Jazz /
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Evan Parker's followup to The Snake Decides is this live recording of saxophone solos from 1989 recorded in the Holywell Music Room by Michael Gerzon."Of the many solo soprano recordings by British improviser Evan Parker, few offer as intimate a portrait as this one in terms of his development as an artist. In 1993, Parker had hit a new stride in his playing. He worked -- as he does now -- long hours to find a way through the improvisation barrier imposed by the restrictions of circular and conv…
Journey
Fred Van Hove's 52 minute solo piano performance at the Jazz à Mulhouse summer festival 2007 reveals one of the giants of improvised music at the height of his creative powers.
Ostro
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.…
Touchless
Co-released in 2011, this 7" features alto saxophonist Paul Flaherty, a major American alto saxophonist active since the 1980s, and Bill Nace, head of Open Mouth, an experimental label in the same country. Includes two improvised tracks with alto and guitar, DL code included.
Requiem for Jazz
Composer, clarinetist, singer and educator Angel Bat Dawid announces the release of a new work, Requiem For Jazz. A 12-movement suite composed, arranged, and inspired in part by dialogue from Edward O. Bland’s 1959 film The Cry of Jazz, the album is a wide-ranging treatise on the African American story from one of its most astute narrators.
Itself an incisive critique of racial politics in the USA, The Cry of Jazz draws formal comparisons between the structure of jazz music and the African Ameri…
Ask The Sun
"Hamid Drake and Michael Zerang drum up a storm, to put things succinctly. This album of percussion duets features intricately interlaced drums, bells, shakers, and chimes. Rolling patterns, melodicism, and moods pervade this fine album. Forget your nightmares of the endless drum solos perpetuated by bloated classic rock dinosaurs; try to put aside more current preconceptions of deadhead drum circle revivalists and world beat wannabes. These two musicians are serious but not full of themselves a…
Mouth Eating Trees And Related Activities
*2023 stock* "Swedish multi-reed artist Mats Gustafsson was just beginning to come into his own at the time of this recording. The oddly titled Mouth Eating Trees and Related Activities catches him at the cusp when his prodigious technical abilities were starting to be subsumed into an impressive musical presence. It doesn't hurt that his companions for this freely improvised session are stalwarts like Barry Guy and Paul Lovens, who provide accompaniment that's creatively telepathic. While Gusta…
One To (Two)...............
*2023 stock* These 18 short duets between cellist/trombonist Gunter Christmann and Swedish new music provocateur and saxophonist Mats Gustaffson eschew all melodic pretension, leading to some very difficult, though rewarding listening. Christmann performs mostly on his stringed warrior, where scratches and little sounds lead the way. Somehow, when matched with the saxophonist's highly developed sense of rhythm and sporadic flurry, the results lure the listener into a den of revolutionary fervor.…
Signs
*2023 stock* "A masterful statement from the Peter Brotzmann Tentet – a large group, but one that's capable of a rich array of sounds and sentiments – maybe given best exposure here in this key recording from the prime years of the ensemble! Ten players can be a huge number, especially when improvising so much – but these guys all have ears that are beautifully tuned to each other, and which really seems to not only bring out the best in each member, but also push the whole group together with a…
Be Music, Night
*2023 stock* "Peter Brotzmann's Chicago Tentet combines some of the finest avant improvisers out of Chicago and Europe. For a such a logistically and musically complex multi-member outfit they've had a rather long and significant life. And they still flourish today, as witnessed by their recent European tour. We turn the clock back to 2004, and a Tentet gig recorded at Wall to Wall in Chicago. It was auspicious and fortuitious that the mikes were in place, the “tapes" running that day, because t…
Tesserae
Drummer Tilo Weber joins forces with bassist Petter Eldh (Koma Saxo) and Elias Stemeseder, who plays harpsichord and keys here on Weber's We Jazz debut, "Tesserae". The three musicians plus guests present a unique jazz trio sound for all times, without boundaries. Weber, based in Berlin, came to the attention of We Jazz Records with his his highly inspired drum work on Otis Sandsjö's Y-OTIS, and has since then also been awarded with the prestigious Deutscher Jazz Preis for the arrangement of the…
Kind Of Shadow
Four magnificent improvisers from different countries. Among them, legendary and iconic double bass master Barry Guy, one of the greatest jazz / improvised music drummers Ramon Lopez, Japanese living in Ireland classically trained piano master Izumi Kimura and polish trumpet and cornet wizard from Poland Artur Majewski. All of them, after Ad Libitum Festival 2021, after the initiative of FSRecords’ executive producer, Maciej Karlowski, went to the studio and recorded some improvised music that n…
Molten Gold
Four absolute masters in their respective instrumental fields! Ivo Perelman on tenor saxophone, the great trombonist and jazz legend Ray Anderson, the well-known Joe Morris this time with double bass in his hands, and the long-time companion of Henry Threadgill's musical journeys, drummer Reggie Nicholson! The quartet's latest studio recording was made in mid-November last year at Brooklyn's excellent ParkWest Studio recording studio by the invaluable Jim Clouse.
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*2023 stock* "Improvised music is invariably meant for live consumption, where the give-and-take between musicians is laid bare for all to hear and the ephemeral nature of the playing is intrinsically linked to that one moment that’s never to be repeated. In a way, recordings of improvised music negate the one arguably essential tenet of improv — namely, spontaneous composition: Even the most unusual and challenging music, once recorded, becomes permanent and obviously immutable. Though listenin…
In Paris, Aries 1973
** 2023 Much needed reissue ** Edition of 500. Aguirre Records present a reissue of In Paris, Aries 1973 by the Black Artist Group. "This outstanding free jazz session was recorded in 1973 in Paris by Chicago outfit. It was Lester Bowie, trumpeter with the Art Ensemble of Chicago, who suggested that the Black Artist Group should head for Paris. In 1972, several members took his advice and flew to France for an extended stay. The following year, a concert featuring saxophonist Oliver Lake, trumpe…
Maulawi
Considered to be one of two Holy Grails on Strata Records, Maulawi Nururdin, 180 Proof presents a stellar reissue featuring a previously unheard instrumental version of ‘Street Rap’. This 180 Gram vinyl album has been remastered from the original reel to reel master tapes and is presented with an alternate cover artwork done by Ge-ology and Mr. Krum
Stumps
* 75 copies limited edition * In times of vinyl shortage and production backlog, resourcefulness is key. In keeping with his well-established practice of replacing original materials with surrogates to generate new sonic experiences, Sven-Åke Johansson has devised a digital reinterpretation of the historic flexidisc in the shape of a 10inch rubber disc with engraved QR codes that let buyers access the music online.
About the music: "The six compositions titled ‘stumps’ are based on a potential f…
Ornette At 12 Crisis To Man On The Moon Revisited
Temporary Super Offer! "The title Ornette at 12 is something of a misnomer. Although Ornette is Denardo’s middle name, why wasn’t the album called Denardo at 12, his age at the time of the concert? Is there a hidden meaning related to Ornette’s own childhood? According to John Litweiler’s book A Harmolodic Life, he was either 13 or 14 when he received his first horn. If the year 1956 is meant to represent a significant event in Ornette’s musical life, it does mark his meeting with Don Cherry and B…
World Of Objects
Recorded live in concert in the fall of 2013, "World of Objects" is an intense and confounding document of 21st century improvised music. Featuring Evan Parker, a singular musician whose approach to music and the saxophone has influenced several generations of improvisers, in trio with trumpet great Nate Wooley and clarinetist Jeremiah Cymerman, "World of Objects" is both a concert document and an intricate journey through the digital post-production of Jeremiah Cymerman. Over the course of thre…
John Tchicai With Strings
2023 Repress Knockout! Real spiritual jazz — frank, deep, reaching; no fakery. John Tchicai appears on Ascension and Albert Ayler’s New York Eye And Ear Control; he’s on Witchdoctor’s Son, with Johnny Dyani and Dudu Pukwana, besides landmark recordings with Archie Shepp, including Four For Trane; and his Mohawk LP on Fontana is a five-star affair. Yet still Richard Williams in The Guardian reckoned this ‘wise and lyrical’ album ‘one of his best recordings’. Here his playing is somewhere new, osc…