Jazz /
Circus/Citadel
Finnish bassist Antti Lötjönen returns in February 2023 with his second Quintet East album on We Jazz Records. With Verneri Pohjola on trumpet, Mikko Innanen and Jussi Kannaste on saxes, and Joonas Riippa on drums, Quintet East is a hard-hitting ensemble of Helsinki scene A-listers. The new release sees the quintet work with Lötjönen's inspired new music with remarkable spirit, spreading out on a quest for new sounds and ideas, and returning to base with a fresh batch of acoustic creative music,…
Starting Point
Tip! In 1975, under the oppressive air of military dictatorship in Brazil, brothers Lelo and Zé Eduardo Nazario invited bassist Zeca Assumpção to join their musical experiments in a basement under Sao Paulo’s Teodoro Sampaio Street. As teenagers, the trio had already been playing together in Hermeto Pascoal’s Grupo, alongside guitarist Toninho Horta and saxophonist Nivaldo Ornelas, and it was while working together under Hermeto’s direction that the Paulista rhythm section (as they were then kno…
Searching For The Disappeared Hour
*2023 stock* "Even though they’re often neighbors in the rhythm section, piano and guitar are not typically a good fit for jazz duets. Some of that has to do with the difference between an electrically amplified instrument and a percussive acoustic one, and some with the fact that the close voicings pianists favor are difficult on guitar, while the open voicings guitarists love don’t easily translate to piano.
But as Sylvie Courvoisier and Mary Halvorson suggest on Searching for the Disappeared …
Sara Schoenbeck
*2023 stock* "This record documents long-term musical partnerships; duets with artists who have helped me refine my creative vocabulary. Yet my deepest musical relationship is with the bassoon itself, the kernel of my inspiration. It is the nurturer, the supporter, the quiet glue in an ensemble. It is awkward, huge, and demure. Even as a child, I was drawn to its uniqueness—its textures, timbres, and a sound that inspires movement. While I certainly appreciate orchestral playing in the Western c…
Ancient Songs Of Burlap Heroes
"This album is dedicated to those who recognize living as a heroic act: the occupiers of sunup barstools; the cubicle-planted; the ghosts of Greyhounds; the reasonably sketchy. A burlap hero is one who marches—consciously or not—back to the sea in hopes of making no splash, who understands and embraces the imperfection of being, and in that way, stretches the definition of sainthood to fit." - Nate Wooley
Séances
*In process of stocking* "In order to bear witness one must believe what one sees and belief, of course, is subjective. Knowledge is essentially faith. And the flexibility of human memory, our blind spots (whether empathetic or optic) and our great imaginations don’t make truth any easier to contain. This becomes more evident over time as the pages of history weather and the cataracts of progress cloud our collective “knowledge”. Humans love to forget and to repeat. We fall subject to confirmati…
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
"I imagined the four ensemble pieces that begin this album as belonging to the repertoire of a speculative musical culture — one potentially not so far removed from my own — whose sonic and lyrical affinities reflect chronic, hazardous inundation, and mystifying betrayal. Without my realizing it at first, they became, in their own way, more-or-less oblique renditions of the Jerome Kern / Otto Harbach standard “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” an object lesson in the transmutation of weather and grief i…
Everywhere to be Lost
*In process of stocking. 2023 stock* "I chose the name "Everywhere to be Lost" as a means of summing up the ideas behind the compositions on the record. My personal growth as a musician is one thing but my growth as a person in general has been a different journey that I want to reflect on through this music. There have been times when I felt lost, times when I needed to assess my purpose and direction in life, times where my self esteem, mental and emotional health has gotten the best of me and…
Family Band
Family Band is the eponymously titled 3rd release from this quartet of like-minded friends and collaborators. This is a band in the truest sense, with no leader contributions come equally from Kim Macari on trumpet, Riley Stone-Lonergan on tenor saxophone, Tom Rivière on double bass and Steve Hanley on drums. The group met while studying at Leeds College of Music in 2008, founding the band in 2015.
The album was recorded over two days in early February 2020 by Tim Thomas in an old farm outbuildi…
Micromotives
Six years in the making, Micromotives represents a dynamic and empowering vision of real-time collective composition, created by composer Moss Freed and showcased by large ensemble Union Division. With improvisation and sociality at its core, this is dazzling and surprising music that shifts nimbly between materials and structural events, encouraging synchronicity and collaboration while giving unusually high levels of creative control to individual performers.
The aim of the project was to engi…
Unforeseen Blessings
*2022 stock* "This is a pure gem, a beautiful and much enjoyable album, highlighting the immense talent and musicality of pianist Kirk Lightsey and his accomplices. Listen to the solos of Arthur Blythe and Chico Freeman, the music and humour of Lester Bowie, the pure life and joyful rythm by Cecil Mc Bee and Famoudou Don Moye. Be ready do move and rejoice with Heaven Dance ! " - All Music
In These Times
In These Times is the new album by Chicago-based percussionist, composer, producer, and pillar of our label family, Makaya McCraven. Although this album is “new," the truth it’s something that's been in process for a very long time, since shortly after he released his International Anthem debut In The Moment in 2015. Dedicated followers may note he’s had 6 other releases in the meantime (including 2018’s widely-popular Universal Beings and 2020’s We’re New Again, his rework of Gil Scott-Heron’s …
8
*2022 stock* Ill considered 8 was recorded live during our tour in the fall of 2018. Once again thanks for your ongoing support
Mind Reader
SOLL is an exploration in rhythm, melody and soundscape. A musical story free from preconceived roles with melodies driven by eight carefully tuned congas, framed by electric bass and effected guitars. At times phsychedelic, at times spiritual, always grooving with improvisation at the core.
Live at Mu 7th of July 2022
*200 copies limited edition* Recorded live at 'Mu' Dalston London on the 7th of July 2022
Personnel:Bruno Heinen - PianoGene Calderazzo - DrumsJulian Siegel - Tenor SaxophoneLeon Brichard - Double Bass
Live at Mu 22nd of April 2022
* 300 copies only * Recorded live at 'Mu' Kingsland high road, Dalston. Personel: Idris Rahman - Tenor SaxophoneLeon Brichard - BassGene Calderazo - DrumsGuest: Robin Hopcraft: Trumpet
SuperDeluxe!
After nearly five years of silence, the all-star power trio of Giovanni Di Domenico, Jim O'Rourke, and Tatsuhisa Yamamoto, working as Delivery Health, return with “SuperDeluxe!” a stunningly beautiful double LP of material, issued by Holidays Records. Encountering three of contemporary experimental music's most remarkable minds locked in the rigorous conversations of live improvisation, across four sides the trio darts and dodges across a startlingly range, never revealing what might come next, …
Terrain (Extended)
Gondwana Records and Portico Quartet announce a strictly limited edition collectors-item. Featuring an expanded version of their long-form composition Terrain and re-arranged for the Portico Quartet Ensemble and recorded live in Studio One
A Love Supreme & Meditations
*2022 stock* Some records tell you what’s what. That’s not a bad thing: there’s a place in music for reportage, for commentary, for what’s going on. But A Love Supreme Electric, the collaborative project between Vinny Golia, John Hanrahan, Henry Kaiser, Wayne Peet, Mike Watt, and John Coltrane’s immortal spirit, starts from a different place. “What if?” it asks. In fact, ALSE asks “What if?” over and over again, joyously interrogating the twin templates of Coltrane’s A Love Supreme and Meditatio…
Naja
*In process of stocking* Swedish saxophonist Mats Gustafsson might have a separate discography for his solo records. He's investigated the possibilities of unaccompanied reed music from almost every angle. Presented with the opportunity to make a new solo record under the isolation of the pandemic, Gustafsson returned to a project he'd conceptualized but never realized: the playing-card pieces of Peter Brötzmann. Although these Fluxus-like prompts are better known through the two card sets the G…