - a voice too soft, too high, too undefended for a man - is exactly what now sounds like the future turning up ahead of schedule.
There is al…
Recorded 1984-87 in Brooklyn and never before on vinyl, jazz pianist Masabumi Kikuchi's Rokudai cycle - Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, Air, Mind - turns synthesizers and a Shingon Buddhist framework into improvised electronic music. Remastered by Taylor Deupree. Complete six-2LP set.
On Spoki, Ingus Bauskenieks cracks open his private sonic world: homemade electronics, odd pop instincts and spectral melodies that refuse consensus, turning “ghosts” into solitary songs built strictly on his own terms.
Light In The Attic’s Japan Archival Series continues with Kankyō Ongaku: Japanese Ambient, Environmental & New Age Music 1980-1990, an unprecedented overview of the country’s vital minimal, ambient, avant-garde, and New Age music – what can collectively be described as kankyō ongaku, or environmental music. The collection features internationally acclaimed artists such as Haruomi Hosono, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Joe Hisaishi, as well as other pioneers like Hiroshi Yoshimura, Yoshio Ojima and Satoshi…
*2026 repress* Antônio Carlos Jobim was a primary force behind the evolution of bossa nova and his sixth studio release Stone Flower is an absolute classic. The album is emblematic of '70s bossa with its seductive samba beat fused with elements of modern jazz provided by a star-studded supporting cast of Ron Carter, Hubert Laws, Airto Moreira, and Joe Farrell. Stone Flower was recorded by Blue Note engineering virtuoso Rudy Van Gelder and arranged by fellow pianist and guitarist Eumir Deodato; t…
*2026 repress* Construção (Portuguese for 'Construction') is the eighth studio album by Brazilian singer-songwriter Chico Buarque, released in December 1971. It was composed in periods between Buarque's exile in Italy and his return to Brazil. Lyrically, the album is loaded with criticisms of the Brazilian military dictatorship, especially with regard to the censorship imposed by the government at the time. It is widely regarded by music critics as one of the greatest Brazilian albums of all tim…
*2026 repress* The soundtrack to Jim Jarmusch's 1986 film Down By Law is composed and performed by John Lurie, who also plays the pimp Jack in the movie. His world-weary avant-jazz pieces like "Please Come to My House," "What Do You Know About Music, You're Not a Lawyer," "Strangers in the Day," and "Fork in the Road" convey the film's seedy but humorous crime story.
*2026 repress* This is the only solo album by American soul singer James "Baby Huey" Ramey. He died at the age of 26 while recording his solo debut, and the album was finished and released posthumously. A quarter century after its release, The Baby Huey Story went on to become a cult classic among soul musicians and fans. Its single "Hard Times" has been sampled many times by a lot of artists and was covered by John Legend and the Roots in 2010 for the album Wake Up!
Legendary Japanese experimentalist Keiji Haino (Fushitsusha) and London's fearless drummer Steve Noble took to the stage at Cafe OTO in 2012 for a monumental concert - with Haino's extreme treatments of electric guitar, and feedback, with Noble on a lot of percussion...
While Haino theatrically sweeps between bleak and uninhibited paranoia, deep-level zoning and bluesy contemplation, Noble's huge set up and graceful approach brings space, light and shade - so much so that at one point Haino unpl…