Jazz /
Everyone’s Children
Tip! *2023 stock* Everyone’s Children is the stunning debut album of spiritual avant-garde music from keyboardist, composer Surya Botofasina, out on Spiritmuse Records. The record combines deep jazz excursions with expansive synth passages and intimate piano turns to create a hypnotic, meditative and devotionally expressive suite that soothes, enriches and uplifts the soul. Botofasina’s upbringing at the Sai Anantam Ashram in the Southern Californian hills involved daily bhajans (traditional Hin…
Psychicemotus
Psychicemotus was released in 1965 and features Yusef Lateef on various flutes and tenor saxophone, Georges Arvanitas on piano, bassist Reggie Workman, and drummer James Black. And while the Coltrane era of modal and free jazz was in full swing, Lateef always followed his own muse, and continued looking forward while looking back to ancient musics. His use of bamboo and Chinese wood flutes on the title track and "Bamboo Flute Blues" added not only dimension and texture, but rhythmic invention to…
Trio
Jesper Nordberg Trio is a group based in Copenhagen (DK) and Malmö (SE), featuring the double bass player Jesper Nordberg, violinist Stefan Pöntinen and trumpetist Ruhi Erdogan. With Nordberg's compositions as a starting point, the trio's playing can be characterized by close interplay, radical shifts, and having elements ranging from experimental improvisation, Balkan music, Scandinavian folklore, jazz and expressionism. Jesper Nordberg's warm tone and rhythmic displacements meet Ruhi's trumpet…
Spirit Spirit
*2023 stock* Spirit Spirit is an improvised suite in nine parts and epilogue by the Scandinavian trio featuring the renowned saxophone player Torben Snekkestad, pianist Søren Kjærgaard, and double bass player Tomo Jacobson. The suite was carefully composed from almost 3 hours of spontaneously improvised studio recordings by the trio. The outcome is a focused, minimal, dark, dynamic, enigmatic 38 minutes of music that unfolds like a ghostly tale. The trio was formed in 2016.
Variations On No Particular Theme - Part 2
*2023 stock* Lo and behold, the second and final part of the diptych from the unusual free improvising quartet featuring two New York-based viola players Mat Maneri & Tanya Kalmanovitch, and Copenhageners Tomo Jacobson on double bass & Kresten Osgood on drums, is finally here! This time, we enter into a darker, fiercer, seemingly telepathic exchange - a powerful finale to an unprecedented musical journey.
Variations On No Particular Theme - Part 1
Perhaps for the first time in the history of music, here is two violas, double bass, and drums quartet featuring the New York-based Mat Maneri & Tanya Kalmanovitch, and Copenhageners Tomo Jacobson & Kresten Osgood. Calling their music chamber free improv gives some clues about the sound world you are entering, but it also falls very short in the face of the multitudes presented here. ‘Variations On No Particular Theme’ is a pregnant name in which we can look for the key to this album. Of course,…
The Cod And The Cat
*2023 stock. 50 copies limited edition* After his oneiric, Casio-centric 'Nullpluss' that Kristian Tangvik released two years ago, the time has come for his next move. In Kristian's own words: "The Cod and the Cat has developed over the course of two years. It came to me in a dream. Some compositions arrived while traveling, others in a complete standstill. And so I have gathered a fresh combination of exceptional performers from the rich and exciting underground of Copenhagen's music scene, and…
Litterjug
*2023 stock* Bloodstock themes, cascading drum fills, pumping bass lines, and flamethrower saxophone cries - Litterjug is a rollercoaster ride of joyful anarchy. Litterjug is a Copenhagen-based contemporary trash jazz trio featuring three original improvisers from Poland, Lithuania, and Denmark. The band's explorations are heavily rock-inspired, with a dose of abrasive free flow improvisations. The trio offers contrast-filled, action-packed music, sometimes rocking a simple groove, and other tim…
More Lost Performances (Revisited)
"The almost five year span bookended in this particular Ayler revisitation marks, in a certain sense,
the beginning and end points of the most lasting and creative portion of his remarkable, though
sadly brief, career." – Brian Olewnick
Circular Temple
"On a good day it is strenuous to stay current with pianist Matthew Shipp's imposing and voluminous output. On an even better day it is a fool's hardy errand to say the least. Now with the planned re-issuing of some of his great early deconstructions of musical thought and theory, starting here with 1990's daringly incongruous yet hypnotically accessible, Circular Temple, keeping up just got a whole lot harder. With William Parker on bass and Whit Dickey on drums, this four-movement suite for pi…
Crescent
*2023 stock* "John Coltrane's Crescent from the spring of 1964 is an epic album, showing his meditative side that would serve as a perfect prelude to his immortal work A Love Supreme. His finest quartet with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones supports the somewhat softer side of Coltrane, and while not completely in ballad style, the focus and accessible tone of this recording work wonders for anyone willing to sit back and let this music enrich and wash over you.
While not quite at th…
Midnight All Day
*2023 stock* Some of the best improvised percussion solos from the early years.
Environment For Sextet
*2023 stock* "In 1978, thanks to Eugene Chadbourne, Davey Williams and John Zorn I was able to organize a memorable US tour. On this CD you’ll find the original New York recording session with a sextet of great musicians. The tape has been released in the past on Ictus LP in a reduced version and on CD in an unfortunate cut full of wrong edit. Now you can finally enjoy the music as it was conceived and performed. Environment for sextet LP was made possible by a generous loan from the unforgettab…
L.A. Strictly Confidential
*2023 stock* "The West Coast Chamber Jazz Trio, recently formed, remains faithful to its name, in the sense that the undoubted chamber size and the jazz component, apparent in rhythmic melodic lines and improvisation always kept under control, are beautifully conjugated in the narrative modes, colloquialisms and relaxed of the Californian jazz, not only from the fifties and sixties, but also that one of the most recent landings …" - Libero Farnè
October Wind Vol. 1
*2023 stock* "The release of the two volumes of October Wind, on the tenth anniversary of Steve Lacy death, has a special meaning for me. Not only because it’s probably the last unreleased recording of this extraordinary trio, but also because I was working on it with my dearest friend Gilles Laheurte, who had been one of the best friend of the late Steve Lacy. Gilles was a scholar of Steve Lacy music and I had the privilege to have his liner notes on the previous re-discovered trio recording re…
October Wind Vol. 2
*2023 stock* "The release of the two volumes of October Wind, on the tenth anniversary of Steve Lacy death, has a special meaning for me. Not only because it’s probably the last unreleased recording of this extraordinary trio, but also because I was working on it with my dearest friend Gilles Laheurte, who had been one of the best friend of the late Steve Lacy. Gilles was a scholar of Steve Lacy music and I had the privilege to have his liner notes on the previous re-discovered trio recording re…
Ictus Nights @The Stone - Anthology Volume 2
*2023 stock* "Celebrating a label's 35th anniversary at a venue as iconic as The Stone in New York City is already quite revealing of the nature of the music to be heard, i.e. definitely unusual and daring, definitely with no piano bar and no noisy cash register... But with the present celebration, there was an added element of surprise, as Andrea Centazzo — founder of the creative Ictus label and curator of the 12 nights Festival (April 1-14, 2012) -- brought for the first time ever to the hear…
Ictus Nights @The Stone - Anthology Volume 1
*2023 stock* "Celebrating a label's 35th anniversary at a venue as iconic as The Stone in New York City is already quite revealing of the nature of the music to be heard, i.e. definitely unusual and daring, definitely with no piano bar and no noisy cash register... But with the present celebration, there was an added element of surprise, as Andrea Centazzo — founder of the creative Ictus label and curator of the 12 nights Festival (April 1-14, 2012) -- brought for the first time ever to the hear…
Ictus Records' 30th Anniversary Collection
*2023 stock* "This 12CDs Box Set is perhaps the most important collection of music in the Ictus Records history, a celebration for the 30th anniversary of the birth of one of the first independent labels of the 70′.
At that time for a young musician like me, the recording scene was fairly discouraging especially in my country of origin, Italy. Record companies were not interested in producing “avant-garde music”, and this music found its way out through few small musicians – owned labels. In o…
In Real Time
*2023 stock* "Real Time is an extraordinary example of interaction between musicians coming from different worlds of new music. I had the chance to perform with those two great musicians on other occasions: in duo with Curran and in duo, trio and sextet with Parker. Alvin came from the American school, full of minimalist references, melodic structures and open to all kinds of contamination.
Evan had left jazz to accomplish his own instrumental language, aiming at total improvisation. The idea of…