Jazz & Improvisation / Free Improvisation

* Edition of 500 * An amazing loft tape find of a Norwegian Jazz concert suite taped at Molde Jazz Festival 1973, Christian Reim’s sextet Mona Lisa features Norway's top jazzmen at the time and it’s a rollercoaster post-bop showcase with influences from modal and spiritual jazz with folk undertones and pop psychedelia, one of a kind, never previously released and in great sound quality!

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 larger ensembl…

The immaculate mess of Blunder originates from a three-piece impro group consisting of Mads Forby (drums), Kristian Poulsen (guitar) and Lars Greve (saxophones and clarinets). Their debut album Blunder presents a music that's hazy and patient, struck by a disarming sense of attentiveness. It's a slow dance around a malformed energetic forcefield, it's the pull of the vortex, sucking the listener into an elastic sound world of repetitive rhythmic structures and shamanistic summoning.

Recorded, mixed and mastered by Marc Schots in January 10th 2018 at Splendor, Amsterdam. Performed by Hupata! : Ada Rave - tenor saxophone, clarinet, Marta Warelis - piano, Yung-tuan Ku - percussion + objects, preparations, voices; featuring Marc Schots on track no.8. All compositions by Marta Warelis, Ada Rave, Yung-Tuan Ku. Special thanks to: Michael Moore.

Recorded at Static Age Records in Asheville, NC, June 10, 2018 by Dylan Jordan. Performed by Tatsuya Nakatani - percussion, Shane Parish - nylon string guitar, Zach Rowden - double bass. Mixed by Tatsuya Nakatani in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, Summer 2019.

Icepick is the super-power trio of some of the busiest musicians on this planet – American, Brooklyn-based trumpeter Nate Wooley, Norwegian, Austin-based bass player Ingebrigt Håker Flaten, and American, Upstate New York-based drummer Chris Corsano. «Hellraiser» is already the third album of this trio and was recorded live in February 2018, on the occasion of a gathering supporting the Option series at Experimental Sound Studios (ESS) in Chicago. Originally, this performance was slated for anoth…

"Back in 2018, I was invited by Dave Rempis to participate in the Exposure Series at Elastic Arts in Chicago. The Series was for me a shining example of artist-lead organizing of different yet connected communities around the Music. From my standpoint, it is yet another in the continuum of such actions, specifically in Chicago, and has been a major inspiration for my work as an artist and for the material on this recording. The ensemble was assembled by Mr. Rempis, and was the first time the gro…

Distinguished Los Angeles-based jazz pianist Horace Tapscott is probably best-known as the founder of the Pan-Afrikan People’s Orchestra of PAPA, also known as The Ark, though he began his career as a trombonist, working with Lionel Hampton and others during the late 1950s. The 1978 solo album, Songs Of The Unsung, released in small number on pianist Toshiya Taenaka’s Interplay label, features Tapscott alone on piano, delivering a superb set of freely interpreted jazz tunes, including an unfette…

Superb performance recorded in Paris, March 1967, and broadcast on French radio station ORTF.From the very beginning, Los Angeles-raised Don Cherry (1936) displayed an anti-virtuoso attitude that contrasted with the ruling dogmas of jazz music. Cherry shunned both acrobatic exhibitions and radical experiments in favor of humility and pathos (thus appealing more to the rock crowd than to the jazz crowd). His style focused on the idiosyncratic timbres of his pocket trumpet and on languid phrases t…

Pat Thomas is one of the most extraordinary pianists of our time. In a first time duo with saxophonist Matana Roberts, the lyricism of his distinctly dexterous and curious approach to the piano paints pathways for Robert’s poignantly vocal saxophone. Together the two speak; locked grooves and neat switchbacks on the keys form dialogue with long deliberate lines on the alto, punctuated by Roberts’ ecstatic vocalisations.  The trio of improvised pieces which make up the record’s first side are ric…

Reissue, originally released in 1973. The only LP featuring a band under Peter Kowald's name, Peter Kowald Quintet comes from a vital moment in the German bassist's career. A close colleague of Peter Brötzmann's in their formative years, including the saxophonist's debut For Adolphe Sax (1967) and the classic Machine Gun (1968), Kowald had by 1972 broadened his circle of collaborators, eventually working with a who's who of global creative music. Recorded live in Berlin, released on FMP, this da…

Reissue, originally released in 1985. Gentle, incisive solo music for violin and electronics by one of the unsung giants of free improvisation. Philipp Wachsmann emerged in the fertile mid '70s underground free music scene in London, playing with everyone from Simon Mayo to Barry Guy to Derek Bailey to Evan Parker, starting a band called Chamberpot, making albums for the collective artist-run label he managed: Bead Records. These LPs, 26 of them in total, were made in tiny batches and are now ra…

A special bundle that includes the latest 4 CD releases published in late October 2020 by Belgian label A New Wave of Jazz. Includes works by John Russell, Stefan Keune, Kris Vanderstraeten, Colin Webster, AndrewLisle, Rubicon Quartet, Cath Roberts, Dirk Serries, Martina Verhoeven, Tom Ward. This bundle includes the following CDs: - John Russell, Stefan Keune, Kris Vanderstraeten "On Sunday" (NWOJ036) - Colin Webster, Andrew Lisle "New Inventions" (NWOJ037) - Rubicon Quartet "Crosscurrents" (NWO…

Performed by Cath Roberts (bariton saxophone and objects), Dirk Serries (acoustic guitar), Martina Verhoeven (piano), Tom Ward (flute, clarinet and bass clarinet) on July 18th 2020. This music was recorded simultaneously in two locations - Brockley and Sint-Lenaarts - using the JackTrip software to transmit/receive the live sound via the internet. The musicians could hear each other at studio quality in near-realtime, despite the physical distance separating them.

* Edition of 300 * Performed by Patrick De Groote (trumpet, bugel), Cel Overberghe (alto sax), Dirk Serries (acoustic guitars), Martina Verhoeven (piano). Recorded, mixed and mastered at the Sunny Side Inc. Studio, Anderlecht (Belgium) on December 14th 2019.

* Edition of 300 * Performed by Colin Webster (alto saxophone), Andrew Lisle (drums) at Shrunken Heads Studio, London on 24th May 2019. Recorded and mixed by Senor Al Funklinos. Mastered at the Sunny Side Inc. Studio, Anderlecht (Belgium).

* Edition of 300 * Beautiful registration of a 2010 concert by this exceptional trio, 3 musicians renowned in the world of free improvisation: John Russell (guitar), Stefan Keune (sax) and Kris Vanderstraeten (percussion) at L'Archiduc in Brussel (Belgium).

Taking their name from a Thelonious Monk quote, I Like To Sleep are three young Norwegian musicians, all 22 years old. "Nicolas and Øyvind first met in high school in Trondheim before they joined up with Amund in a youth big band. It soon became apparent that they shared the same musical background centered around 70s progressive rock, jazz, improvisation and classical music. Soon after the trio was formed, first for fun, but soon with higher ambitions, they won the prestigious "Young Jazz Music…

An unearthed treasure from the '70s Italian avant garde archives! A previously unreleased recording from the legendary Beat72 club in Rome in 1973, featuring a one-off Italian-American all-star ensemble with Roberto Laneri founding member of the experimental vocal group Prima Materia, maverick American composer Alvin Curran co-founder of Musica Elettronica Viva. Trombone specialist Giancarlo Schiaffini from the historical Gruppo di improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza. Cello virtuoso Frances Marie U…

An average of one album every other year is pretty good going for a free jazz collective, and that's what The Nu Band has achieved. Its fifth, Live In Paris, comes ten years after their first communion in 2000. It's also a departure, not in that it is a concert recording as there are already three of those in the discography, but in that, for the first time, the quartet showcases its considerable talents at instant composition.  Reedman Mark Whitecage's résumé numbers two fine, though overlooked…

Temporary Super Offer! The Thing started as a recording project in 2000, for the newly formed label Crazy Wisdom, run by Christian Falk, Conny Charles Lindström and me. I wanted to put together a trio, to record some Don Cherry pieces and since I had recently played with Paal in Stockholm and heard Ingebrigt playing live, I knew they were tight. So, things went where they went. I invited the two young Norwegians to Stockholm for a recording date at Atlantic Studios. One day of recording for the …

Trumpeter Don Cherry, an Ornette Coleman soulmate and a world musician decades ago, became one of jazz’s many early losses 10 years back. But saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, who joins him on this fizzing 1966 set, has since ascended to cult status, and he is still around to admire . In the 1960s, he knew no melodic fear at all, in which respect he was aptly partnered with Cherry. This is a quartet set, strongly influenced by the melodic approach of Coleman, but with a fierce abstraction of tone qui…

Sainkho Namtchylak is a singer originally from Tuva, an autonomous republic in the Russian Federation just north of Mongolia. She is known for her Tuvan throat singing or Khöömei. Her music encompasses avant-jazz, electronica, modern composition and Tuvan influences. Once the Soviet Union had collapsed, she moved to Vienna, making it her base, although she traveled widely, working in any number of shifting groups and recording a number of discs that revolved around free improvisation. Amongst th…

Phil Minton is a jazz/free-improvising vocalist and trumpeter. He is a highly dramatic baritone who tends to specialize in literary texts: he has sung lyrics by William Blake with Mike Westbrook's group, Daniil Kharms and Joseph Brodsky with Simon Nabatov, and extracts from James Joyce's Finnegans Wake with his own ensemble. Minton is perhaps best known, however, for his completely free-form work, which involves "extended techniques" that can be as unsettling as they can be mesmerising. His voca…

Rodrigo Amado was born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1964 and took up the saxophone at the age of 17 while convalescing from an accident. Later he studied at the Hot Club Music School and was soon playing with numerous rock, pop and experimental projects. At the shifting boundary between free jazz and improvised music, Amado's position is clear: he plays jazz. He is so clearly a jazz musician that he doesn't require any pre-determined elements of rhythm, harmony, chorus lengths or melody to play jazz.…

It is intended with the utmost respect that this album is entitled Apura!, which in the Filipino language Tagalog translates to “Very Urgent” (the name of an epochal record by the Blue Notes, the pioneering South African jazz sextet of which drummer Louis Moholo-Moholo was the heartbeat). The musicians of Louis and Trevor Watts’s generation cast a tremendous shadow over the legacy of improvised music. It’s not difficult to romanticize the era in which these musicians first made their marks, exer…

If Brandon Seabrook’s previous trio album, Convulsionaries, was quietly pummeled by a modified chamber jazz vibe, Exultations, featuring the ever-versatile drummer Gerald Cleaver and the inimitable Cooper-Moore on diddley-bow, leaves no holds barred. A makeover doesn’t even begin to describe what has happened to Seabrook with the shift in personnel, now a vehicle in full flight; while the faint of heart had better clear out, everyone else should buckle up! For those unfamiliar with Cooper-Moore’…

Deluxe, spot gloss-printed, massive three-hour box set collecting the full work of Herbert Joos (one of the most celebrated musicians in Lithuania’s avant-garde scene) 1968-1973 units, the Modern Jazz Quintet Karlsruhe and Four Men Only

Turkish free jazzers Konstrukt continue their series of exciting collaborations with Otomo Yoshihide, highly repudiated multi-instrumentalist and composer in the experimental world. #4 in the continuing series of Konstrukt collaborations on Karlrecords is a live document of the concert by the Turkish freeform group with the Japanese experimental musician Otomo Yoshihide from the TUSK Festival 2018. Konstrukt, the Istanbul based free jazz/freeform group founded and led by Umut Çağlar and Korhan F…

“a brisk but free-flowing dialogue with phrases and ideas being batted back and forth between them ... in effect, they are soloing simultaneously with each being aware of the other's playing and responsive to it. Even when Parker gets locked into one of his protracted, circular-breathing solos, Smyth is still there with him, responding with an impressively gargantuan solo of his own. The two obviously understand and complement each other well.” — John Eyles, All About Jazz “Parker and Smyth use …

"'Proprioception' initially focuses on his acoustic improvisations, studio recordings with a startlingly vivid and intimate sound, so near that one feels like an occupant of the clarinet itself. When he adds amplification to the clarinet he presses it into the sonic territory of an electric guitar." — The New York City Jazz Record "Not only London's, but probably the UK's finest exponent of free, extended technique improv on clarinet is also a gripping solo performer, as he proves here." — Jazzw…

**CD Edition** “Peter Brötzmann has made no secret of the fact he doesn’t especially dig playing with pianists, citing a few notable exceptions including Fred Van Hove, Pat Thomas and Masahiko Satoh. Recorded in Dublin in 2015, this adventurous set extends the honour to Irish pianist Paul G Smyth. As Brötzmann locks into a characteristically savage mutter, Smyth responds with hyperkinetic leaps up the keyboard but, when the tenor briefly drops out, he’s able to employ a more deft touch, generati…

"Operating at an extremely high level, Smyth and Corsano share a special connection. One can almost see their thoughts syncing together and their bodies merging into one four-armed monster. Several moments are reminiscent of the best work from Cecil Taylor and Tony Oxley, while still managing to sound like Smyth and Corsano." — Burning Ambulance “With the energy and focus on display, it is tempting to compare the meeting to two heavyweights coming toe-to-toe, prepared to slug it out… but that wo…

4-disc boxset with 20-page booklet documenting Mopomoso's triumphant UK tour in 2013. disc 1 – Evan Parker / John Russell / John Edwards – Chasing The Peripanjandra disc 2 – Pat Thomas – Naqsh disc 3 – Alison Blunt / Benedict Taylor / David Leahy – Knottings disc 4 – Kay Grant / Alex Ward – Seven Cities "On this evidence, 'Making Rooms' already seems certain to feature prominently in many an end-of-year list of best releases. Yes, a future classic." — All About Jazz "'Making Rooms' has a connect…

The long awaited second release from the Peter Evans Quintet. Four new compositions commissioned by the Jerome Foundation's Emerging Artist Grant and recorded at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in Troy, New York. The album is named after a novel by Frank Herbert concerning a mission into space to create an artificial consciousness, a mission designed to use planned failure as a springboard to new levels of creativity. Destination: Void is an epic, cinematic synthesis of eccentr…

The eponymous debut recording from the quartet Rocket Science, recorded live at the Vortex in London. Rocket Science brings together four virtuosic instrumentalists: Evan Parker (tenor and soprano saxophones), Craig Taborn (piano), Sam Pluta (live electronics) and Peter Evans (trumpet and piccolo trumpet). Together they perform an hour of highly detailed, dynamic and surprisingly beautiful improvised electro-acoustic chamber music. Each member of the group is widely recognized as having pushed t…

The first release from Evans' new group Being & Becoming, featuring some of the leading lights from the next generation of creative musicians: Joel Ross, Nick Joziwak, and Savannah Harris. This debut album features a set of new compositions from Evans, moving between notated chamber music textures, free improvisations, deep grooves and telepathic ensemble playing. Being & Becoming represents a new chapter in Evans' commitment to composition and improvisation in a small-group format. After workin…

Ornette Coleman's most controversial album back on vinyl. Originally from 1966, 'The empty foxhole' also marking the recording debut of his son Denardo, who was ten years of age at the time of the recording. " Ornette Coleman's brief tenure at Blue Note was neither as seminal as his Atlantic output nor as brazenly ambitious as his early-'70s work for Columbia and later with Prime Time. Still, the period did produce some quality music, and The Empty Foxhole is one of his most intriguing efforts. …

Albert Ayler's 1969 album New Grass has been misunderstood from the day of its release. The album finds Ayler experimenting with soul music and digging back into his R&B roots (he started his career playing saxophone with Chicago bluesman Little Walter), fusing it with the avant-garde free jazz (the one element of the record which garnered consistent praise) and adding the vocals of Rose Marie McCoy, The Soul Singers and Ayler himself. As if predicting the divisiveness of the record to follow, A…

Reissue. Originally released in 1981. "A two-LP set on Theresa, Rejoice features Pharoah Sanders in excellent form in 1981. Sanders sounds much more mellow than he had a decade earlier, often improvising in a style similar to late-'50s John Coltrane, particularly on 'When Lights Are Low,' 'Moments Notice,' and 'Central Park West.' The personnel changes on many of the selections and includes such top players as pianists Joe Bonner and John Hicks, bassist Art Davis, drummers Elvin Jones and Billy …