Jazz /
Roman Norfleet & Be Present Art Group
Premiere LP by Portland's finest practitioners of Great Black Music. A spiritual record for the ages. Roman Norfleet And Be Present Art Group play deeply felt sometimes earthy and sometimes cosmic music. A trio (sax, drums and organ) are augmented by additional percussion, soaring vocals and even a vocal appearance by a toddler. This record will take you where you need to go. Don't miss history in the making. Across six expansive tracks, Roman Norfleet and Be Present Art Group build from free-fl…
One Line, Two Views
One Line, Two Views features seven compositions for nine-piece ensemble by Muhal Richard Abrams. Works range from the subtle textural and tonal explorations of "Textures," "Hydepth," and the title track to the hard bop revisitations of "11 over 4" and "The Prism 3." The disc is rounded out by an ebullient, joyous, and celebratory "Tribute to Julius Hemphill and Don Pullen" and the blues-tinged "Ensemble Song." Abrams opts for unique instrumentation including violin, harp, and accordio…
Kew. Rhone.
*Comes in a CD-sized papersleeve album replica (gatefold), with obi-strip and insert of notes mostly in Japanese..2024 stock* The classic restored. No extra tracks, just this legendary release as it was originally conceived. Kew Rhone was made soon after Peter and John left Henry Cow, at Carla Bley and Mike Mantler’s Grog Kill studio in New York (they both appear on the CD). Fellow conspirators included singer Lisa Herman and drummer Andrew Cyrille. It’s one of those records which sums up a mome…
Constitution
“Members of the dispossessed, won’t you lend me your ears!”
Panorama
"Given their distinct backgrounds and individualistic sense of creative process, it’s not surprising to discover that the sounds Levin, Mariam and Miguel generate do not fall into common improv tactics, stylistic clichés, or the isolation of chance. There are individual characteristics that affect our perception of the flow, cessation, and singularity of events heard here, and serve to identify and intensify the moment." – Art Lange
Fanfares and Freedom
A live recording from a piece premiered at the 2023 Cheltenham Jazz Festival, and later recorded at The Vortex. Laura Jurd was commissioned to write this piece for scored ensemble plus improvising quartet, and the resulting piece balances the composed and improvised elements beautifully in the fast moving 45 minute work which is very much in the tradition of the best British jazz.
Laura writes - "I don’t think I’ll ever forget hearing Paul Dunmall play for the first time. Whilst aware of his gra…
Truth Is Not The Enemy
A set of high intensity free jazz interactions captured live at The Vortex, London in early 2024. Brackenbury and Bianco have worked together as a duo for a number of years and this is their third Discus Music release, following their opening fire music statement Rising Up (112CD) and the mystical Hildegard von Bingen + Coltrane inspired Wayward Mystic (140CD). The addition of Pope and O’Gallagher expands the duo into a formidable improvising quartet. Tony Bianco writes: “In this world overwhel…
Maua
“A blissfully ecstatic sprawl of spiritual-jazz explorations of the most transcendent order” – Brooklyn Rail
Heart Trio
CD Edition. 6-panel digipak, printed on heavyweight stock reverse board. Per AUM standard, a beauty. Notes/poem by WP & photos on inners. Heart Trio features three lifelong-devoted fellow travelers on the path of healing through sound. World-renowned & revered bassist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, improvisor, community leader William Parker has performed and recorded extensively with both master pianist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, improviser, inveterate performer Cooper-Moore & master …
September Night
Recorded at Munich’s Muffathalle twenty years ago, in September 2004, this previously-unreleased concert recording of the Tomasz Stanko Quartet is a fascinating document, capturing a developmental chapter in the music between the song forms of the Suspended Night repertoire and the improvised areas that the Polish musicians would explore on Lontano. The Munich show was a highlight in a year in which the Stanko Quartet played a record number of gigs, with extensive tours of the US and Europe. T…
My Prophet
On My Prophet, Oded Tzur together with his quartet of pianist Nitai Hershkovits, bassist Petros Klampanis and the new group member Cyrano Almeida on drums, continues on the idiosyncratic musical path he has carved out for himself – a flowing jazz idiom that seamlessly combines multiple forms of expression –, while delving deeper into the meditative and highly concentrated realm of improvisation. In the process, the saxophonist presents some of his fiercest playing yet.
The quartet’s synergy is…
Live In Munich
This concert recording from Munich’s Schwere Reiter performance space features improvisation with an expanded palette of possibilities. “To work with these colours is a great challenge and joy!” says bassist Barry Guy of the glowing and ever-changing tints, timbres and tones radiating from Jordina Millà’s freely associative piano. Like Guy, Millà is both a player of prodigious technical capacity and a fearless improvisational explorer, and her highly creative use of the piano interior opens up …
Bakteria
The Błoto quartet had made a comeback six months ago with their first singles in over two years dropping “Szlam” and “Ścieki”. These tracks were pressed on a 7-inch vinyl by Astigmatic Records, but this only whetted the appetites of the band’s mud-loving fans, as the singles sold out instantly. And so, the band's musical onslaught continues. Ahead of their upcoming LP “Grzybnia” set to release in autumn 2024, Błoto is putting out another bacteria-laden 7-inch to conclude this brief series of sin…
The Invisible
"Masters of musical tension. Maintaining tension, resolving tension. It's an integral part of improvised music, but of this international trio in particular. Rodrigo Amado and Dirk Serries first bonded over a couple of duo concerts in the summer of 2018. With his roots in (free) jazz, lauded Portuguese saxophonist Amado became an intriguing sparring partner for the Belgian guitarist, who's been involved in a more abstract style for some time now. With English Andrew Lisle, a drummer with an extr…
Towards The Flame, Vol. 2
"Three of Europe's most acclimated and proven improvisers—pianist Robert Mitchell (Steve Coleman, Greg Osby), bassist Neil Charles, and drummer/percussionist Mark Sanders (Jah Wobble, Rachel Musson)—band together as The Flame for the first time and emerge from pandemic isolation, and the forever wars and broken civics that accompanied it, with a hypnotic performance captured absolutely live on Towards the Flame.
Recorded at London's Cafe Otto in February of 2022, The Flame comes to life like mos…
Lullabies And Other Stories
CD edition. Solo album by Walter Prati, here back on his cello driving us through an illuminating and sublimative journey. Walter Prati’s composition for cello seems to interpret this range of facets, these transparent and elusive angles. Contemplative music, to a certain extent, but also ready to express fragments lyrically, and their rushing to compose a mosaic. For reasons I cannot explain, I catch a glimpse of several iridescent colours, between turquoise and hard blue with odd crimson strip…
Abundant Shores
Mark Holub’s (Led Bib, Blueblut) new band Anthropods returns with their second album. This follow-up to the warmly received self-titled debut album, described by Jazzwise as a, “richly eclectic set of enjoyable and unclassifiable music celebrating the joy of collectivity”, brings the band into new directions, exploring the spaces between composition and improvisation. The composition of the suite began at the culmination of two years of working together, Holub elaborates: Anthropods for me was a…
The Pelican
Initially founded in 2015, after a period of shuffling members and names, Halcyon Daze settled on its final lineup by early 2016 of then-high schoolers Ivan Cunningham (saxophones), George Adzick (woodwinds), Nicholas Christenson (guitars), and Samuel Stroup (drums). At this point, the band entered its peak of activity within the Twin Cities jazz scene of the time, performing at many of its most prominent venues and DIY spaces while building up an extensive songbook of original compositions and …
Jewels of Thought
180 gram Vinyl Edition. Gatefold Cover. The fourth album as a leader by spiritual jazz saxophone titan Pharoah Sanders, Jewels of Thought was released in 1969. It Consist of two extended tracks, one of which had to be divided into two parts in order to fit onto the LP. Sanders was incrediblt active in 1969, recording lo less than four albums and releasing three. The band on Jewels of Thought includes several major stars, among them Idris Muhammad, Roy Haynes, Richards Davis, Cecil McBee, Leon Th…
Telepatia Liquida
2024 stock. This project is the exciting, unusual and at times unexpected result of five musicians from different backgrounds getting together and making music. This unlikely group that features a scientist on piano and an array of musicians from different places around the world is able to communicate on a level that is not only beyond planning and speech but also rational thought. The resulting music goes from moments that are exquisitely soft to deep juicy grooves. When studied attentively, i…