Jazz & Improvisation / Free Improvisation

NoBusiness Records presents Undulation, the fifth release of the Archive Series dedicated to Sam Rivers. Recorded May 17, 1981, Florence, Italy. Re-mastered by Arūnas Zujus at MAMAstudios. Photos (cover and pages 2, 7, 9): Courtesy of Monique Rivers Williams. Cover and Booklet Design: Jeff DiPerna. Liner Notes: Bill Shoemaker. Produced by Danas Mikailionis and Ed Hazell. Co-producer: Valerij Anosov. Sam Rivers - tenor saxophone, flute, pianoJerry Byrd - guitarRael-Wesley Grant - electric bass gu…

NoBusiness Records presents Rested Turquoise by Szilard Mezei Tubass Quintet. Recorded on 21-22nd August, 2018, KCNS, Novi Sad, Serbia. Recording engineer - Lazar Živanac. Mixed and mastered by Szilárd Mezei & Lazar Živanac. Liner notes by Alexander Hawkins. Cover graphic by Erzsébet Mezei. Photo by Aleksandar Stojković. Design by Oskaras Anosovas. Produced by Danas Mikailionis. Co-producer - Valerij Anosov.Ervin Malina - double bass (right)Ernő Hock - double bass (left)Kornél Pápista - tuba (ce…

NoBusiness Records presents The Field by Rodrigo Amado Motion trio with Alexander von Schlippenbach. Recorded by Valdas Karpuška at the Vilnius Jazz Festival, Vilnius, October 18th, 2019. Mixed by Joaquim Monte and Rodrigo Amado. Mastered by David Zuchowski. Produced by Rodrigo Amado and Danas Mikailionis. Co-producer - Valerij Anosov. Cover photo by Rodrigo Amado. Inlay photo by Vytautas Suslavičius. Design by Rodrigo Amado. Rodrigo Amado - tenor saxophoneAlexander von Schlippenbach - pianoMigu…

NoBusiness Records presents Walpurgisnacht by Total Music Association. Transferred and remastered from the original tape. Tape transfer by Wolfgang Obrecht at Tonstudio RichArt, Munich. Original Cover Design by Manfred Vogel. Design by Oskaras Anosovas. Remastered by Arūnas Zujus at MAMAstudios. Photography of the musicians by Konstanze Vollmer. Produced by Danas Mikailionis and Ernst Nebhuth. Co-producer - Valerij Anosov. Liner Notes by Hans-Jörg Hussong / Liner Notes (translation) - Ernst Nebh…

Decca presents Journeys In Modern Jazz: Britain 1961-1973. The rediscovery of British jazz of the 60s & 70s is a phenomenon of our days. Some time ago this music seemed forgotten, today it is cult and artists like Shabaka Hutchings and Kamasi Washington call it a formative influence on their own music. British Jazz is cool again! Now, under the title British Jazz Explosion, Universal Music is diving deep into its jazz archives and reissuing the most sought-after, hip and collector-market pricele…

Impulse! is releasing a virtually unreleased work by the legendary and late jazz godmother Alice Coltrane, a 1981 recording titled Kirtan: Turiya Sings. The album, to be released on 16 July 2021 as part of the historic label's 60th anniversary celebrations, comprises nine devotional songs originally released in 1982 only on cassette for ashram students. In addition to Alice's voice and instrument, those recordings included parts for synthesizer, strings and effects. In 2004, Alice's son (and pro…

The Northwoods Improvisers return with a new album comprising their first release in 10 years. Raft is the latest effort with an augmented lineup that includes veterans Mike Johnston (bass, bass recorder, wood flutes, percussion) and Nick Ashton (drums, percussion) and unites them with a fierce front line of saxophones with Dominic Berenga (tenor/alto/soprano saxophones, flute, percussion) and Donovan Boxey (alto/soprano saxophone, clarinet, melodica, wood flutes, percussion). The music is all a…

** 2021 Stock ** Inscribe is the third release by this group. The self titled disc includes pieces and improvisations by all the members. The instrumentation includes guitar, cheng, violin, bass, tabla, percussion, bowed banjo and cello. With elements of indigenous music, jazz and the avant garde, natural reference points are Don Cherry, Ahmed Abdul-Malik, The Art Ensemble of Chicago and early ECM records. Includes member of the Northwoods Improvisers. The first release on the label in nearly 10…

** 2021 Stock ** Emerging Field marks the sixth release of Faruq Z. Bey with the Northwoods Improvisers on the Entropy Stereo label. This release finds the group exploring rhythm and space in a broader sense than previous offerings. Faruq Z. Bey, Mike Carey, and Skeeter Shelton create thoughtful space and intricate conversations in their horn lines evoking a relaxed and passionate response with a solid blues focus. Mike Johnston and Nick Ashton root the group with their sound rhythmic foundation…

** 2021 Stock ** A rare recording from an under recorded period of Bobby Bradford's music. This date stems from a California radio broadcast. The line up is Bobby Bradford on trumpet, James Newton (flute), Richard Rehwald (bass) and John Goldsmith (drums). Includes a bonus track duet with Vinny Golia (clarinet) from a 2003 gig.

** 2021 Stock ** "Once a member of Detroit legends Griot Galaxy, Bey's take on jazz is informed by the spectral divinations of Sun Ra, and pieces like "Moors" and "sherrif Sam (Sound By Law)" remind you of prime era Arkestra, floating between beautifully extended melody heads and stretches of languid free blowing, all underpinned by a steady, rolling rhythm section." Jon Dale; Signal To Noise Fall 2008. "If this were merely an audio CD, it would garner excellent reviews. But this set with DVD an…

On Ancestry, Trevor Watts approaches improvisation in a more stripped down approach with percussionist Jamie Harris. Both Watts and Harris combine an incredible sense of rhythm with exploration and subtlety. The recordings were culled from live performances and more intimate settings at Trevor's home studio to give a balance of the high energy of performance and relaxed musical exploration between friends. The end result is a stunning document of duo interplay on various hand percussion and reed…

** 2021 Stock ** A diverse follow up to their 19 Moons release of 2002. The groups has added longtime Bey collaborator Mike Carey (flute/tenor saxophone) to the ensemble. Ashirai Pattern embodies a higher spiritual plane and elements of mysticism in an aural feast. Instrumentation includes vibes, marimba, voice, bass, drums, tenor saxophone, flute, bass clarinet, violin, and percussion. "The Michigan-based Northwoods Improvisers collective meld the largely undefined sounds of world music with ja…

Matthew Halsall to release Oneness. A triple vinyl set of archive recordings featuring three sessions of deep meditative spiritual-jazz in a deluxe edition, designed by Ian Anderson of The Designer's Republic. The recordings on Oneness date from Jan, March and September 2008 and were born from a period of experimentation as Halsall first began to explore the music that would provide the inspiration for his spiritual jazz recordings Fletcher Moss Park and When the World Was One. They also offer a…

** Limited edition, individually numbered copies on translucent vinyl ** Marc Moulin’s debut LP Sam Suffy (1975) is a compelling and unique mosaic of jazz, soul, and electronic elements that employs sampled sounds and sequencers to startling effect, vividly anticipating the music of the not-so-distant future. While rooted in collective improvisation, cuts like the opening “Le Saule” and “Le Beau Galop” foreshadow the emergence of house music via their underlying electronic motifs; even more impr…

** 2021 Stock. 180 gram audiophile vinyl. Including 16-page booklet with liner notes by jazz-historian Ashley Kahn and superior packaging ** Music On Vinyl proudly presents the first installment of the acclaimed Miles Davis Bootleg Series on 180 gram vinyl! The explosive transformation of Miles Davis' 'second great Quintet' with Wayne Shorter (tenor sax), Herbie Hancock (piano), Ron Carter (bass), and Tony Williams (drums) is laid bare on Live In Europe 1967: The Bootleg Series Vol. 1. Culled fr…

** Special Edition of 110 hand-numbered copies ** Avant-garde. Paul and Limpe Fuchs and Friedrich Gulda performed live at the famous Munich jazz club Domicile on July 1, 1974. There are three tracks on side 1 featuring and named for each of the musicians. Side 2 is titled “Ensemble”. The original record was given away for free at concerts and was limited to 80 copies. play loud! re-releases this original EP for the first time ever. 110 7” vinyl copies, hand-numbered. Digital on all known platfor…

** First unedited MPS release on 7” 45 single. AAA Transfers from analogue mastertapes. Audiophile-grade vinyl – single one-off batch limited-edition pressing. New artwork authentically recreated on heavyweight gloss sleeves. Cut at Abbey Road Studios by Grammy award winning engineer, Sean Magee. Manufactured at Pallas Group GmbH, Germany. Metallic hype sticker ** For this 1969 recording Wolfgang Dauner expands beyond his more typical jazz settings, introducing psych and eastern raga touches wit…

** AAA Transfers from analogue mastertapes. Audiophile-grade vinyl – single one-off batch limited-edition pressing. New artwork authentically recreated on heavyweight gloss sleeves. Cut at Abbey Road Studios by Grammy award winning engineer, Sean Magee. Manufactured at Pallas Group GmbH, Germany. Metallic hype sticker **  Through the combination of Dave Pike’s vibes and Volker Kriegel’s exploratory electric, acoustic guitar and sitar stylings, The Dave Pike Set was a visionary quartet with a uni…

** First ever release on 7” 45 single. AAA Transfers from analogue mastertapes. Audiophile-grade vinyl – single one-off batch limited-edition pressing. New artwork authentically recreated on heavyweight gloss sleeves. Cut at Abbey Road Studios by Grammy award winning engineer, Sean Magee. Manufactured at Pallas Group GmbH, Germany. Metallic hype sticker ** For his MPS album ‘Rass’, Monty Alexander returned to Jamaica to turn out a jazz-funk groover. Recorded in Kingston in 1974, the date assembl…

** First ever release on 7” 45 single. AAA Transfers from analogue mastertapes. Audiophile-grade vinyl – single one-off batch limited-edition pressing. New artwork authentically recreated on heavyweight gloss sleeves. Cut at Abbey Road Studios by Grammy award winning engineer, Sean Magee. Manufactured at Pallas Group GmbH, Germany. Metallic hype sticker ** Wallen Bink presents My Soul / Au Right by George Duke. In 1971, following his tenure with Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention, George Duke to…

** 180 gram audiophile quality double LP. Gatefold cover artwork features previously unpublished original Blue Note session photos. All Analogue mastering: taken from Rudy Van Gelder tapes; transferred by Grammy-Award winning mastering engineer Sean Magee at Abbey Road Studios ** Wallen Bink presents I Don’t Care Who Knows It - The Complete 68’ to ‘70 sessions by Duke Pearson. This collection of performances, previously unissued in their entirety, drawn from five recording sessions from 24 June …

** 2021 Stock ** Legendary avant-garde jazz saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell is best known for his role as a founding member of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. This group is recognized for incorporating, and none-too-subtly ridiculing, the long-bearded tradition of Western art music. Mitchell, nonetheless, has something to say that is within the tradition himself, apart from, but related to his work in the field of jazz. Usually the sort of classical music piece produced by a "jazz cat" is formulated wi…

** 2021 Stock ** The Blue Note record label needs little introduction. Musically, graphically and sonically iconic, the label created and defined the golden age of modern jazz on record. Founded in 1939 by German émigré Alfred Lion, the label's roster of artists is a litany of giants - Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Horace Silver, Lee Morgan, Art Blakey, Lee Morgan, Herbie Hancock, and many more. With peerless musicians in the grooves, the legendary Rudy Van Gelder behind the boards, and graphi…

** 2021 Stock ** Solo is a solo album by American jazz saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell which was recorded in 2003 and released on Mutable Music as a three CD set. Disc one, titled "Tech Ritter and the Megabytes," is the most varied and interesting of the set. Released by itself, it would have a claim as Mitchell's best solo effort ... This CD offers a compelling balance between composition and improvisation, long and short, abstract and melodic. The second disc, titled "Solar Flares," is entirely de…

** 2021 Stock ** Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda self-released four brilliant cassette albums. These contained music, inpired by the gospel music of the Deroit Churches she grew up in, and the Indian devotional music of her religious practice. Originally available only throughh her ashram, they are her most obscure body of work. Turiyasangitananda’s devotion to spirituality was the central purpose of the final four decades of her life, an often-overlooked awakening that largely took shape duri…

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…

New music from XT (saxophone player Seymour Wright and percussionist Paul Abbott) in the form of an exhilarating, super compressed, reflective re-assembling of a dozen years working together. Re-animating free improvisation with a Chicago house palette, Deorlaf X is made up of frenetic slabs of mutated multiphonics and triggered percussion, suspended in bouts of possessed reflexive quiet. Where the duo’s 2019 release Palina'tufa on Empty Editions focused primarily on a response to the real (and …

" 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…

Percussionist Milford Graves recorded his first and only ESP-Disk' recording on August 5th, 1966 along with fellow percussionist, the late Sonny Morgan. According to Milford Graves, the titles were given numbers according to how many beats were in each measure. Milford Graves has been one of the main drummers in the free mode scene (known for skillful inclusion of Asian and African rhythmic ingredients into his solos). He worked with the New York Art Quartet, Giuseppi Logan, Albert Ayler, Don Pu…

It has occasionally been assumed that Henry Grimes got this recording date as a reward for his long service in the avant-garde of jazz. Having already honed his musical conception with a varied range of players, from Benny Goodman and Arnett Cobb to Lee Morgan, Gerry Mulligan, and Sonny Rollins to McCoy Tyner, Steve Lacy, Albert Ayler(including ESP 1020, Spirits Rejoice), Don Cherry, and Cecil Taylor (to name just a few), the service was certainly there, but he got this gig fully on his merits. …

** 2021 Stock ** The Alabama born saxophonist/clarinetist Marzette Watts had a short lived career as a member of the sixties avant-garde, but achieved legendary status for the company he kept in his Cooper Square loft where the likes of Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, Archie Shepp, and Pharoah Sanders often congregated. This debut date is best known for the presence of players, who like Watts, were to become renowned for the rareness of their recorded output, including Sonny Sharrock,…

"In 1966, the late Steve Lacy visited the new ESP-DISK office at 156 Fifth Avenue with a master tape of his concert in Buenos Aires with his quartet... He offered to sell the master for what I thought was an exorbitant price. I bought it. ... In 1992, the master tape was brought to engineer Ken Robertson at the Sony Studio, who observed that it had been recorded out of phase, and he corrected the phasing." - Bernard Stollman "Soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy's impressive career was filled with man…

First-ever American CD edition of this lost classic, recorded "live" during ESP's 1966 New York State College Tour. The "piano harp" credit is Burton Greene's way of noting that he plays inside the piano, directly on the strings – the first jazz pianist to do so on record, taking a page from avant-gardist Henry Cowell's book. In his notes to the original LP, included complete in this reissue, Greene writes, "The tour found people largely unexposed to this music. They were often shaken up. Some w…

At the behest of Elton Dean's widow, Ogun was (in 2017) delighted to release this live recording of the Elton Dean Quintet from their Brazilian tour of 1986. The first track, the epic 43 minute "Welcomet" had originally been put out on LP by Impetus but was long deleted. The CD reissue included a second track "Rio Rules" which comes in at a mere just-shy-of 34 minutes.

Founders Pino Minafra and Roberto Ottaviano remain at the core of Canto General but since the 1990s there have been many meetings and collaborations. Here they link up with the great South African drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo, recorded live at Tivoli, Italy (with track 8 from a festival in Perpignan, France) in 2007.

Ogun presents For the Blue Notes, Louis Moholo-Moholo's 8-piece Unit recorded live at the Theatre Manzoni in Milan, Italy, on 4 March 2012.

It was May 2009 when I first heard Alexander Hawkins play at the Vortex Jazz Club, with the Anthony Braxton s cornet-playing protégé Taylor Ho Bynum, bassist Dominic Lash and drummer Harris Eisenstadt in the Convergence Quartet. The music was an idiomatic white-knuckle ride, and all the players were variously fascinating but the then 28 year-old Hawkins was a revelation, for the audacity of his ideas, the depth of his understanding of both thematic and free-form musics, and for his Cecil Taylor-…

Ogun presents Before the Wind Changes, the quartet of Chris McGregor, Dudu Pukwana, Johnny Dyani and Louis Moholo-Moholo recorded live at Jazzclub De Hoop, Waregem, Belgium on 1st July 1979.

Ogun presents From Granite to Wind by Keith Tippett Octet. A 2011 CD release (currently out of print) on the Ogun label, recorded by the Octet at the Real World Studios on 30/31 January of that year. "Keith Tippett has been one of the UK's most inventive solo improvisers and composers since the 1970s, and this continuous-performance suite is a fine representation of those skills. It's a framework for the impressionistic poetry of his vocalist wife Julie Tippett, and the sax-playing of four fine …