Jazz /
Life Goes On
*2024 stock* A striking album of new music from pianist/composer Carla Bley, whose trio with Andy Sheppard and Steve Swallow is now in its 25th year. Individual associations among the players go back much further: bassist Swallow first recorded music by Carla in 1961. So when Bley says “Life Goes On”, a lot of life is alluded to. The album, realized in the Auditorio Stelio Molo Studio in Lugano in May 2019, with Manfred Eicher producing, takes the form of three suites. The title piece begins as …
Obras Portuenses Da Década De 20
*Edition Of 100 Hand-Numbered Copies* Obras Portuenses da Década de 20 is a project developed by Sonoscopia for Cultura em Expansão, a Porto City Council programme that seeks to decentralise and diversify the city's cultural offer. Since 2021, four commissions have been made each year to composers from Porto, or with a strong connection to the city, who portray their vision and listening to the city in a unique way. Given the territorial specificities of Cultura em Expansão, each composer is ass…
Excelsior Mill Sun Ra Excelsior Mill
"The outsized sounds emerging from the Excelsior Mill organ captured here constitute a unique chapter in the Sun Ra story, a dizzying phantasmagoria that offers a whole new view on what Ra could do - It might thrill you; it might unnerve you; it might strum your heartstrings; it might spook the living daylights out of you. Most likely you'll experience all of the above before the jolting musical jeremiad is done. Pressed on violet vinyl! When you're Sun Ra, you don't need synthesizers to evoke a…
This Is Our Music
*2024 stock* "This Is Our Music" features Ornette Coleman’s (1930-2015) wonderful piano-less quartet with Don Cherry, Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell. The group consisted of modern players working with the same concept: a freer way of playing jazz, which transcended the strict confines of melody, harmony and rhythm. They would create a whole new idiom by constructing music via the interplay of simultaneous collective improvisation. Coleman had made his debut on records in February/March 1958 with…
Live at Le Stadium
Seven years of effervescent activity: few free jazz groups can be proud of such longevity, especially with a line-up as stable as that of Perception. Yes, there would be several guest musicians, including Kent Carter and Jean-Charles Capon, on the second album... Yes the "existential problems" of Siegfried Kessler would necessitate him being temporarily replaced by Manuel Villaroel... But for the most part, it was the core quartet of the first album which would tour Europe, through concerts from…
Madagascar Now - Maintenant 'Zao
** First ever standalone vinyl reissue. Carefully remastered. 4 page booklet with rare and unpublished photos. Heavyweight 180 gr. LP ** While he was working on the repertoire for the new version of his group Malagasy, with young Malagasy musicians he had met in Paris in 1972 (and who can be heard on the album "Malagasy At Newport-Paris"), Jef Gilson realised that two of his new discoveries, in addition to being established polyinstrumentalists (who both had sharpened their skills in the legenda…
Perception
Souffle Continu Records present the first ever vinyl reissue of Perception's self-titled album, originally released in 1971. The story of Perception takes root in a series of chance meetings, which seem at first glance unlikely, between musicians from differing horizons, be they geographic or esthetic. Jazz Magazine was spot on with an article from the period entitled, "Perception, four conceptions", before detailing the origins of the musicians (Hungarian for saxophonist Yochk'O Seffer, German …
Perception & Friends
Souffle Continu Records present the first ever vinyl reissue of Perception & Friends, originally released in 1973. After their first album which came out in 1971 on Futura Records (FFL 051LP), Perception wanted to rapidly record a second, but Gérard Terronès did not want to produce another, especially so soon after the first. Therefore, the only solution was to produce it themselves. It is thus completely logical that it came out on the label of the Association for the Development of Improvised …
Malagasy at Newport
** First ever standalone vinyl reissue. Carefully remastered. 4 page booklet with rare and unpublished photos. Heavyweight 180 gr. LP ** In May 1972, the wave of anger and the thirst for freedom that had swept the world in 1968 arrived in Madagascar. The Malagasy youth took the opportunity to exile in search of a brighter future. Several of them, all jazz musicians and often polyintrumentalists, came to Paris with their afro hair and bellbottoms. Their names were Sylvin Marc, his cousin Ange "Zi…
Watch Devil Go
* Deluxe reissue, with obi strip + 8 page booklet, 180g vinyl *To write these few lines, we spoke to saxophonist François Jeanneau, an old friend of Jacques Thollot who also played on several of his albums, including the “Watch Devil Go” which interests us here. He told us a story which, according to him, sums up the personality of Thollot. A noted studio had reserved three days for a Thollot recording session. The first morning was devoted to sound checks and putting some order in the score sh…
Archipel
Deluxe edition. Comes with obi strip with 12 pages booklet. 700 copies. Souffle Continu Records present the first ever reissue of Dharma's Archipel, originally released in 1973. "Do your own music!" was Albert Ayler's advice, received loud and clear in France. Cohelmec Ensemble, Workshop de Lyon, and the Dharma Quintet, three groups close in spirit, which would each illustrate, in their own way, a local principle: to get some distance from American free jazz. As far as Dharma is concerned, the c…
End Starting
Deluxe edition. Comes with obi strip with 12 pages booklet. Limited edition of 700 copies. Souffle Continu Records present the first ever reissue of Dharma Quintet's End Starting, originally released in 1971. For Gérard Marais, guitarist with Dharma (the quintet), from this third album -- in fact he replaced Gérard Coppéré, one of the two saxophonists present on the first album (FFL 038LP, 1970) -- Albert Ayler's instruction to play your own music was the detonator. This did not fall on deaf ear…
Mr Robinson
Deluxe edition, Comes with obi strip with 12 pages booklet. Limited edition of 700 copies. Souffle Continu Records present the first ever reissue of Dharma Quintet's Mr Robinson, originally released in 1970. In an interview with Jazz Magazine in the early 1970s, Dharma, as a collective voice, outlined their method: "we try to reach, within free jazz, the same sort of rhythmic cohesion as in bop, a cohesion based not exactly on tempo, but something which feels like tempo. A kind of underlying pul…
Untitled
* Deluxe reissue, with obi strip + 4 page booklet, 180g vinyl* In November 1976, Jef Gilson’s phone rang. What a surprise! It was Serge Rahoerson, one of the musicians he had met in Madagascar at the end of the 60s and who had played on his first album “Malagasy”. Rahoerson announced that he was in Paris for a few days. Immediately, Jef wanted to organise a recording session, starting the next day. He thought of a trio including Serge, Eddy Louiss on organ and cellist Jean-Charles Capon, who ha…
Conspiracy
A new ECM studio album and a programme of new music from Terje Rypdal is cause for celebration. On Conspiracy the great Norwegian guitarist seems to reconnect with the wild inspiration that fuelled such early masterpieces as Whenever I Seem To Be Far Away, Odyssey and Waves, exploring the sonic potential of the electric guitar with both a rock improviser’s love of raw energy and a composer’s feeling for space and texture. Keyboardist Ståle Storløkken, who contributed to Terje’s Vossabrygg and Cr…
I Took Up The Runes
One of the Norwegian saxophonists most outgoing dates, the best-selling “Runes” also marked the first appearance of Manu Katché with the Jan Garbarek group. Centerpiece of the album is the five-part “Molde Canticle”.
Return From The Stars
Mark Turner’s writing for his quartet on Return from the Stars (titled after Stanislav Lem’s science fiction novel) gives the players plenty of space in which to move, on an album both exhilarating and thoughtful in its arc of expression. Solos flow organically out of the arrangements and, beneath the often-dazzling interplay of Turner’s tenor and Jason Palmer’s trumpet, the rhythm section of Joe Martin and Jonathan Pinson roams freely. Although Turner has been a frequent presence on ECM in c…
Lonely Shadows
After critically-acclaimed ECM recordings with the Maciej Obara Quartet (Unloved, Three Crowns), Polish pianist Dominik Wania delivers a solo album recorded in November 2019 in Lugano. Wania’s sensitivity to touch, tone and texture is informed by his classical background. But he also has the in-the-moment instincts of a great improviser, acutely focused on the unfolding details of the music in the responsive interior of the Auditorio Stelio Molo studio. The balancing of influences from both disc…
Human
In its review of pianist Shai Maestro’s ECM leader debut The Dream Thief, All About Jazz spoke of “a searching lyrical atmosphere, emotional eloquence and communal virtuosity that serves the music.” All of which also applies to Human, where Maestro’s outgoing, highly-communicative band with fellow Israeli Ofri Nemya on drums and Peruvian bassist Jorge Roeder becomes a quartet with the inspired addition of US trumpeter Philip Dizack. Shai’s expansive pianism is well-matched by Dizack’s alert, …
Uneasy
Vijay Iyer presents a powerful new trio, in which he is joined by two key figures in creative music, Tyshawn Sorey and Linda May Han Oh. “We have an energy together that is very distinct. It has a different kind of propulsion, a different impulse and a different spectrum of colours”. Repertoire on UnEasy, recorded at Oktaven Audio Studio in Mount Vernon, New York in December 2019, includes Iyer originals written over a span of 20 years, plus Geri Allen’s “Drummer’s Song” and a radical recasting…