Jazz & Improvisation / Free Improvisation

*100 copies limited edition* "Live is a product of trusted musicianship and spontaneity where the central desire is to see what people do with space collectively under conditions where there is no prescribed direction. This is a white label release under a subsidiary label called cow: Music and it comes off two hours of recording and roughly twenty-eight minutes make it into the album. Throughout this record, Williams plays a frugal acoustic role and much of his contributions take shape in the p…

* Limited edition housed in a die cut craft sleeve, flooded pocket, in printed inner sleeve, with insert * Malik King was an important part of the St Louis jazz scene of the 70's & 80's. He studied under Albert Ayler in NY in the early 70s before returning to the Midwest. He was a member of the Shirley Le Flore's ensemble "Free N' Concert". He also served as musical director of The Creative Arts & Expression Lab, The African Peoples Continuum, & The Black Arts Alliance, The worrier poets, The Hu…

Temporary Super Offer!  We can only answer that question from an individual perspective, based upon our perception of place, and space, and time, and stimuli. Each of these categories exists within a complex of contexts – for example, there is the stimulus of personal relationships, the stimulus of our health and that of others around us, the stimulus of political events, the stimulus of work, the stimulus of art. A work of art provides an interactive opportunity to ignite our perception with th…

** Limited edition housed in a die cut craft sleeve, flooded pocket, in printed inner sleeve, with insert ** Artistry was Sirone's first album as a leader, recorded in 1978, just after the split of the Revolutionary Ensemble. Artistry has an Atypical combination of instruments, bass, cello , flute and percussion and delivers aplenty. Listen and you will know. Sirone ( Norris Jones) had an enormously prolific career as a bassist, both as a member of the Revolutionary Ensemble and playing with man…

*First pressing of 200 copies*  Andreas Røysum (clarinet, bass clarinet), Christian Meaas Svendsen (double bass), Kresten Osgood (drums).Art & design by Dylan Marcus McConnell

The Odyssey is one of two major ancient greek epic poems attributed to Homer. The Odyssey is fundamental to the modern western canon; it is the second-oldest extant work of western literature, while the Iliad is the oldest. The poem mainly focuses on the Greek hero Odysseus, king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the fall of Troy. Like Odysseus, the four musicians that gave life to this project traveled into several different situations with a narrative approach; improvisation is a musical p…

"Jeremy Brown might be a new name to many listeners of this music. He is a Professor of Music at the University of Calgary in Alberta Canada who teaches improvisation, is the Director of the University Jazz Orchestra and the Saxophone Ensemble and is a notable and prolific scholar of music. He is a busy professional musician who plays saxophone, flute, clarinet in classical, and jazz settings. He is a virtuoso, who is very highly regarded in Canada and elsewhere. I met him when I was the Killam …

Tip! * Lucky restock * The music world is most fortunate that the past two decades have witnessed the rediscovery of mind-opening music that went under-recognized when originally released, and the wellspring of musical content produced by a generation of brilliant musicians. One such musician was the late great drummer Steve Reid, whose reissued eclectic recordings on his own Mustevic Sound label gave his career a second wind. Though teased on a well-received compilation, one Mustevic release ne…

This bundle includes three LP (one of them is a double set), namely "Solos" "4 Cuts Placed In "A First Quarter"" and "Having Been Built On Sand"

Vinyl reissue of Pat Thomas’ New Jazz Jungle: Remembering. The album was originally released on CD in 1997, at a time when Pat had already spent years playing on the free improvisation circuit with the likes of Lol Coxhill and Derek Bailey. 10 tracks of bass heavy jungle breaks, which are intersected with vocal and orchestral samples, and layers of percussion rotating at varying time signatures. It’s in this fashion that the album seems to present itself: in layers.  Thomas identified jungle’s w…

Complete rendition of the saxophonist’s famed divinely inspired suite was recorded at Seattle’s Penthouse in 1965. Despite being John Coltrane’s most celebrated album, and one of the most beloved jazz albums of all time, A Love Supreme wasn’t a record that the saxophonist touched on much in the live setting. Up until now, most Coltrane enthusiasts have only ever heard a single live performance of the literally divinely inspired four-movement suite that makes up the LP. That will change in Octobe…

Temporary Super Offer! By 1965, Paul Bley had settled on the trio format, and touring Europe revealed a warmer reception for music that employed chordless improvisations, three-way rhythmic counterpoint, unfamiliar melodic constructs, and malleable song form. But there was an equally momentous conceptual change in the group’s material, as the adventurous pieces by Carla Bley were gradually being replaced by those of Paul’s new partner, Annette Peacock. - Art Lange

*2022 reissue.* "Maskerade“ is among the most fascinating fusion and spiritual jazz LPs from West Germany. The sought after album was originally released in 1974 on the tiny label "Creative Music Records“, with only a few hundred copies known to exist. Leader Dieter Bihlmaier stands out as a fantastic flute player, recalling some of the best moments of icons like Eric Dolphy, Sahib Shihab or Jeremy Steig. Bassist Jan Jankeje, percussionist Gerhart Ziegler and vibraphonist Gerhard Dietz form his …

*Limited edition of 200 copies.* A trio of violinist Alex Cunningham, drummer Thom Nguyen and saxophonist Patrick Shiroishi delivers a new release titled "Basket of Knives" on Astral Editions.

In October 1974, the first number of “L'Indépendant du Jazz”, a small self-produced magazine DIY -before punk supposedly invented the concept- was launched by Jef Gilson, Gérard Terronès, Jean-Jacques Pussiauand a few other specialists of a different kind of jazz in France, it looked at the already long career of Jef Gilson and in detail at the album with saxophonist Philippe Maté : The "Workshop" is, with Philippe Maté (alto-sax), an undeniable success. Maté is genuinely ‘the’ most inventive Fr…

Tip! Not unlike the supernatural deities from which they take their name, DJINN - the Swedish collective featuring members of Hills and Goat in their ranks - have proven themselves a potent and mysterious force. Their first release for Rocket Recordings was a portrait of open-minded explorers foraying into the realms of free and cosmic jazz, but never overly reverential or in thrall to their own influences. Following the ‘Avant De Servir’ tape which was released on Swedish label Zeon Light last …

*Limited edition of 600 copies* Nomadic spiritual jazz duo The Sea Ensemble embodied the ethos of their era and art to a uniquely poetic degree. Founded in the early 1970’s by ethnomusicologist Zusaan Kali Fasteau and versatile instrumentalist Donald Rafael Garrett (sideman to John Coltrane, Archie Shepp, and Roland Kirk, among others), the couple’s lifestyle mirrored their music: restless, questing, collaborative, and improvised. Their itinerant journeying spanned Senegal, Congo, Morocco, Haiti…

*2022 stock.* “Family Drug” is the premiere recordings of M(h)ysteria, a new trio founded by Giovanni Di Domenico. While featuring the instrumentation of a classic organ trio, M(h)ysteria charges a rather darker path. Not a swinging session, this is an expression of coping with the chronic tensions of modern daily life, with its inherent distractions and mounting stress, as well as a larger feeling of foreboding. Its sound a symptom of a future glittering with menace. Keeping the roles of the in…

*2022 stock.* Not exactly prolific this band: their first album "And The Missing R" dates from 2008 already, and now, seven years later we get their sophomore album, and that is many years too late, but their music is great. The band still consists of Belgian-Italian Daniele Martini on tenor sax, Belgian-Italian pianist Giovanni di Domenico, Portuguese bassist Gonçalo Almeida who resides in Rotterdam, and Portuguese drummer João Lobo.  The first track, "Non Negative Python", is a slow intimate a…

*2022 stock.* The band consists of Italians living in Belgium - Daniele Martini and Giovanni di Domenico, as well as two Portuguese residing in Netherlands - Gonçalo Almeida & João Lobo. Tetterapadequ is a free-jazz quartet firmly rooted in the traditions of European improvised music. It is no accident, that their first album released in 2008 was pressed by Clean Feed label. On "Pangatuna" we can hear the band enlarged to an octet, which enriched their music with brand new, almost orchestral dim…

*2022 stock.* Tetterapadequ is formed by Italian Daniele Martini (tenor sax) and Giovanni di Domenico (piano), and Portuguese Gonçalo Almeida (double bass) and João Lobo (drums). This quartet creates improvised music, mostly subdued, introverted and restrained, where the four musicians create small creative aural environments, with scarce sounds and making use of empty space. Their first release"And the Missing R" (2008) has appeared on the acclaimed Portuguese label Clean Feed. After some years…

Steve Day, poet, writer, percussionist has been around Discus Records for several years contributing sleeve notes for Keith Tippett recordings as well as reviews and other wordplay. Although he and comrades Peter Evans, Julian Dale, Mark Langford, have recorded for other labels, the Day Evans Dale Ensemble is a completely new venture with regular live dates in a range of venues. This seemed like an appropriate time to bring their 'new thing' to Discus Music; a mix of spoken word and spontaneous …

*In process of stocking.* The Roadburn Festival has, in recent years, expanded from a metal-oriented set of concerts to include classical, jazz, and ambient / drone music as well. What’s more, Roadburn typically books outside-leaning artists in these additional styles of music. Enter the Martina Verhoeven Quintet, consisting of an all-star lineup with Verhoeven on piano, Gonçalo Almeida on bass, Onno Govaert on drums, Dirk Serries on guitar, and Colin Webster on sax. Driven is a near 50-minute, …

Kang Tae Hwan plays alto sax with a rawness that's usually reserved for the tenor – a fantastic sound that really comes through beautifully here in this solo set of improvisations! The material was recorded around the same time as Kang's brilliant (and few) recordings for the Japanese market – and the long-overdue presentation of this performance comes as a much-needed accompaniment to his small catalog – the kind of record that boldly, brilliantly documents a completely unique talent – one whos…

Brilliant work from these two very inventive bassists – the legendary Barre Phillips, working on acoustic bass – and Motoharu Yoshizawa, playing an unusual homemade electric vertical 5-string bass! The combination of instruments is beautiful – and with one electric, and one acoustic, you can really separate the voice of each player – even though both Phillips and Yoshizawa resonate strongly together, and really have a complimentary sense of improvisation – a beautiful combination of both their t…

No relation to the sparkling wine of the same name, Cold Duck is instead a series of nine biting improvisations by S4, an ad-hoc, all-star quartet of soprano saxophone innovators – one British, John Butcher, and the others Swiss: Urs Leimgruber, Hans Koch and Christian Kobi, the last of whom is also a member of the all-saxophone Konus Quartett, which interprets notated music.  Designated by Roman numerals, Cold Duck’s tracks, lasting from barely one minute to more than 12, could be the auditory …

The CD contains tracks originally released in the LP "Usa Concerts" issued right after the first American tour of Centazzo in 1978 and three new tracks: one recorded in New York, at Zoo Place with Kondo e Chadbourne; a second in Woodstock in duo with Tom Corra in 1980 and the third one in Bolgna (Italy) in 1985 with the Philadelphia sax player Jack Wright. It was an homogeneous musical view the one that Centazzo found on the arrival in New York in 1978, rich of collaboration between musicians co…

Duos, quartets and quintets of FREE improvisations by Tony Coe (clarinet), John Edwards (bass), Alan Hacker (clarinet), Sylvia Hallett (violin, voice, sarangi), Marcio Mattos (cello), Evan Parker (tenor saxophone), Philipp Wachsmann (violin, electronics), Kenny Wheeler (flugelhorn).

ESP-Disk' present a CD reissue of Peter Lemer Quintet's Local Colour, originally released in 1968. British pianist Peter Lemer studied with Jaki Byard, Paul Bley, and Bill Dixon. His lengthy and distinguished career has found him in a wide variety of settings. As an avant-garde jazz pianist, he recorded with Spontaneous Music Ensemble; in the jazz fusion realm, he was a member of Gilgamesh and Paraphernalia; as a progressive rock keyboardist, he played with Gong, Baker Gurvitz Army, the Mike Old…

Recorded on 24/07/2021 in Buenos Aires, Argentine.  In Argentina, improvised music or free music (here, choose the label you like) is not something new. As early as the mid-sixties, Juan Carlos Cáceres, fine arts student, pianist and trombonist left his sound experiments recorded. Thus the scene, fed by musicians who come from free improvisation, jazz and even rock, has developed strongly in the last twenty years. In this context, Osvaldo La Porta, Darío Dolci and Omar Grandoso are, at the same …

Norbert Eisbrenner (1935–2022) was a German improvising painter and musician. During the 1960s, he became involved with the West Berlin underground music scene and has played in the free-form group Human Being that evolved around the Zodiak Free Arts Lab, as well as in the trio MND (Moderne Nordeuropäische Dorfmusik), with Sven-Åke Johansson and Werner Götz, and in Schlangenfeuer, MND's later incarnation that was covered previously on Edition Telemark (cat. no. 903.07). After having started out …

Were We Where We Were is a recording of set of compositions by Michael Formanek, and performed here by him, saxophonist and clarinetist Chet Doxas, and drummer Vinnie Sperrazza, collectively as the Michael Formanek Drome Trio. These pieces were loosely grouped together as Palindrome Series 1 and Palindrome Series 2, from 2020. They started out as a series graphic scores that were then reinterpreted as conventionally notated music for this trio. The Drome trio learned the music and rehearsed outs…

Torbjörn Zetterberg’s new record, Opinions, is not a conventional “solo” outing. It doesn’t represent the bassist, composer, and bandleader stepping away from all that to prove his mettle as a virtuoso unaccompanied improvisor. Anyone familiar with Zetterberg’s small group recordings needs no confirmation of his prowess. And anyway, strutting his stuff is not his vibe. Certainly not the vibe of this record, where the bassist plays more than bass, a solo venture on which he is occasionally joined…

*2022 stock* In the year that Juneteenth was finally declared a national U.S. holiday, 2021, Joe McPhee and Tomeka Reid united for a live concert in celebration. Multi-instrumentalist McPhee was deeply moved by the historical nature of the circumstances, the incredible freight of that history of oppression and liberation represented in the legislation, both the insanity of its overdueness and the joy of its institutionalization. As a preamble to the music, McPhee led off with two poems, read wit…

A breathtaking self-conscious free-jazz masterwork, 'Rise Vision Comin'' summarizes more than 30 years of musical and theoretical/political expression from renowned activist/scholar/free-jazz pioneer Haki R. Standing on the verge of spiritual jazz aesthetic, his music remains timeless & unforgettable after it's longstanding creation. The first album by the group Rise Vision Comin was released in 1976, and features among others Wallace Roney on trumpet, Clarence Seay on bass and Agyei Akoto on sa…

*2022 stock* On October 14th 1989, Horace Tapscott, founder of the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, performed alongside his close friend and musical partner Michael Session at the Théâtre du Chêne Noir in Avignon, France. This was during a tour in which they traveled across Europe. The duo presented compositions by Leimert Park musicians Jesse Sharps, Nate Morgan and Tapscott himself. The stark instrumentation of this concert led to minimal arrangements of compositions typically performed by much l…

Sublime solo piano from Masaru Imada – a Japanese player with talents in a range of different styles, but who sounds especially nice up-close here in an intimate setting! Imada's got a way of letting a tune really find its way organically – almost as if the songs here are little flowers opening up in his fingers on the keyboard of the piano – although never in a style that's "flowery" at all, because Imada's a master of finding just the right notes at the right moment – never embellishing things…

Japanese free jazz pioneer and trumpeter Itaru Oki, who passed away in August 2020, was active mainly in Europe. He was one the key players in the development of a distinctively Japanese take on free jazz in the Tokyo scene of the late 1960s and early 70s, leading his own power trio and collaborating with other formative names like percussionist Masahiko Togashi and bassist Keiki Midorikawa. His last recording (recorded live on October 7, 2018) was a 75-minute improvisation with legendary Masahi…

Tip! For the 8th edition of Mats Gustafsson's NU Ensemble, Gustafsson focused on the current state of the world, „Hidros 8 Heal" is an attempt to rise and find the questions about the state of things. there is an extreme unbalance on local and global levels at the moment — from ideological, economical, cultural and political perspectives – and we need an equilibrium of some sorts very soon. can it heal ? what can make it all heal? and for how long can it heal? Anna Högberg - alto and baritone sa…

Three improvisers having fun and taking risks. The classic piano-less jazz trio reinvented by mixing melodies, dirty sounds, noises, extended techniques and references to tradition with a quasi-punk approach.