Jazz & Improvisation / Free Improvisation

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…

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…

This open-minded trio recorded Plaything in October of 2012 at Studio Juillaguet, a recording and dance space located in a rural part of southwest France that is run by Kent Carter and his wife, a professional choreographer. Bassist Kent Carter produced the album, along with the NoBusiness label. Gianni Lenoci and Bill Elgart first met in Evil Rabbit's 2010 Amsterdam music festival. Subsequently Lenoci invited Carter to Monopoli, Italy to do a workshop with his orchestra, which Carter …

Temporary Super Offer! John Coltrane is the steady catalyst, channeling galvanizing thoughts and energy through the tangible mechanics of his horns and sometimes running momentarily afoul of the lacunae between intent and implements. That it was all accomplished from the comparatively cramped confines of a basement jazz club stage is both the miracle and promise of momentous jazz music. The boon of emotional reciprocity between band and audiences was in optimal effect across these nights, even i…

Temporary Super Offer! Ezz-Thetics presents New York Eye And Ear Control 1964, Revisited. Albert Ayle tenor saxophone, Don Cherry cornet & trumpet, John Tchicai alto saxophone, Roswell Rudd trombone, Gary Peacock double bass and Sunny Murray drums. As a visitor of the Albert Ayler Quintet concert 1966 in Lörrach, Germany and producer of his recordings since 1982, I like to present New York Eye And Ear Control by Albert Ayler, remastered, given permission for it by Desiree Ayler-Fellows of the Al…

Paul Bley is a master of the piano trio. He showed new and different ways of exploring the complex triangular geometry of what has arguably become jazz’s signature formation. Bley’s early recording with Charles Mingus and Art Blakey promised great things to come. He emerged more fully as part of Jimmy Giuffre’s innovative trio with Steve Swallow, but it was with his own trios of the mid to late 1960s, with drummer Barry Altschul and bassists Kent Carter and Mark Levinson, that he really began to…

Though short-lived, the New York Contemporary Five brought together NY free players Don Moore on bass, J.C. Moses on drums, Archie Shepp on tenor saxophone, and Don Cherry on trumpet with Danish alto saxophonist John Tchicai, in a remastered edition of their 1966 album "Consequences", expanded with Shepp's revisiting of the material in a sextet with Sunny Murray and Ted Curson.

The two volumes of "Heliocentric Worlds", recorded 7 months apart in 1965, represent perhaps one of greatest chapters in Sun Ra's legacy, bringing together his immense orchestration skills with future-leaning free jazz, allowing his players expanse inside disciplined compositions that reflect on both space and the then-new freedom explored by jazz soloists.

Three variations of quartet settings from iconoclastic free jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler, remastering and combining two Debut Records albums, "Spirits" from 1964 and 1965's "Ghosts"

Annihaya present Rats Don't Eat Synthesizers, the long-awaited second album by The Dwarfs Of East Agouza. Hailing from the Agouza district of Cairo, Egypt, this brilliant trio consists of Alan Bishop (acoustic bass, alto sax), Maurice Louca (keyboards, drum machine), and Sam Shalabi (electric guitar). Following their acclaimed first album Bes (NAWA 005CD, 2016), this new full-length is composed of two hypnotic journeys: "Rats Don't Eat Synthesizers" and "Ringa Mask Koshary" which were recorded i…

Despite its modest role on the world stage, Belgium has produced a number of internationally renowned musicians and composers. There is the iconic gypsy jazz guitar maestro Django Reindhart, whose position remains unassailable, and guitarist/harmonica player Toots Thielemans, who became an internationally renowned artist performing and recording with Bill Evans, Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Shirley Horn and Quincy Jones. The other key Belgian figure is composer/arranger Francy Bol…

We're delighted to announce the reissue one the most sought-after European private press spiritual jazz albums: The Magnetic Atmospher by Clarence Peters Quartet. Never reissued in its entirety before, The Magnetic Atmosphere is a solid album of deep, post modal spiritual jazz that will appeal to fans of the Strata East, Tribe, and Black Jazz labels. Resident in France since the 1970s, drummer Peters recorded the album with a French rhythm section: Patrick Gauthier on piano, and Jean-Jacques Ave…

Tip! * 140g vinyl, cover art silkscreened on recycled cardboard. Edition of 300  * Rauhan ja nautinnon puutarhassa (In the garden of peace and pleasure) is a meditative sound piece created by Pasi Salmi and Simo Laihonen, which paints a serene sonic space where the listener can rest and wonder. In terms of style, the album floats somewhere between impressionism, avant-garde jazz and ambient music, without falling into any of these categories in particular. Simo Laihonen (b.1982) is a percussioni…

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.

Fundacja Słuchaj! presents Bosque de Niebla (2CD) by Lucia Martínez, Agustí Fernández and Barry Guy. Recorded: July 9th, 2019 at Rosazul Estudi, Barcelona, Spain. Recording, mixing, and mastering: Ferran Conangla. Photo: Mario Burbano. Liner Note: Lucía Martínez. Liner Note translation: Sarah Claman. Graphic design: Semafor. Executive Producer: Maciej Karłowski. Produced by Lucía Martínez for Fundacja Słuchaj. Barry Guy plays exclusively on Thomastik Springs + logo. Music by Lucía Martínez, Agus…

On 1992 after the great flood of the Chicago River legendary icon of jazz/improvised music master Hal Russell and great Joel Futterman did a large, two days performance for the victims of the cataclysm. It was pyrotechnic, but at the same time full of fire, lyric, and abstract flavor concerts. We are honored that Joel decide to release this long-awaiting music in full length without any overdubs on our label. Over 3 hours of music on 3 CDs!

Do you remember the first musical meeting between Japanese-born, Irish-based pianist Izumi Kimura and legendary drum master Gerry Hemingway? It was the album Illuminated Silence recorded with Barry Guy. Today it's the two of them, Kimura and Hemingway, in the second installment of their artistic collaboration. In front of you is the album Kairos, containing five signature compositions by the two artists, one track each of their own, and the traditional song Over The Tide. And for poetry lovers, …

After the very well received, both by the audience and critics, debut album Repetitions (Letters to Krzysztof Komeda), focusing on the lesser-known works of the legendary Polish composer, the Wrocław-based EABS decided to further expand this lead and released two more vinyl records, "live" and "on tape", which crowned the "Komeda triptych". The astounding reception of the band's debut whet listeners' appetite for completely new recordings. It took 2 years for the new album to materialise, this t…

* 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.

*300 copies limited edition* During the last decade Pedro Alves Sousa has been establishing himself as one of the most inventive and creative musicians of his generation. He is a self-taught musician and continues to learn how to play his saxophone every day. His label Futuro Familiar is born out of the idea that he needed to mark some of his creative evolutions and create more specific paths for his career. “Rahu” and “Ketu” were recorded in 2016 and 2017 with a group of musicians: Alex Zhang H…

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…

" Here we have the tasty combination of two blog favorites, finding China-native Lao Dan joining forces with the visiting Jooklo Duo for a set of cosmic vibrations (and a little bit of free funk) at Old Heaven Books during 2018's LOFT Festival. Here Vanzan takes up his usual percussion duties while Lao Dan and Genta load up on various reeds and flutes which Genta supplements with a generous sidecar of vintage keyboard. This rowdy little number has a little bit of everything and once the trio get…

Axis / Another Revolvable Thing is the second installment of Blank Forms’ archival reissues of the music of Japan’s eternal revolutionary Masayuki Takayanagi, following April Is the Cruellest Month, a 1975 studio record by his New Direction Unit.

*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…

Another absolutely mind-blowing gem from Transversales Disques, Archie Shepp's "Live in Paris (1974) Lost ORTF Recordings" is some of the best jazz of the era that almost no one ever heard. Fully mastered from the original tapes and capturing one of the great giants of free jazz in a crucial moment of change - tracing toward funkier, fusion tinged compositions, and more straight ahead bop at the boundaries of spiritual jazz - the historical importance and raw beauty of these never before release…

Big Tip! LP version. Includes 20-page booklet. France, early sixties: the Mouvement de l'École moderne is in full bloom. Relying on the experiments and writings of its founder, the educationist Célestin Freinet, this consortium of teachers is about to give empirical evidence proving that another approach to music in school can be fruitful. With its pragmatic, anti-authoritarian tack, the method that Freinet was already developing in the 1920s held children in respect, giving them confidence and …

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.…

*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* 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* 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.

Black Saint present a reissue of John Carter Octet's Dauwhe, originally released in 1982. Dawhe is the first chapter in John Carter's Roots and Folklore saga. A five-part epic journey through the African American heritage conceived by the great clarinetist-composer and performed by a stellar line-up featuring Carter himself, Bobby Bradford (cornet), James Newton (flute), Charles Owens (soprano sax, oboe, clarinet), Red Callender (tuba), Roberto Miranda (bass), William Jeffrey (drums), and Luis P…

*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…

Patrick Shiroishi returns with his second Notice album, a duo with double bassist Kyle Motl. “Apparitions” opens this album of the same name, and we are greeted with wispy and amorphous trails of wind-blown textures, as if the very first layer of an abstract painting fell to the floor of an old house and followed the contours of the walls and door frames, under shafts of light and in-between the fine cracks of floors. This is an album full of expressive and poetic phrasings, jittery movements an…

When Mars Williams dove into his vault to excavate several recordings for a Mars Archive series on Corbett vs. Dempsey, he immediately landed on a concert date from a decade earlier. The event, recorded at Chicago's Elastic Arts Foundation in 2012, featured a trio with Williams on reed instruments, Darin Gray on bass, and Chris Corsano on drums. This configuration had already been highly enough estimated by Williams that he'd posted one set on Bandcamp, but he saved the other set for future rele…

*2023 stock* The Orange Blue Green band improvises freely in the true sense of the word. An improvisation initiating from the very first sound produced without any prior coordination regarding the style, structure or anything relating to the overall musical form. An acoustic, almost classical trio that has embraced the fundamental features of the sound of chamber music, along with the various musical idioms and experiences of the members’ multi-dimensional course. Their music features a primal e…

Super Tip! Reissue, originally released in 1967. Frank Wright returned to the studio in May 1967 to make his second album using a quintet of players little-known at the time but now legends to free-jazz cognoscenti. Trumpeter Jacques Coursil, who almost made an album for ESP-Disk' himself, went on to the greatest fame of the players besides Wright; alto saxophonist Arthur Jones was not recorded nearly as often as his talents deserved; Steve Tintweis's stint playing with Albert Ayler raised the y…