Jazz /
Traces
*Very limited edition* Cosmic Ear is a new group bringing together Christer Bothén, Mats Gustafsson, Goran Kajfeš, Kansan Zetterberg and Juan Romero. Their debut album Traces is released by We Jazz Records on 23rd of May, 2025. Including 6 deep cuts, Traces is an album that sees Cosmic Ear tracking down the "traces" of the legendary Don Cherry's legacy while paving their own way in contemporary creative music expression.
Christer Bothén, a collaborator with Don Cherry during his Swedish period i…
Compassion
*2025 stock* Pianist-composer Vijay Iyer follows his 2021 ECM disc Uneasy — the first to showcase his trio featuring bassist Linda May Han Oh and drummer Tyshawn Sorey — with Compassion, another album in league with these two gifted partners. The New York Times captured the special qualities of this group, pointing to the trio’s flair for playing “with a lithe range of motion and resplendent clarity… while stoking a kind of writhing internal tension. Crucial to that balance is their ability to c…
Antibes '62
Jazz in Britain are pleased to announce the forthcoming release of a stunning previously unissued live recording of the legendary saxophonist Tubby Hayes and his quintet live at the Antibes Jazz Festival in July 1962. Hayes' band including trumpeter Jimmy Deuchar, pianist Gordon Beck, bassist Freddy Logan and drummer Allan Ganley were the UK's representative on a starry festival bill also featuring US stars Jimmy Smith, Dizzy Gillespie and Fats Domino, drawing rave press reviews and the admirati…
Free Flow
"None of the musicians need to be introduced to anyone Alexander von Schlippnebach is one of the founding fathers of free improvised music, a great expert on the music of Thelonious Monk and an exquisite piano master, Barry Altschul co-founded Anthony Braxton's first great quartet, a friend and musical companion of Sam Rivers, Chick Corea, Roswell Rudd, Dave Liebman, Barre Phillips, Kenny Wheeler, Andrew Hill, Sonny Criss, Hampton Hawes, and Lee Konitz and one simply of the greatest drummer in j…
Agree To Diagree
A chance to spend several days in the gorgeous Chamber Music Hall of the Deutschlandfunk Cologne, recording your music, is surely a coveted opportunity for any musician. No wonder I was elated to receive such an invitation from the radio producer Thomas Loewner. Pondering the question of how exactly I would like to use the time in the studio, I decided to write a series of pieces for three ensembles, keeping the same rhythm group throughout, adding the rest as my writing progressed. The resultin…
The Poets Walk
"Friendship as a principle. A superb case, like a quiver. Inside, magnificent clarinets. That's all it took for Joe Fonda, passing through Brest, in France, to invite their owner to play with him on his next visit to the US. After all, anyone who owns these beautiful instruments ‘can really play’. And that's how New Origin began. From the very first bars of Vers le soir, the double bass leaps onto the springboard, cast by an urgent call from the drumsticks. Urgency, energy, decisiveness—it all c…
Moontower
2012 release ** "The second release from two of the most fearless and creative improvisers on the planet, guitarist Craig Green and drummer Dave King. Moontower is not so much an object or fixed location as it is a state mind or stream of consciousness channeled from the energy that these two sonic sculptors posses. Recorded and mixed over two days at the vintage audio temple, The Hideout which is nestled along the Mississippi River in King’s hometown of Minneapolis. Coincidentally, Green is fro…
Nuits De La Fondation Maeght
Hugest tip! "Originally released across two edited volumes by Shandar in 1971, the concerts are now being reissued by Strut in a stunning expanded 6 LP vinyl box set for Record Store Day 2025. The set is housed in a hardboard box and features a reprint of the original festival programme, a 12-page over-sized booklet featuring liner notes by Daniel Caux, Jacqueline Caux and Paul Griffiths and stunning restored photos of the festival by Philippe Gras.
Sun Ra’s Nuits de la Fondation Maeght recordin…
Misterioso
Back in the mid 80's, Paul Motian, one of the greatest jazz drummers of all times, assembled one of the most inventive groups of the decade. Motian invited four highly individual players such as Joe Lovano and Jim Pepper on tenor sax, Bill Frisell on electric guitar and Ed Schuller on bass, and the result was a unique sound in perfect balance between post-Ornette free-bop and a new and spacier form of interplay. First released in 1987 "Misterioso" stands as a stunning example of modern jazz!
Lehto / Korpi
Finnish saxophonist Pauli Lyytinen makes his We Jazz solo debut with Lehto / Korpi, a widescreen environmental jazz ambient album effortlessly bringing together Lyytinen's saxophone, field recordings and extended instrumentation. Lyytinen's solo music is built on textural compositions, extended saxophone techniques and electro-acoustic soundscapes and layers. Think albums like Evan Parker's "With Birds" and "Schwarzwaldfahrt" by Brötzmann/Bennink but with a whole other world of sounds to work wi…
II
Finnish quartet Superposition returns with their second album, "II", on We Jazz Records, 19th July. The band will premiere their new album live on the same day at Helsinki's Odysseus Festival, organised by We Jazz. Led by drummer Olavi Louhivuori, Superposition features Linda Fredriksson and Adele Sauros on saxes and Mikael Saastamoinen on bass. Having won the "EMMA" prize for the Finnish jazz album of the year with their debut (We Jazz Records, 2020), Superposition takes leaps forward with thei…
Volume 1
Brooklyn-based pianist Eva Novoa delivers a masterfully executed trio album of melodic themes replete with touches of swing, grooves and exquisite electronic landscapes. Novoa’s articulated playing flows with plenty of room gifting the band full freedom of improvisation.
On the track ‘Rocket Man’ you can hear the possibilities of the traditional jazz trio format as it projects into the future, combining the acoustic beauty of the piano with the electronic tapestry of modular synthesizer. The gro…
The Gowanus Recordings
*2025 stock* This eclectic group features the legendary multi instrumentalist Daniel Carter as well as the scientist/pianist Matthew Putman, drum wizard and 577 Records co-founder Federico Ughi, together with the brilliant up-and-coming member of the New York downtown scene, Texas-born clarinet player Patrick Holmes plus veteran bassist Hilliard Greene, a mainstay of the avant-garde for the last 20 years.
Elastic Wave
*2025 stock* Drummer Gard Nilssen’s ECM leader debut follows acclaimed recordings for the label with the Maciej Obara Quartet and with Mathias Eick. Elastic Wave presents Nilssen’s powerful trio with fellow Norwegian André Roligheten on reeds and Swedish bassist Petter Eldh. The group’s dynamic interaction, dancing sense of pulse and boldly etched themes – all three players contribute compositions – make Acoustic Unity one of the most engaging bands on the circuit today, able to address fiery an…
The Blue Land
*2025 stock* For the follow-up of his ECM-leader-debut La traversée, French saxophonist Matthieu Bordenave expands his trio of German pianist Florian Weber and Swiss bassist Patrice Moret with the unique sensibilities of drummer James Maddren, whose unrelenting pulse adds deft counterpoint to the group’s already idiosyncratic sound. Besides the soulfully angular rendering of John Coltrane’s “Compassion”, the quartet tackles eight Bordenave-originals that bridge the gap between chamber-jazz dynam…
A New Day
*2025 stock* Rekindling the familiarly flowing interplay with fellow travellers Thomas Morgan and João Lobo – the trio’s musical partnership goes back over a decade at this point –, on A New Day Italian pianist Giovanni Guidi moreover expands the group’s instrumental grasp with the introduction of American saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, who makes his ECM debut here. Not only is the ensemble scope widened; with Brandon Lewis in tow, new dialects and fresh perspectives are broached, and differe…
Music Is the Healing Force of the Universe
Music Is the Healing Force of the Universe is a powerful and often ignored 1970 recording from the American avant-garde jazz saxophonist, singer and composer Albert Ayler. Apart from the posthumous album The Last Album, this was to be Ayler's last studio album, recorded and released before his death in November 1970. The album was initially judged as too difficult by Down Beat, then recognized by the most as “an important portrait of a man facing a life and death inner struggle beyond the bounda…
Solhverv
Bomb! Danish pianist Tom Prehn was one of the first Europeans to deeply explore free music. With his quartet featuring Fritz Krogh on tenor saxophone, Poul Ehlers on bass, and Finn Slumstrup on drums, Prehn recorded Axiom in October, 1963, for Sonet, though it went unreleased until 2015 because the band felt that their music had moved beyond it already. To hear the music they were talking about, one could only turn to two privately-made reel-to-reel tapes, Centrifuga and Sohlverv, recorded in Au…
Skrifum
From the very first note, Norway’s Jon Balke proposes a new sonic dimension with Skrifum, continuing a line of inquiry begun with Warp (2016) and Discourses (2020), solo piano albums which also processed the acoustic environment in which the music was heard. Skrifum (the Icelandic word for “write”) takes things a step further. With the aid of electronic audio tool the Spektrafon, which he helped develop, Balke is now able to directly manipulate ambient audio sound from the piano while playing –…
Relations
Musical messages from Oslo, New York, Basel and Lugano – recorded between 2018 and 2022 – are juxtaposed and recombined on an absorbing recording that features Norwegian drummer Thomas Strønen solo and in a series of duets . With such partners as Craig Taborn, Chris Potter, Sinikka Langeland and Jorge Rossy, the musical frame of reference is very broad. Elements from Langeland’s’s archaic-sounding folk to Potter’s post-Coltrane saxophone and Taborn’s whirlwind modernist piano each find their p…