Jazz & Improvisation / Free Improvisation

CD edition, comes in mini LP replica with obi & Japanese insert. Art Yard continues their voyage into the omniverse of unreleased Sun Ra tapes with I Roam The Cosmos, an unreleased, previously unheard 1972 live session recorded at Slug's Saloon in New York. Fronting a stellar 18-piece incarnation of the Arkestra, I Roam The Cosmos finds Sun Ra taking the listener on a poetic journey to the outer limits of planetary awareness. While the captain of the space-ship declaims his message with Arkestra…

2024 stock. Claude & Ola return to the Steep Gloss label with Immara. Recorded from autumn of 2021 into 2022, this collaboration introduces new sounds and textures into each artist's catalog, while retaining and amplifying the varying degrees of abstraction inherent in their unique approaches. Claude and Ola Aldous are experimental musicians residing in the northern reaches of New York state in the US. They have previously released music on the Steep Gloss, TQN-Aut, Tone Burst, and Noise á Noise…

"This overdue duo record by longtime colleagues Tashi Dorji (guitar) and Dave Rempis (saxophones) is a monument to the endless musical curiosity that links them. These two come at it from remarkably different backgrounds – Dorji combining his Bhutanese ethnicity with a love for metal, punk, American blues and folk, and anarchist political theory, with Rempis riding the outer edges of the jazz world throughout his career, while also inspired by his Greek ethnicity and a longstanding interest in f…

Sun Ra, notorious for his aggressive keyboard attack and seemingly schizophrenic stylings, here offers a unique selection playing the celeste-like Fender Rhodes electric piano, which has a distinct sound (think Doors' "Riders on the Storm") and an interesting history. This is Ra sound at his most relaxed and contemplative state.This Sun Ra 1980 solo set at Haverford College has been kicking around the internet and in the digital libraries of Ra collectors for years, though it has not previously …

A sonic odyssey of extreme brilliance! Computer musician Tom Mudd and Hungarian percussionist/violist Áron Porteleki navigate the liminal space between the virtual and the corporeal with ferocious intelligence. Recorded live at NEXT Festival 2022 in Bratislava, this rambling and consistently surprising collaboration bridges divergent sonic landscapes with rare intensity. Mudd's impossible virtual instruments - simulated guitar using the NESS physical modelling code - intertwine seamlessly with P…

Joining their newly launched Luminessence audiophile vinyl-reissue series, the legendary imprint, ECM, digs deep into their own vaults and comes up with an absolute gem: the guitarist John Abercrombie, the bassist Dave Holland, and the drummer Jack DeJohnette’s groundbreaking 1975 LP “Gateway”. Rooted in approaches drawn from free jazz and unquestionably springing from both Holland and DeJohnette’s time working in Miles Davis’ electric fusion band at the end of the 1960s and early '70s, it’s a r…

"We wrote “Accept When” between 2022 and 2023, after a long, beautiful period improvising together intimately in the safety of a friend’s practice space. Our friendship, the quality of attention that colored the light of that and all our other practice spaces, became the basis for our activity and growth as songwriters and our relationship as improvisers. Friendship, how we relate to each other, is our nucleus: the central and essential part of our movement; the positively charged central core o…

The Finnish/Italian improvisational collective makes a comeback after the acclaim of 'Gan-Ri-La.' This time, they grace Pelto Studio with their presence, offering a groovy free jazz encounter filled with unexpected twist

2024 Stock. Atto is one of Vladimir Tarasov's long evolving experimental music projects. Tarasov's percussion merges with the hypnotically repetitive synth sequence into one long piece. All instruments are played by Tarasov himself. Originally dispensed by state label Мелодия (Melodya) in 1989, the 4th ‘Atto’ volume features Vladimir effortless rolling out on a 35 minute piece in two parts built from pranging percussion, hunting horns and electronics. It’s a hypnotic study in sublime tension and…

Black vinyl Cape Town, South Africa-based drummer Asher Gamedze explores relationships of time between music and history on his new album Turbulence and Pulse, out May 5th 2023. Gamedze’s critically-acclaimed debut album Dialectic Soul was released at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in July 2020. Around the release of that record, with friend and writer Teju Adeleye he organized and participated in a joint online discussion “Poesis,” with historian Robin D.G. Kelley and others. One of the no…

Tip! *300 copies limited edition* {scope} came to life in 2020, when musicians Laura Agnusdei, Matteo Pennesi and Luca Sguera got selected for Holydays Festival, an artist residency in Scopoli, a small village in Umbria, central Italy. Despite having never played together before, the musicians found a common musical language which emerged in their first album "A week from Monday", recorded during the residency and released by ViaIndustriae and Rous Records. At the start of 2022 a new opportunity…

"Repress of Johnny Dyani's 1979 LP Song for Biko, recorded in the summer of 1978 with the powerful front line-up of Don Cherry and Dudu Pukwana, the album was dedicated to the martyred South African activist against apartheid Steve Biko (1946-1977). Johnny Mbizo Dyani (bassist/composer) was born in East London, South Africa in 1945 and became one of South Africa's most internationally acknowledged musicians. Since his arrival in England in 1965 as a member of South African jazz group called The …

2009 release ** "Two improvisations-one live, one without audience-by an Anglo-French trio of new voices from trombonist Forge, electronics artists Julian and cellist Papapostolou. The music is quiet and spacious....there is a wonderful sense of slowness to the music that suggests each sound, every contribution comes only after careful consideration."

*50 copies edition* "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 co…

After eleven albums with a varying ensemble size, Martin Küchen’s Angles returns with The Death of Kalypso, its most ambitious statement to date: a jazz opera for our times. Joining forces with vocalist Elle-Kari and Angles pianist Alexander Zethson, who wrote the string arrangements and band notations, Küchen adds another volume to the band’s sizeable, yet coherent catalog, which merges infectious free jazz grooves with tumultuous emotional cadences that reflect both human and political concern…

Nelly Klayman-Cohen is a singer, pianist, composer, and lyricist performing under the moniker Rotem Geffen. The album The Night is the Night consists of eight newly written songs and follows her critically acclaimed debut album, You Guard the Key (Zeon Light 2021). The lyrics, written in German, English, and Hebrew, delve into memory, love, sorrow, and the poetics of the night. The "I" and the "You" merge as relational organisms, their boundaries continuously shifting, blurring, and being redefi…

The Act Of Noticing is an invitation to enter a sound world rich in sonic imagery, evocative atmosphere, and finely wrought detail. This album takes listeners on a journey, at one moment guiding them through changing musical landscapes at high speed, at another inviting them to simply stop and stare. Espial emerged from a discussion between David Beebee and myself about how to develop and extend the musical language we had established on our duo album for Discus, “Ripples”. David felt that expan…

The magical encounter of three skillful players, right before their self titled debut on ECM. On September 1, 1978, the musical trio Codona performed live in Willisau, Switzerland. This Swiss FM broadcast captured Codona in full flight, with Collin Walcott on sitar, Don Cherry on trumpet, and Nana Vasconcelos on percussion. Their performance weaved a magical web of sound. The opening track, “New Light,” is a 16-minute journey of pure joy

"In its entirety, the concert is lively and penetrating evidence of Braxton’s remarkable facility, powers of invention, and commitment to his principles at this point in time, with special emphasis on saxophone techniques energizing variables of tone color, texture, and timbre to affect separate phrases, extended lines, and sectional contrasts."  – Art Lange Producer’s note: "I experienced over many years Anthony Braxton different performances. His solo performance 1984 in Bern belongs into the …

"It is a message, and you will hear it sounding firmly through the various pieces that make up The Human Factor, that tells us much about how we might live together: sharing, giving way, simple giving, lifting up, helping ... above all, listening ..."  - Brian Morton

** Deluxe 3LP set, housed in heavy tip-on box with pigment ink foil stamping, mounted film laminated cover painting by Jeff Schlanger, three printed inner sleeves with original notes by William Parker and Alan Licht, original concert flyer re-print and a five photograph portfolio in black envelope ** A legendary concert by one of the great unrecorded bands in free jazz history is here at last. WEBO, the third installment in the Black Editions Archive series of previously unreleased recordings fr…

* CD Edition * Out of print since 1981, this pressing features a full LP’s worth of unissued music, including what may be Jessica’s only vocal recording. Includes extensive liner notes by musician Jennifer Leitham and jazz historian Scott Yanow. Jessica Williams was one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time, but she was also a victim of geography. Her technical brilliance, complete control of the piano, creative imagination, wit, and constant desire to stretch herself put her at the top of h…

*150 copeis limited edition* Recorded at "Dei Suoni" event, as unique track, splitted in two parts for the cassette release. Limited edition of 150 hand-numbered copies. Comes with an original polaroid.

In January 2023, Tom Skinner and his ensemble performed material from his recently-released album 'Voices of Bishara' (Brownswood, IARC & Nonesuch, 2022) at London club “mu”— a venue founded by the curators at Brilliant Corners and named after the seminal Don Cherry live album. Their performance was augmented by three pieces by Abdul Wadud, whose 1977 self-released solo cello album, By Myself, was a primary inspiration for Voices of Bishara. The woodwinds featured on Skinner's original Voices of…

*2024 stock* Swedish pianist Karin Johansson has set music to some of Tomas Tranströmer’s poems for her band ORD. Vocals, horns, and bass converse freely around the piano. Some parts are free improvisations, often with a prepared piano.

*2024 stock* First release of the Swedish duo Karin Johansson / Lisen Rylander Löve. Fine-veined Crinkle Weed, Wentletrap and The Two Lipped Door Snail are some of the poetically resonating titles on the pianist Karin Johansson and saxophonist Lisen Rylander Löve’s new album Arter (Species). The song titles are also names of plants and animals from the SLU Artdatabanken’s red list of threatened species. The reality that many species disappear completely from our planet yearly is what the duo sh…

Outerdisk is very pleased to present Rosanna Gunnarson's and Karin Johansson's dizzying (sound) work, which was composed in 2021/22. Their piece "I grunda vikar är bottnarna mjuka" is inspired by August Strindberg's classic short story about a fortepiano being dropped into deep waters off an archipelago island, Stora grusharpan. The musical content is based partly on secret underwater recordings during a summer, autumn and winter, as well as audio recordings of a piano being lowered into the wat…

*2024 stock* "Quagmire on “Creative Sources Records”. Album was recorded by Nina de Heney (double bass), Karin Johansson (piano) and Henrik Wartel (drums). All three musicians are interesting and talented improvisers. They’re the central figures of avant-garde jazz scene. Nina de Heney is a famous bassist. The improvisations are filled with drive, passion and expression and are based on the main elements of experimental jazz innovations and the roots of avant-garde jazz. Improviser is getting on…

"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…

*Limited Edition* Trumpeter Terumasa Hino at a level that's quite different than most of his early work in Japan recording in New York, and using a very spiritual approach one that's clearly influenced by some of the other players in the session! The album features one long track a bit improvised, and almost free at times but also given a strong sense of direction, too that balance between completely unbridled expression and structure that can make some of the best spiritual jazz sessions so gre…

Axes and layers, but also the axes, for striking and cutting. This work embraces the muscular energy of avant-jazz and delicate and dreamlike introspection. The musical references are to the America of Tim Berne and the Europe of Marc Ducret - the polyphony and rhythmic pulse of the urban environment. But the connections, even if not strictly musical, reach far; "Axis: Bold as Love" by Jimi Hendrix and "AlasNoAxis", Jim Black's debut album. More than one axis: axes.

25 copies limited edition. 2024 stock. Lo-fi but still fantastic documentation of a 2011 concert by Arthur Doyle in a duo with drummer Steve Noble. Doyle sounds pretty great to me here. The top end of his sax playing is less powerful than it once was, but a lot of his magic was always derived from his sheer otherness, and there's enough of that here to go around. Noble works hard to provide the right rhythmic racket for whatever's going down, and this is some swank soundtrackery for long drives.…

Sun Ra Arkestra, Live in Japan! Recorded at Shinjuku Pit Inn on August 8, 1988, this recording has undergone fresh remastering from the master tape, marking the first reissue in 36 years

*2024 stock* Collaborators for years, here is the first shared record release by two of the leading figures in contemporary improvisation, here grappling with trombone, cello, bass, electronics. A disc for explorers of less frequented and predictable sounds, full of unexpected cues and solutions.

*2024 stock* "Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore has been exploring this kind of radical free improvisation since the 1990s. The three pieces on the record feature the guitarist with two highly compatible veterans of the avant-garde scene: cellist and electronic manipulator Walter Prati and trombonist and electronics guru Giancarlo Schiaffini. The three pieces arise from spontaneous improvisation but there is such energy between the musicians that the flow of ideas is uninterrupted." - S. Loew…

*2024 stock* Gaetano Liguori, jazz pianist, he was part of the Gruppo Contemporaneo in 1971, which provided one of the earliest examples of Italian "free"; in '73 he founded the Idea Trio with Roberto Del Piano (double bass) and Filippo Monico (drums) and later devoted himself to socially engaged works (including with poet Giulio Stocchi), music for theater, ethnomusical research. He recorded, among others, with his father "Lino" pasquale (Naples 1927), an active jazz drummer.

Huge Tip! Original released in 1971 by the Black Artist Group group's own label “Universal Justice Records” this album has for years been an impossible to find/listen to album, and this is its first reissue ever. Ofamfa by The Children Of The Sun, a band led by poet/musicien Ajule/aka Bruce Rutlin is a heady mix of poetry/jazz/political songs/ and a document of a comunity avent. The BAG group being about all the arts theater and dance. The original liner notes by Ajule are great Insight in to th…

Stunning, moody, spiritual jazz from Ireland, recorded in 1979; featuring original compositions such as the deep collectors’ cut Spon Song, subtle Latin flavours on Spacer’s Delight, and a beautiful modal arrangement of the traditional Irish air Castle of Dromore. ‘A legendary recording in Ireland, Ozone reflects Noel Kelehan’s keen appreciation of classic quintet-era Miles, with touches of the cerebral fusion of Ian Carr and the arranging genius of Neil Ardley. Not just a landmark Irish jazz se…

*2024 stock* French non-jazz trio overflowed by Simple Music Experience’s funders Tamara Goukassova, Théo Delaunay & Alexandre Larcier, offering a 40mn of non-simple music madness, and navigating between a dozen of etiquettes from undecided space rock to motorik-infused-dub, medieval folk, cartoon trance; everything under the seal of psychedelia and half-improvisation. Built from drums, violin, springs, samples, reiterations, overdubs, trumpets, synths, distortions; and the appearances of L. Ced…

2024 Stock, reduced price. Remastered edition on British Jazz Explosion series. ‘Le Déjeuner Sur L’Herbe’ features key players in modern British jazz including Henry Lowther, Ian Carr, Michael Gibbs, Derek Wadsworth, Barbara Thompson, Dave Gelly, Dick Heckstall-Smith, Frank Ricotti, Jack Bruce and Jon Hiseman, under the directorship of Neil Ardley. ‘Nardis’ features solos by Ian Carr on flugelhorn, George Smith on tuba and – rarely heard – Jack Bruce on acoustic bass.  Complementing this is what…