Jazz /
Meta Zero
Temporary Super Offer! The music on this CD is an impressive document of such a search for meaning and artistic legitimacy. It doesn’t want to add something even louder to the supposedly spectacular. On the contrary: Here, it is about the subtle intimacy and emotionality of human relationships, about breathing as one. It is about being interested in each other beyond ever new superlatives. This is where the unobtrusive authenticity of this music comes from, what makes it special and thoughtful. …
Ink Folly, Orchid Gleam
"Ink Folly, Orchid Gleam is a piece in two movements for alto saxophone, upright bass, and drum set. Each movement was transmuted from a two-part poem of the same name, which was first drafted on a bus to my home of Northeastern Pennsylvania. The pang to return to where nature is abundant wasn't something I expected would be so strong when I moved to New York, but Ink Folly, Orchid Gleam is a product of those emotions. Written with my dear friends Mathias Jensen and Eliza Salem in mind, I knew I…
In Focus
Listen to Misha Panfilov's latest release and witness the mastery of beat, mood, and melody as he teams up with jazzaggression. None can do it better than Misha Panfilov!
Flowers In Space
"This is the first LP (following a cassette) released under Drew Gardner’s name and it’s a doozy. Drew is a guitarist, probably best known as a founding member of Elkhorn (although his musical partnerships with Jesse Shepard go back way further than that), and his recent work with Jeffrey Alexander’s Heavy Lidders has also been noteworthy as hell. The band here is a trio with Andy Cush (Garcia Peoples) on bass, and the extremely well documented Ryan Jewell on drums. Drew’s guitar playing is jazz…
Un Hombre De Buenos Aires
Jazz, funk, and bossa vibes kiss each other, all wrapped up in JLR's trademark cinematic feel. In his colourful Un Hombre de Buenos Aires, recorded in 1978, JLR puts the political outcry of his early 70s works aside and focuses on his love for the city of Buenos Aires. Jorge López Ruiz gets far less credit than he deserves. His crucial role in shaping Argentina's jazz history should place him right next to Gato Barbieri and Lalo Schifrin, who found success abroad. It's an honour do dig deeper in…
Volume 2
Super groups are always risky—the potential for disappointing fans or warring musical styles is high—but when longtime friends and masterful improvisers come together, they usually work. Evident in their first collaboration, simply titled Volume 1, John Dikeman (Saxophone; When The Time Is Right, 577 Records, 2021) joined musicians Pat Thomas (Piano; Shifa Live at Cafe Oto 2019, BleySchool 2019, Shifa Live in Oslo 2020, Educated Guess 2021), John Edwards (Bass; EMPoWered. 577 Records, 2021), and…
Extensions
Pianist and composer Simon Nabatov has played with "who's who" of the jazz and improvised music community, given concerts in over 60 countries, appeared on the numerous international festivals, received prizes and documented his music on 30 CD's under his own name. His musical activities include Jazz, improvised, experimental and world music. Nabatov’s initial idea to extend his Cologne-based quartet - hence the CD title – resulted in this exciting musical document. Both tracks, while fully impr…
Basenezmen
*2023 stock* Recorded in Royal Alzheimer Hall, Thessaloniki, Greece, January 2015, Limited release of 500 unique record covers for the 500 hand-numbered copies of the Basenezmen music project. Two of the most important musicians in Greece are currently together for the first time to present ‘basenezmen’ project. They improvise under rythmic structures in form of jazz, rock, ambient and folk music.
Conversations From The Past
*2023 stock* Lakis Tzimkas and Milcho Leviev came in contact in 2002 during their first common performance. Ever since, a special bond has been created in both personal and artistic levels. One of the outcomes of this common progression is this recording, five years before Milco Leviev had passed (1937-2019). This CD features compositions by both. The style oscillates between the classical and jazz music bordering the cinematic. Musical narrations create a tension that births the sense of depth,…
Something There
*2023 stock* "Almost two years of inactivity have passed. The main reason was the pandemic, of course, but there was also a second one, an eight-month period when I could not use my left arm because of a shoulder fracture. But still, on the 21st of October 2021, I performed solo at the Open Jazz events of Demetria Festival. In one of the old warehouses in the port of Thessaloniki which have been converted into cinema halls. Right across the port authority where I served for three years. The tens…
Skra’s Confession
*2023 stock* The Orange Blue Green band improvises freely in the true sense of the word. An improvisation initiating from the very first sound produced without any prior coordination regarding the style, structure or anything relating to the overall musical form. An acoustic, almost classical trio that has embraced the fundamental features of the sound of chamber music, along with the various musical idioms and experiences of the members’ multi-dimensional course. Their music features a primal e…
At Tilos, Budapest
Blurt was founded in Stroud, UK, in 1979 as part of the post-punk movement by poet, saxophonist und puppeteer Ted Milton along with Milton's brother Jake, formerly of psychedelic group Quintessence, on drums and Peter Creese on guitar. After three albums Creese left the band to be replaced by Herman Martin on synthesizers who, after a year of constant touring left the band, and was replaced by Steve Eagles, former member of Satan's Rats, The Photos and Bang Bang Machine. Shortly thereafter Jake …
Divisions
A suite of four new compositions from Johnny Hunter, performed beautifully, stylishly, and most creatively by this trio of great players. The music treads a fine line between free jazz and free improvisation, areas where these musicians live easily and naturally. By turns exciting, textural, sensual, joyously cool. Johnny writes "The recording came off the back of the trio's tour where they were performing purely Free Improvisation. The interest is in how they would now treat some composed mater…
3D@Paris
Paris, marked by the passage of time - Paris, alive and cosmopolitan -Paris, inspiration to poets - The City of Light!
“3D@Paris” interweaves music with the sounds of everyday life in Paris. Let yourself be swept along on a dreamy stroll through the city. The charm of murmuring voices. The fascinating musicality of crumpling paper, the rhythmical beat of the Metro. The musicians respond, enhance, offset. There is a beguiling story being told here.
As a composer, Cécile Broché proposes a complete…
Mountains, Meditations, Murmurations
Two mountains, three meditations, and three murmurations, interwoven in dynamic duo performance, presented in order of emergence at the time of the music’s making. Tromans and Sanders have worked together on a number of projects in the last decade, including Tromans’ Birmingham-Chicago Improvisers’ Ensemble (as featured on BBC Radio 3) and Sid Peacock’s acclaimed Surge Orchestra, but this is the first time they have recorded together in a duo setting. The session was suggested by Sanders in earl…
Tapestry Koto & The Occident Sea
'Tapestry: Koto' is a 3-album series produced by Nippon Columbia in the mid-1970s dedicated to one of the main instruments of Japanese traditional music: Koto. The beauty of the trilogy curated by composer Kiyoshi Yamaya, whose chapters are respectively dedicated to Sea, Hillside and Country, lies in the fact that they are a modern translation of tradition using newer and more avant-garde sound idioms, integrating the koto with jazz musicians. An original mix, a 'crossover’ that allows for the a…
Next Door
Adroit jazz guitar, prog rock fantasia, and Japanese environmental music all rest comfortably behind Leo Takami's Next Door. The follow up to the acclaimed Felis Catus & Silence, Next Door finds Takami ruminating on passages — of time, seasons, consciousness. Through music, Leo contemplates daily events and finds beauty in ordinary moments. He also seems to be questioning the value of being stuck in the world, allowing his mind to wander towards something beyond it. His music is earnest, deeply …
Wednesday Weld
Musician Paul Flaherty believes that the difference between pre-composed music and free-form improvisational music is a bifurcation of the mind, “The logical mind is reduced to a witness during free playing and the emotional mind is fully released.” Free from concept, outline or even leadership, the music is a free-form experience. This is realized on the newest release from Paul Flaherty (Tenor sax, alto sax) and his long-time collaborators Jim Matus (Electric guitar, Baritone guitar) and Larry…
You Is You
What does it sound like to be a working artist? Here, flutist Joe Melnicove, joined by his mentor, saxophonist George Garzone, drummer Billy Hart and bassist Ben Street, tries to convey it. ‘You is You’ is inspired by a spirit of radical self-acceptance and self-knowledge, from a single melody he composed at home in Rosh Pinna, Israel. Recorded in New York, the songs have clear allusions to the experience of being musicians. Tracks like “Monday Night” and “No Applause” invoke the experience of a…
Ancient Africa
Ancient Africa represents Nat Birchall’s official follow-up to last year’s universally acclaimed Mysticism of Sound. Nat once again plays all the instruments here, tenor and soprano saxophone, bass clarinet, bass, drums and percussion. But this time around the Korg synth is replaced by piano as Nat wanted to utilise a more “classic” Jazz sound to express his musical visions. He has also arranged the songs for multiple horns, with melodies and harmonies played by up to five different instruments …