Jazz & Improvisation / Free Improvisation

1993 Japanese re-issue on Limelight's "The Final Press" series of the 1965 album featuring Misha Mengelberg, Jacques Schols and Han Bennink.

1974 Dutch split-LP released by the Instant Composers Pool with a 1964 live recording by the quartet backed with a Mishs Melgelberg solo recording from 1972.

Friends and colleagues since the late 1970s, Evan Parker and John Zorn are two of contemporary music’s most uncompromising saxophone innovators, and here they collaborate on a surprising and long overdue studio project. Recorded in New York and Britain from 2025 to 2026 Those Landings is an achingly beautiful exploration of modern reed music with an ambient touch from two radical musical philosophers who use the saxophone as a sound source. Astonishing!

Tip! *300 copies limited edition* This is a live recording of the Peter Brötzmann Trio (Peter Brötzmann, Sabu Toyozumi, and Jason Adasiewicz) from their performance at the 5th OCT-LOFT Jazz Festival at B10 Live, Shenzhen, in 2015. After the performance, the B10 Live team conducted a warm and friendly interview with the three musicians. The transcribed conversation has been edited and included in the liner notes of this vinyl album. Liu Ying Studio delivered exceptional mixing work, perfectly cap…

On In Pas(s)ing), Mick Goodrick turns understatement into signature, floating a cool, singing tone across an ECM all-star backdrop. John Surman, Eddie Gomez and Jack DeJohnette move with almost invisible precision around his quietly lyrical themes, creating a session where momentum whispers rather than shouts, and melody lingers long after the notes fade.

*2026 repress* John Surman's Jazz in Britain '68-'69 is an overview disc of his '60s band and one of the more enjoyable vintage British jazz records. These tunes come from several different sessions recorded in the late sixties, as evidenced by the alternate drummers - Alan Jackson and Tony Oxley - and the use of different instrumentation, like the three-horn modal piece "Bouquet Garni," from 1968 that places Surman in the company of only two other horn players - Alan Skidmore and Mike Osborne -…

"In November 2024 (for reasons that we all understand) I recharged the meaning and value of my commitment to play Free Music many years ago. Everyday since I’ve been guided by its inherent support for the rights of all people, non-violence, peace, equitable, moral, ethical justice for everyone, the health of the planet, and the certainty that music might comfort us, enlighten us and even elevate our thinking.
The current criminal world spectacle requires billions of individual and collective cou…

Two sunken treasures from the same Copenhagen underground, gathered here as a pair. On one LP, Predetermination: The Contemporary Jazz Quartet caught in 1964 alongside Sunny Murray and Gary Peacock - the rhythm section of Albert Ayler's Spiritual Unity - on music that stayed hidden for sixty years. Free jazz before the norm was set, exploding out of Denmark years ahead of the rest of Scandinavia. On the other, Beautiful United Harmony Happening / The Education of an Amphibian: John Tchicai at hi…

* 150 copies Small repress* “Beautiful United Harmony Happening” / “The Education of an Amphibian” - the second release by Alga Marghen’s brand new free jazz imprint, Formalibera - is also dedicated to the output of John Tchicai following his return to Copenhagen during the mid 1960s. Comprising two pieces, remarkably, this single LP effectively bookends a rich period of activity for the saxophonist, capturing one of his earliest group formations as a leader from 1966, as well as one of his last…

* Edition of 300 copies. High thickness cardboard with opaque laminated cover. Comes with a four-page printed insert. The Contemporaray Jazz Quartet together with Gary Peacock and Sunny Murray! This is THE sunken treasure. This is music I have only heard about. And yet, here it is. Unbelievable. Intact. Preserved. Beaming of energy and JOY! This is a sensational find. My favorite Danes exploding together with my favorite double bass player all time. Gary Peacock. The engine. The power engine. I …

Gatefold LP edition + OBI.  There are few figures in improvised music quite like Akira Sakata. A marine biologist by training, he surfaced in the early 1970s inside the Yamashita Yosuke Trio, one of the most ferocious units Japanese jazz has ever produced, and for half a century since he has gone entirely his own way: bandleader, relentless collaborator, singer of strange incantations, a man who can make an alto saxophone sound like grief and slapstick in the same breath. Born in 1945 near Hiros…

On The Will Come Is Now, Ronnie Boykins finally moves from Sun Ra’s bass chair to the centre of the frame, leading a septet through six originals where earthy groove, cosmic harmony and astonishing arco work reveal the band’s quiet architect as a full‑blown composer.

On Trio, Lowell Davidson explodes the piano tradition from the inside out, trading clustered storms, sudden lyric breaks and pregnant silence with Gary Peacock and Milford Graves in a one‑off 1965 session that still feels dangerously new.

On The Call, Henry Grimes refuses the “leader date as reward” narrative, stepping out as a co‑equal melodic force with Perry Robinson and Tom Price in a trio document where free jazz means deep listening, not just full‑bore blaze.

On Timeless Records: From The Archives (1974–1991), Antal rethreads the Dutch label’s glory years into a double‑LP of modal and spiritual fire - from Pharoah Sanders to Art Blakey, Woody Shaw and beyond - built for dancers, diggers and late‑night headphones alike.

Thollem performs original themes and improvisations on four pianos in unique tuning systems devised by Clem Fortuna. Clem joins Thollem in performance on Ten Tone Equal Temperament with spontaneous tuning alterations.

Some reunions can result in the participants meeting at a juncture where they were previously, then continuing forward with the same spirit as before. This is precisely what happened when Alex Harding contacted me and said, 'let's hit.' It was the first time since 1995 and the fireworks were still sparking. Soon afterwards, he asked me to recommend a bassist in forming a trio. I immediately told him about Rocco Popielarski. The three of us performed a couple of gigs and hammed and my home a few …

Ancient Infinity Orchestra return with their third album, It’s Always About Liberation, a new record that deepens the vision of their acclaimed recent work while moving into darker, more searching emotional territory. Conceived as a partner to It’s Always About Love, this new body of work shares its predecessor’s generosity and spiritual openness, but carries a different charge. Where the previous album focused on healing and warmth, It’s Always About Liberation is largely animated by struggle, …

On his self‑titled debut, Bauke Meersman steps into focus with an intimate, detail‑oriented statement: a set of pieces shaped as much by touch, space and recording perspective as by melody, quietly framed by DHM Records’ tactile artwork and production care.

Vienna FLAMMeS, or: The noise of these post-jazz improvisers resounds from paradise. According to a widespread cliché, improvisation in jazz is supposed to help promote the free play of the imagination. It was the Viennese flugelhorn player Franz Koglmann who vehemently contradicted the image of the naively self-actualizing jazz musician. As a composer of cerebral “cool” pieces, whose melancholy sprang from a razor-sharp analysis of his own means of expression, Koglmann was the most qualified pe…

On Fire in Orbit, Hill Collective sharpen their Brighton‑born spiritual jazz into its most expansive form yet: loose‑limbed, witty and rough‑edged, but guided by a collective instinct that lets every groove breathe and slowly catch fire.

On Let the Sky Open Under Your Feet, Skyjack fuse South African groove, European improv and chamber‑level detail into a live‑wired suite of cosmic jazz, where deep‑rooted rhythms and free flights feel like earth and atmosphere trading places.

Taking a slight deviation from the widely celebrated path through experimental sounds that has largely defined their efforts over the years, the venerable Sub Rosa returns with rare and essential dive into the world of ethnomusicology with ‘Ethiopian Musics 1971’, their third release dedicated to the recordings of Ragnar Johnson and the second devoted to the groundbreaking recordings he made in Ethiopia with Ralph Harrisson during the summer of 1971. Belonging to a larger body of recordings dedi…

CD edition. A title like a manifesto, and music with the conviction to carry it. For a few nights at the close of 1972, the Jazzhus Montmartre in Copenhagen held a trio that would barely survive the season. Abdullah Ibrahim - then still recording as Dollar Brand - sat at the piano; Don Cherry stood with his trumpet; Carlos Ward raised his alto. From the performance of November 14 came The Third World-Underground, a record that surfaced only in Japan, on Trio Records' Nadja imprint in 1974, and t…

„Not So Late / Because it Happens“ on CD and „Because it Happens“ on LP is the material recorded live on August 5th 2025 in London at legendary Cafe OTO. Three masters of improvisation: Mikołaj Trzaska on saxophone, John Edwards on double bass and Mark Sanders on drums. They don't use the term "improvisation," preferring instead to speak of "live composition" and the audience, who are an essential component of the concert ritual. The community created by the performers and the audience's attenti…

There is a particular kind of record that only happens when a visiting player drops into a local scene and everyone raises their game. Love Walked In is one of those. For a short run of dates in 2024 the New York pianist Michael Kanan joined the Leeds trio of Alex Fisher, Simon Henry and Elliot Roffe, and the group carried that chemistry into a small hillside studio above Keighley, in West Yorkshire, to commit it to tape. The result is a single, unrepeatable meeting of veteran New York swing and…

Over the past decade Helsinki has quietly become one of Europe's busiest cities for young jazz players, and few labels have done more to document that activity than Jazzaggression. Uusi Jazzi Klubi - the loose collective that bills itself as the city's underground jazz club - return with their second album, recorded across two days in the spring of 2024 at the label's own Pelto Studio. Nothing here was written in advance. Drummer Aleksi Tanhuala gathered the players, set the tape rolling, and le…

Recorded at Studio Grez, Brussels, on March 10th, 2025, by Augusto Pirodda and Giotis DamianidisMixed by Augusto PiroddaMastered by Titos Kariotakis at Royal Alzheimer HallArtwork by Peter Jacquemyn Design by Jeroen Wille

Tip! *100 copies limited edition* "A Decent Run is the result of a journey that began in 2000 and was recorded in 2024, seven years after the death of Tom Raworth, whose poems I used as the basis for ten tracks—ten songs—to which I added two pieces by Steve Lacy. It is a journey through many different kinds of music, lyrics, images, and sounds, yet one shaped by a single principle: the idea of music and improvisation as a collective, choral process, in which space and prominence are given to ind…

With Writing, Ahmed - the quartet of Pat Thomas, Joel Grip, Antonin Gerbal and Seymour Wright - turn a decade of notes, essays and sleeve texts into a woven chorus, mapping how their deep dive into Ahmed Abdul‑Malik becomes a living method for making future music.

Privately released 1982 album of lovely free-flowing piano music by the French musician who had previously released the fantastic electronic Images LP on Pôle and on the NWW list.

Trombonist-composer Samuel Blaser is one of jazz's most prolific voices, with 34 recordings as a leader or co-leader since 2008. On Rosina, he delivers his most personal album yet — eight originals drawing on Italian folk melodies and a deep reconnection with his family roots in Emilia-Romagna. The album takes its name from his maternal grandmother, Rosina Pierina Scarpioni — a wartime Resistance fighter who later moved to Switzerland, and a woman he never had the chance to meet. Reconnecting wi…

*2026 repress* Souffle Continu records is thrilled to present Byard Lancaster – Funny Funky Rib Crib, one of his 4 legendary albums released on Jef Gilson’s Palm Records in the 1970s. At the beginning of the 1960s, at the Berklee College of Music, Byard Lancaster met some feisty friends: Sonny Sharrock, Dave Burrell and Ted Daniel. It is easy to see why he rapidly became involved in free jazz. Once he was settled in New York, he appeared on Sunny Murray Quintet, recorded under the leadership of …

*2026 repress* Souffle Continu records is thrilled to present Byard Lancaster – Exactement, one of his 4 legendary albums released on Jef Gilson’s Palm Records in the 1970s. At the beginning of the 1960s, at the Berklee College of Music, Byard Lancaster met some feisty friends: Sonny Sharrock, Dave Burrell and Ted Daniel. It is easy to see why he rapidly became involved in free jazz. Once he was settled in New York, he appeared on Sunny Murray Quintet, recorded under the leadership of the drum c…

'May Spring Last a Lifetime’ is the first duo release from improvising tenor saxophonists Tom Challenger and Evan Parker. The album emerged after years of informal practice sessions; then, following two live performances, the duo recorded this session at Arco Barco in Ramsgate. The album is Evan Parker’s fifth appearance on the False Walls label. Evan: “Duo is the simplest form of group playing. And so it’s the simplest, the purest in a certain sense, and the most challenging. There’s nowhere to…

A pivotal masterpiece by Masahiko Togashi, Masayuki Takayanagi, Mototeru Takagi, and Motoharu Yoshizawa is set to be reissued as the eighth release in the Spin This Now! series

*100 copies limited edition* Five Nights in the Midwest is a new three-CD release from the improvising trio of bass clarinetist Jason Stein, double bassist Damon Smith, and drummer Adam Shead. Recorded during a December 2025 tour across the American Midwest, the album presents seven extended performances exactly as they occurred—without edits or cuts—allowing listeners to experience the full arc of the tour as it unfolded night by night. The December 2025 run marked the trio’s first tour since 2…

*200 copies limited edition* On Many Roads, their second full-length album, microplastique expands its playful yet rigorous commitment to instant composition, deepening an ethos that treats sound itself as both material and meeting ground. Recorded live across the ensemble’s 15-concert June 2025 U.S. tour, the album functions less as a polished artifact than as a document of encounter—capturing how place, audience, and momentary circumstance all shape what this quartet becomes onstage. Seven tra…

*2006 release, 2026 stock* This is a work that proves the worth of the trio that kept the group alive for 16 years, and at the same time captures a miraculous performance that’s hard to believe was entirely improvised — they went into the studio with no plan and made everything on the spot. Of course there were no overdubs or edits. It might convey the nuance better to call it composition while playing rather than pure improvisation. A series of acoustic treatments by ZAK fully preserves the stu…

*2026 stock* Very special quartet of Kazuhisa Uchihashi, Keisuke Ohta, Shinobu Kawai, Akira Sotoyama. This is real free music from Japan.