Jazz & Improvisation / Free Jazz

“Hurtling Between” is an apt description of the way Barry Altschul plays drums: effortlessly moving between swing and free playing. It’s also a fitting analogy for the current historical moment, in which there’s often a feeling of catapulting between awareness and denial. During the pandemic, Joe Fonda asked me if I would join him in a trio session at Barry’s house. We began to play semi-regularly, developing a rapport. Barry’s living room is filled with the accumulated trappings of a jazz life.…

Threnody is the working free-improv trio of Swedish sax hero Martin Küchen and double bass player Johan Berthling, both also collaborate in Küchen’s Angles groups, and English drummer Steve Noble. The group released its first live album in 2015. This is now, after eleven years the fourth instalment of this extraordinary trio’s musical journey.

Wadada Leo Smith, Joe Fonda and Reggie Nicholson together. A trio of trumpet, double bass and drums. Six compositions/improvisations – or perhaps six sonic poems – filled with magic, contemplation and deep reflection.

Saxophone, double bass and drums trio of Michael Foster, John Moran and Joey Sullivan, in two long parts recorded in Philadelphia on May 8th 2025.

This bundle brings together New Light and Incantations, the two sets that Sunny Murray, Arthur Doyle and Rasul Siddik played at Thelonious in Bordeaux on October 21st, 1999, never released before and now issued by NoBusiness Records. Murray is on drums, Doyle on tenor saxophone, flute and voice, Siddik on trumpet.New Light opens with a long trio improvisation and goes on with Doyle's African Express, Don Cherry's Complete Communion and a closing piece whose title is unknown. Incantations has thr…

This bundle brings together New Light and Incantations, the two sets that Sunny Murray, Arthur Doyle and Rasul Siddik played at Thelonious in Bordeaux on October 21st, 1999, never released before and now issued by NoBusiness Records. Murray is on drums, Doyle on tenor saxophone, flute and voice, Siddik on trumpet.New Light opens with a long trio improvisation and goes on with Doyle's African Express, Don Cherry's Complete Communion and a closing piece whose title is unknown. Incantations has thr…

Matthew Shipp on piano and William Parker on bass in only their fourth duo album, the fruit of a four-decade friendship that began in the David S. Ware Quartet. Recorded in Brooklyn in June 2025, CD on Tao Forms.

Marc Ribot's first all-instrumental album since Live at the Village Vanguard: a quartet with Chad Taylor and the saxophones of James Brandon Lewis, Brian Settles and Briggan Krauss, between free jazz and No Wave. On Pi Recordings.

First vinyl edition of Last Exit's 1989 live recordings from Stockholm and Munich, with Brötzmann, Sharrock, Laswell and Shannon Jackson.

Reissue of Zo, the first duo album by Matthew Shipp and William Parker, recorded in 1993, with an epic Summertime, on ESP-Disk'.

CP Unit in real time: Chris Pitsiokos, Sam Lisabeth, Henry Fraser and Jason Nazary between harmolodic funk, noise rock and musique concrète, recorded in Brooklyn in 2018.

Second CP Unit album on Clean Feed: Chris Pitsiokos with Sam Lisabeth and two rhythm sections, between Ornette Coleman's harmolodics, noise and Stockhausen.

The first CP Unit album: Chris Pitsiokos with Brandon Seabrook, Tim Dahl and Weasel Walter, jazz forms filled with noise and rock, recorded in Brooklyn in 2016.

Second solo alto saxophone album for Relative Pitch, eight pieces named after rocks, recorded in January 2022.

Solo alto saxophone: six pieces dedicated to Charlie Parker, Anthony Braxton, Roscoe Mitchell, Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy and John Zorn.

Double CD by the Berlin CP Unit (Chris Pitsiokos, Marta Warelis, Dan Peter Sundland, Luca Marini): studio takes from October 2025 and a concert from April 2026.

CP Unit's first live album, recorded at the Moers Festival and at Unlimited in Wels in 2018: Chris Pitsiokos with Sam Lisabeth, Henry Fraser and Jason Nazary.

Live quartet of Keiji Haino, Otomo Yoshihide, Chris Pitsiokos and Tatsuya Nakamura, recorded at Goodman in Tokyo on September 1, 2024.

Trost Records is delighted to announce the second album from the otherworldly improvising quartet of Tony Buck, Franz Hautzinger, Ignaz Schick, and Philip Zoubek, an ensemble now known as Pulsar. The new recording was made at a live performance at the Loft in Cologne in December of 2024, and it captures a radically different sound than the group’s debut, Silt, recorded at the same venue four years earlier. Its members rank as some of the most celebrated and distinct free improvisers in Europe, e…

2CD version. A new edition of Joshua Abrams’ 2015 2xLP magnum opus Magnetoception is at last here. Out-of-print on vinyl for a decade+, Magnetoception is the 3rd album, & 1st double album, in the saga of Natural Information Society. In a Berwyn, Illinois attic, February 2013, Abrams, guitarists Emmett Kelly & Jeff Parker, & grand master drummer Hamid Drake gathered around vintage Neumanns & a woodstove to record the nucleus of Magnetoception live to 2-track. Beamed-in over the next year at Abram…

Debut of the open improvisation collective founded by Philipp Hager, with Andrew Bernstein of Horse Lords: four pieces of free jazz, polyrhythmic drums, droning bass and synths, cut in one day.

Raoul Björkenheim on guitar and Paal Nilssen-Love on drums, old partners from Scorch Trio, in nine pieces of free music recorded in Helsinki: wild and raw, at times delicate and introspective.

Cellist Tristan Honsinger and guitarist Olaf Rupp in their first recorded duo, Berlin, March 2010: one hour-long improvisation, Can You Imagine a Conversation Between a Table and a Chair?, in eight parts.

Peter Kowald solo on double bass and voice, live at Podewil in Berlin in November 2000 and edited by Kowald himself in June 2002: a concert version of his solo album Was da ist, in seven parts.

Manuela+, the quartet of Rüdiger Carl, Jin Hi Kim on komungo, Hans Reichel on guitar and daxophone and Carlos Zingaro on violin, live at the Total Music Meeting in Berlin in 1999: an hour-long improvisation in seven parts.

Peter Brötzmann's Die Like a Dog Quartet with Toshinori Kondo, William Parker and Hamid Drake, live at the Total Music Meeting in Berlin in November 1994: two long pieces, Close Up (Man) and Close Up (Woman).

Fred Van Hove alone at the piano: Prosper, recorded live at Flöz in Berlin in 1981, and Die Letzte, recorded at Studio Casablanca in 1986, the two SAJ solo LPs on one CD.

Radu Malfatti on trombone and Stephan Wittwer on guitar in Innsbruck, February 1977: the duo LP Und? plus Untitled?, a fourteen-minute piece from the same tapes released here for the first time.

Peter Brötzmann solo on clarinets and alto, tenor and bass saxophones, recorded at the FMP studio in May 1976: the twelve pieces of the LP Brötzmann/Solo, from 27 seconds to ten minutes.

Irène Schweizer, Rüdiger Carl and Louis Moholo: the LP Messer, live in Moers and in the FMP studio in 1975, followed by Tuned Boots, the twenty-minute trio piece recorded in Graz in 1977.

Steve Lacy in Berlin: the 1975 solo soprano recordings of the Stabs LP, plus the 1977 quintet with Steve Potts, Irène Aebi, Kent Carter and Oliver Johnson playing Esteem and Follies at the Workshop Freie Musik.

The Globe Unity Orchestra at ten years old, recorded in Baden-Baden in November 1975 with Braxton, Rava, Wheeler, Brötzmann, Parker, Mangelsdorff and Lovens: five pieces from inside the orchestra, nearly all unreleased until this CD.

Following the genre-redefining revelations of A Love Supreme in 1965, John Coltrane began a dramatic shift toward spiritual free jazz, abandoning familiar forms in favor of a more abstract sonic palette and bold questions he'd spend the rest of his life and career pursuing. Meditations, released by Impulse! in 1966, continues that emotional throughline while retaining, for the last time in full, the classic quartet that propelled Trane to greatness: pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison an…

Solo piano by Per Henrik Wallin: eight pieces from his 1982 Caprice LP One Knife Is Enough and eight recorded in spring 2003, abrupt shifts between free and fettered playing from one of Sweden’s most individual jazz pianists.

David Maranha's electric organ and Rodrigo Amado's tenor saxophone in a single 41-minute piece recorded live at Out.Fest 2025: drone, noise and free jazz, with liner notes by Stuart Broomer.

Original 1976 spiritual/free jazz double album on Ogun by Dudu Pukwana, Johnny Dyani, Louis Moholo and Chris McGregor.

First edition with LP-size cover of the 1989 CD-only album on BVHaast by the ICP member.

2006 brown vinyl LP on Qbico of wild free jazz noise by Finnish drums and keyboards duo.

Lovely 1986 double album on Impetus with recordings spanning from 1980 to 1985 by the eclectic and inimitable saxophone player, featuring Mike Cooper and Roger Turner among others. Never re-issued on either LP or CD. With insert.

Very obscure self-released album of free improvisation by an Italian group featuring Angelo Avogadri.