Jazz /
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.
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.
Adams Apple
2026 stock Doug Carn made four records for the Black Jazz label, more than any other artist, and each one topped the previous release's lofty standard. Adam's Apple was his last (1974) album for the label, representing the final note in his staggeringly creative crescendo. It was also the first record without Jean Carn, but Carn and crew (John Conner and Joyce Greene) don't miss a beat on the vocals. And the band is absolutely sick, featuring reedman Ronnie Laws and fellow Black Jazz recording a…
Omniverse
Tip! Tip! Tip! Twenty years after its first publication, Art Yard are proud to present the fully revised 2nd edition of Hartmut Geerken's long unobtainable Omniverse Sun Ra, a definitive hitch-hiker's guide to the Sun Ra galaxy. 304 full colour pages / 1850 gramms - Size: 290mm x 245mm Portrait.The new, completely revised edition features:- unpublished photographs of Sun Ra and the Arkestra by Hartmut Geerken and Val Wilmer;- fully revised discography by Chris Trent, co-author of The Earthly Rec…
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 unavailable on vinyl and CD, and then only in hard-to-find European and Japanese issues. It is arguably the finest and most ambitious of the 14 studio albums recorded by the Art Ensemble of Chicago during their 23-month sojourn in France, which laun…
Live In The Listening Room
Limited edition of 500 copies. Recorded direct-to-tape in Devon Turnbull's Listening Room at 180 Studios, London. Pressed on 180-gram heavyweight black vinyl with colour sleeve featuring exclusive session photography. Engineered by Jamie Harley. On January 30, 2025, saxophonist Isaiah Collier and drummer Tim Regis walked into Devon Turnbull's Hi-Fi Listening Room at 180 Studios in London - the same OJAS space that has become a pilgrimage site for anyone serious about how music should actually s…
Dogon A.D.
One of the most important jazz albums of the 1970s - finally on vinyl in its definitive edition. Julius Hemphill's Dogon A.D. is the missing link between the avant-garde and the blues, between the cotton fields and outer space. Recorded on a freezing February day in 1972 at Oliver Sain's Archway Studios in St. Louis - no heat, malfunctioning equipment, some musicians didn't even show up - and yet what emerged was nothing short of a masterpiece. An "almost accidental classic" that has haunted col…
The Tapscott Sessions Vol. 6
October in Los Angeles. Horace Tapscott sits down, plays for 38 minutes, gets up. No audience, no applause. Just Tom Albach and his tape machine. This is how monuments get built - one session at a time, one composition at a time, nobody watching. "Ancestral Echoes" opens - nearly thirteen minutes tracing lineages back through time, the piano as time machine. Then Roy Porter's "Jessica," a beautiful detour into someone else's melody, proof that Tapscott could interpret as powerfully as he compose…
The Tapscott Sessions Vol. 4
Solo (Steinway) piano. Los Angeles, September 1982. Just read the titles: "A Dress for Renee" - infectious melody, keeps coming back like a persistent thought. "Shades of Soweto" - South Africa seen from South Central. "The Hero's Last Dance" - whoever that hero was. "First Call of the Humming Bird" - nature breaking through concrete. And then "Forgiving" - as a closing statement, as a breath.
Horace Tapscott was a fierce critic of racial bigotry, and his music never hid it. But here there's als…
The Tapscott Sessions Vol. 3
Solo piano. Recorded March 1983, Los Angeles. Five pieces, forty-one minutes. Where Sun Ra meets Erik Satie. This is the third volume in what would become Tapscott's monumental series of solo recordings - over thirty hours captured between 1982 and 1985, documenting his own compositions alongside works by unknown Black composers in the Los Angeles area. Producer Tom Albach considered these the most important music Horace Tapscott ever made.
The titles read like chapters from a life: "The Tuus," …
The Tapscott Sessions Vol. 2
Solo piano. Recorded November 15, 1982 at the Lobero Theater, Santa Barbara. A Steinway piano and one man's soul, nothing else. Producer Tom Albach believed the solo sessions were the most important music Tapscott ever made. Between 1982 and 1985, over thirty hours of solo piano were captured - Albach made it his life's mission to release them all. This is volume two, and it cuts deep.
The centerpiece: "Struggle X, An Afro-American Dream" - nearly twenty minutes of Tapscott wrestling with the un…
Touching Your Feelings (LP)
We are thrilled to announce the reissue of the most precious hidden gems of Soul Jazz / Spoken Word albums from a key era. Originally released in 1974 as a private pressing of fewer that 100 copies, Touching Your Feelings by Jim Marks is a crucial missing piece of the proto-rap era lying firmly between Gil Scott Heron and Amiri Baraka, with whom he made a strong friendship. Jym Marks' mix of deep, expressive poetry and solid jazz sits on the edge of works by The Last Poets and fellow west coast …
The Sisters
A heretical symbol of Rare Groove, with its alternative and avant-garde ferocity! Irvine Weldon's 1973 masterpiece, which continues to have a wide influence around the world even today! Although it is based on jazz, it is a work released in 1973 that is more soul/funk than the first album, and reflects more experimental and political aspects and ideas. For over 30 years, it has been loved by diggers all over the world and reigns at the top of the rare groove as a most wanted item, and today the …
Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse
Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse by Eugene McDaniels is a singular statement of early-70s soul dissent, bridging the realms of jazz, funk, and political activism. With inventive musicianship and lyrics addressing injustice, colonialism, and resistance, the album remains a powerful, relevant artifact, both musically adventurous and unflinching in its message.
To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol. 1
** With a 12-page 11x11" insert booklet (new for IA11, with unpublished photos and new liner notes by Alabaster DePlume), IARC 2025 obi strip and printed poly-lined printed inner-sleeve. ** In the words of Emma Warren: Alabaster DePlume is not doing things properly, and this makes him very happy. DePlume is a Manchester-born, London-based bandleader, composer, saxophonist, activist and orator. He’s a resident at the legendary London creative hub Total Refreshment Centre, a recording artist for…
Reese and the Smooth Ones
Reese and the Smooth Ones was captured during the same revolutionary Paris session as Message to Our Folks, but stands apart as a two-part, 40-minute odyssey of unchained invention.
B-X0 NO-47A
A cornerstone of avant-garde jazz, B-X0 NO-47A captures Anthony Braxton at a pivotal moment in his career and in the history of the Association For The Advancement Of Creative Musicians (AACM). Recorded in Paris in 1969 and newly restored from the original master tapes, this classic session finds Braxton leading a quartet of fellow AACM visionaries: trumpeter Leo Smith (before adopting the name Wadada), violinist Leroy Jenkins, and drummer Steve McCall.
The group’s instrumentation is strikingly …
Sonny's Time Now
** Rare original copies. Early 80s LP reissue. Unplayed copies from a dead-stock, minor wear due to ageing on covers ** A seismic moment in the history of free jazz, Sonny’s Time Now stands as a raw, uncompromising manifesto of musical liberation. Recorded in New York City in November 1965 and released on the visionary Jihad label founded by LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), this is the first album led by the revolutionary drummer Sonny Murray-and it’s nothing short of essential.
With a lineup that re…
Ketchaoua
Recorded August 18, 1969 in Paris with Archie Shepp on soprano, Grachan Moncur III on trombone, Dave Burrell on piano, Sunny Murray on drums plus Arthur Jones, Beb Guerin and Earl Freeman.
Restored & remastered from the original tapes Pressed on 180-gram black vinylInsert featuring insightful essay by author & music journalist Kevin Le GendreLP original gatefold sleeve & artwork faithfully reproduced
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…