Jazz /
Jazz Flamenco
On Jazz Flamenco, Pedro Iturralde forges a taut, singing dialogue between Andalusian cante and modal jazz, letting saxophone and flamenco guitar trade roles as soloist and accompanist in a music that sounds both inevitable and newly invented.
Africa / Brass
In 1961 John Coltrane joined the newly founded Impulse! label. The great saxophonist was coming off several impactful albums (Giant Steps) and a very notable — even commercial — success: that My Favorite Things which had made his soprano sax one of t…
Amiri Baraka / The Jihad
Originally released in New York in 1968 on Baraka's own Jihad label, "Black and Beautiful Soule and madness" is a fiery document of the 1960s. It could be mistaken for a lost ESP-Disk release, sitting well between Sun Ra / the Fugs/ and Albert Ayler.…
Karma
Karma is Pharoah Sanders' third recording as a leader, and is among a number of spiritually themed albums the Impulse! Record label released in the late 1960s/early 1970s. Although it is followed by the brief "Colors", the album's main piece is the 3…
Reference: Miles Davis’ 3rd Quintet Bitches Brew Live 1969 in Europe
"The shock and awe that Bitches Brew produced within and without the jazz world on its release in March 1970 was largely unexpected, the result of the music’s uncompromising power and what many felt to be its perplexing, eccentric sound and structure…
Reference: Albert Ayler Spirits & Spirits Rejoice
The album "Spirits," released by a debut label based in Copenhagen, marked the first opportunity for Ayler to record his "free music" in February 1964 in New York. The musicians selected by him included notable figures such as Cecil Taylor (with drum…
The Straight Horn Of Steve Lacy
Originally released in 1962 on Candid Records, The Straight Horn of Steve Lacy finds a young Steve Lacy stepping forward with quiet confidence and a sound unlike anyone else at the time. Stripped of excess and focused on tone, space, and intent, thes…
Blue Train
"We’re listening to Blue Train, which to me is one of the most beautiful pieces on one of the most beautiful records that Coltrane recorded in the fifties. It’s his first real mature statement and he wrote all but one of the tunes on this album which…
Wave
*Back in print!* By the time this album was released, Antonio Carlos Jobim was already an international superstar. Having recently won a Grammy (1965) for "The Girl From Ipanema", by 1967 all the big name stars from up north were breaking down his do…
People In Sorrow
Remastered LP edition. Finally back in print! Originally released by EMI's Pathé Marconi imprint in 1969, People in Sorrow — a 40-minute work by the four-piece lineup of Roscoe Mitchell, Joseph Jarman, Lester Bowie, and Malachi Favors — has long been…
Lola
On Lola, Zbigniew Namysłowski Modern Jazz Quartet fuse blazing post‑bop with Polish highlander melodies, cutting a 1964 London session that became both a historic first outside the Iron Curtain and a cult artefact of fiercely local modern jazz.
The Inflated Tear
Last pressed on vinyl in 2005, The Inflated Tear is a studio album by Roland Kirk, released on Atlantic in 1968. Roland Kirk, was a hugely influential, blind jazz multi-instrumentalist who played tenor saxophone, flute, and many other instruments. He…
Spellbinder Verve Vault
Gábor Szabó's groundbreaking 1966 album Spellbinder, originally released on Impulse! Records, is set for a premium all-analog reissue on March 13, 2026, as part of the acclaimed Verve Vault Series.
This quintet recording, captured at Rudy Van Gelder’…
Copenhagen, Bordeaux 1966 & Newport 1967 Live First Release
"These powerful performances from Copenhagen and Bordeaux, released officially here for the first time, and the Newport Festival in the U.S., provide further evidence of the music’s collective necessity – the true ensemble coordination which Ayler …
Europe 1964
Super tip! Holy ghost music. The real deal. The sound of four men tearing a hole in the fabric of what jazz was supposed to be and letting something else pour through - something ancient and raw and utterly new. In their short time together, Albert A…
Percussion Bitter Sweet
August 1961. Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. Max Roach - the man who reinvented jazz drumming alongside Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie in the 1940s, the co-leader with Clifford Brown of the definitive hard bop quintet until trage…
Four For Trane
August 10, 1964. Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. A young saxophonist from Philadelphia enters the studio to record his first album as a leader for Impulse! Records. At his side, as co-producer, stands the man to whom he owes everythi…
A New Conception
After releasing two astonishing albums of original material with his remarkable debut Fuchsia Swing Song (1964) and the follow-up Contours (1965), multi-instrumentalist Sam Rivers went another direction on his third Blue Note album A New Conception (…
Much Les
Together with the saxophone player Eddie Harris, Les McCann was responsible for one of the best-sold albums in the whole history of jazz – "Swiss Movement" (Atlantic SD-1537). It was his debut album on the Atlantic label. 1968 saw the release of "Muc…
Ornette!
Ornette Coleman, who died in June 2015 from cardiac arrest, must be counted as one of the most influential musicians in the jazz genre. His importance does not only lie in his ground-breaking recordings in the late Fifties and early Sixties, but lies…