Jazz /
Togetherness
Recorded in Paris in 1965, Don Cherry’s Togetherness is a five‑part live suite where pocket‑trumpet chants, Gato Barbieri’s searing tenor, vibes and a dancing rhythm section turn early free jazz into something fiercely open yet strangely joyful.
The Call
On The Call, Bellbird turn their namesake’s piercing cry into a manifesto: an explosive yet intimate quartet music where twin saxes, rhythm‑led structures and “ugly” beauty carry climate grief and solidarity into a single, ringing shout.
nen
Lau Nau (Laura Naukkarinen), Linda Fredriksson and Matti Bye enter the We Jazz Records realm as Kiri Ra! with their new album nen (out 22 May 2026). Kiri Ra! is a trio that creates their sound slowly, in a process of improvisation and discovery. Filtered through the musicians' long-standing friendship and collaboration, Kiri Ra!'s music is a testament to the joy of creation and invention. Their sound together draws from each of the the artists' work before, while creating new world of sound. The…
Orbital
The Outskirts came together as a working band during bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten’s three-year stint as a Chicagoan from 2005-2008. They played regularly at all of the working venues for improvised music in Chicago at that time, including The Hungry Brain, The Velvet Lounge, The Hideout, and Elastic. They even made a live recording in April 2009 that they were eager to release. But unfortunately, the multi-track audio files were lost in a hard drive mishap, leaving only a barely usable rough m…
Reference: Marion Brown Capricorn Moon Why Not? & With Burton Greene Quartet
The rhythm team by Rashied Ali and Reggie Johnson (with former Sun Ra member Ronnie Boykins adding texture on "Capricorn Moon") establishes a solid foundation, complemented by Alan Shorter's sharp trumpet, while Benny Maupin's close expressions in monophonic form also support it. The fact that pianist Burt Green recorded an almost unnoticed ESP album (just a month later) with Brown as a sideman illustrates how fluid and negotiable musical activities were within this nascent community.
Although R…
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 drummer Sunny Murray), members from Sonny Rollins' band (bassist Henry Grimes), and musicians from his Cleveland period (trumpeter Norman Howard, bassist Earl Henderson). This work also represents his first focus on his own compositions, which includes H…
Awofofora
On Awofofora, Marion Brown folds funk, reggae and Afro‑Caribbean rhythm into his mature structural language, using grooves not as decoration but as architecture for golden‑toned alto lines and quietly radical collective improvisation.
Looking for Consonance
"The title Looking for Consonance popped into my head one day as I began thinking about a name for this collection of music. This title immediately felt important, so I kept sitting with it. I thought I knew what consonance meant in music, but I also knew it carried other meanings—ones that extend well beyond sound. Webster’s Dictionary defines consonance as “the harmony or agreement of sounds produced simultaneously, resulting in a pleasing and stable auditory experience.” The word that stands …
As Serious As Your Life: Black Music and the Free Jazz Revolution, 1957-1977 (Book)
In As Serious As Your Life, photographer and historian Val Wilmer chronicles the free jazz revolution as a Black cultural vanguard, situating Ayler, Coltrane, Coleman, Sun Ra and others within the struggles, hopes and solidarities of 1960s–70s America.
Cosmic Music: The Life, Art and Transcendence of Alice Coltrane (Book)
In Cosmic Music, Andy Beta traces Alice Coltrane’s journey from Detroit church pews to avant‑garde bandstands and ashram altars, revealing a visionary composer, bandleader and spiritual teacher whose work radically reshaped the possibilities of Black American music.
One Atmosphere
An original member of the legendary Black Artists Group (St. Louis' counterpart to the AACM), and founder of the World Sax Quartet, Julius Hemphill was one of the most important composer/performers in creative music. His work is marked by a sharp, edgy melodicism steeped in the blues, contrapuntal complexity and a striking formal logic. One Atmosphere presents the full range of his compositional talents: a long, epic work for seven woodwinds (one of his greatest compositions, here receiving its …
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, these sessions reveal a musician already thinking beyond convention. The soprano sax cuts clean and direct, moving between sharp angles and lyrical calm, with a small group that listens as closely as it plays. Nothing here feels rushed or ornamental, jus…
Future Present Past
Future Present Past is the second Impulse! Records album by the free jazz collective Irreversible Entanglements. The album was largely recorded at the historic Van Gelder Studio and showcases how the quintet fuses atmospheric jazz, world music traditions, and spoken word with the story of our collective existence: a future full of possibilities, a present with all its uncertainties, and a past as a source of ancestral wisdom.
Irreversible Entanglements, formed in Brooklyn in 2015, consists of p…
Septober Energy
Centipede’s Septober Energy (1971), released on RCA and produced by jazz pianist Keith Tippett, is a sprawling double-album manifesto of British avant-garde jazz-rock that brings together an enormous ensemble of more than fifty musicians, including members of King Crimson, Soft Machine, and other key figures of the Canterbury and progressive scenes. Conceived as a large-scale orchestral jazz composition, the record blends free improvisation, electric jazz fusion, progressive rock dynamics, and c…
Kwasy I Zasady
What do jazz improvisation, Polish Radio, dingy rap from Memphis, cassette tapes, trap, drill elements and hip-hop loops have in common? These are the ingredients that the Błoto quartet used in their lab to cook an explosive mixture for their third LP entitled “Kwasy i zasady” (eng,“Acids and bases”). Nobody thought that a band who appeared suddenly and unexpectedly on the jazz scene would develop so rapidly and in such an unforeseen direction. A year ago, critics and music journalists treated …
Moons Melt Milk Light
Anenon's tenor saxophone breathes an emotive contemplation on loss, meshed with sustained piano and field recordings. 'Moons Melt Milk Light' is a hyper-personal statement contained in a visceral beauty.
vd5
Vladislav Delay, primarily known as a highly regarded electronic music innovator, steps ahead with his acoustic jazz quintet. Echoing the forward-looking vd musical vision always ahead of the curve, the new album does not fit into any specific category, forging a path of its own across the 10 tracks. Recorded at Candybomber Studio in Berlin, the album brings vd together with Maria Bertel, Lucio Capece, Derek Shirley and Max Loderbauer. This is shape-shifting, elastic music that exists left of an…
The Forward Process
*200 copies limited edition* "In a somewhat inconspicuous passage in Ursula K. Le Guin’s sci-fi classic The Dispossessed, its main character — the brilliant physicist Shevek — meets a composer who has translated Shevek’s revolutionary theories into music: ‘I’m writing a piece of chamber music. Thought I might call it The Simultaneity Principle. [Several] instruments each playing an independent cyclic theme; no melodic causality; the forward process entirely in the relationship of the parts. It m…
Groundspeed
*300 copies limited edition* In October 2024, g a b b r o travels from Brussels to the mysterious village of Gabbro in Italy. Together with drumming virtuoso Casper Van De Velde, Hanne De Backer invites musical friends along the way to record in places that have personal significance for them. The quest to Gabbro takes them through five countries in seven days: Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland and Italy. The diverse landscapes and numerous encounters leave a deep impression. The pace of …
Quartet
Hatka performed at Telakka Jazz on the first Friday night of January 2025. The following Sunday the trio visited the studio to record a session - music captured in the festival afterglow, fuelled by a shared commitment to free expression. The album is titled Quartet for a reason. A fourth voice, saxophonist Jone Takamäki, was originally meant to join the group for both the live performance and the studio recording. Quartet is what was planned and what remains. Jone couldn’t make it, so he never …