Jazz & Improvisation / Free Jazz

2025 stock It's no secret that we have a soft spot for this fabulous group and would wish nothing less than world domination for them. With one leg in heavy rock and one in jazz, what they do seems to be almost a lost art when it comes to making records. Basically meaning great musicians playing together in a proper recording studio, interacting and playing off each other. The tracks are mostly first or second takes, there is no editing and just a couple of overdubs on the whole album. And while…

2025 stock Welcome to your next jazz favourite, Skurkar. This is the young, fearless and exploratory all-Scandinavian quartet consisting of baritone saxophonist Jenny (no), alto saxophonist Amalie (dk), double bassist Oda (no) and drummer Emma (se). In addition to being an interesting line-up, they also put the somewhat unexplored genre of “detective jazz” on the map. The band was formed in the autumn of 2018 at the prestigious Jazzlinja in Trondheim, and has since made its mark at the Copenhage…

2025 stock John Blum (piano), Denis Charles (drums), Antonio Grippi (alto sax, alto clarinet), William Parker (bass). Studio recordings from 1998. There are few sessions to rival this one for sheer urgency and gusto. It's as if something pent-up in these four musicians waited for this combination of players to unleash it... the music explodes into action. Pianist John Blum is a secret hero of New York's free jazz community, known as a proficient and forceful improviser in the tradition of his me…

2025 stock We Don't is a previously unreleased 1981 session pairing Jemeel Moondoc with Denis "jazz" Charles (1933-1998). in the 1970s, Moondoc was a member of ensemble muntu with William Parker. Moondoc's quirky & vivid alto style suggests the influence of Ornette Coleman, but the comparison "does not do justice to Moondoc's originality" (the penguin guide to jazz). Moondoc's grandfather, the original 'moondoctor' & the family namesake, sang & danced in medicine shows at the turn of the century…

2025 stock Alan Silva's playing and live composition have been a highlight of the avant garde's living history for the past 35+ years. from his work with sun ra's arkestra, through extended relationships with Bill Dixon, Cecil Taylor, and Albert Ayler, on into the celestial communications orchestra and the frank wright center of the world band, silva has been one of the music's most consistently valuable thinkers. A child of alan silva's other-worldly strategies for double bass, William Parker i…

"Kiso", "Asama", "Hakuba" and "Hida". He recalls the landscapes of his past and carefully weaves his feelings and emotions into the music. This work is one of the pinnacles that Akira Miyazawa has reached.

Yosuke Yamashita, Itaru Oki, Yuji Ohno, and Kimiko Kasai. An astonishing jazz workshop with a never-before-seen encounter. Japanese jazz was so sharp and original.

We are pleased to announce the upcoming reissue of “Min Bul”, a milestone of Norwegian rock and jazz, included in the renowned Nurse With Wound list, from the band whose leader was a young Terje Rypdal. Recorded in the Rosenborg studio in September 1970, with Egil Eide as engineer, “Min Bul” is a highly experimental work for its time that grew out of the Samklang projects at the Henie-Onstad Art Center, where director Ole Henrik Moe encouraged adventurous composers and improvising musicians to j…

Velvele : Beating the usuls of Ottoman/Turkish Music, dividing them by section.

*50 copies limited edition. 2025 stock* Introducing morosphinx, a squeaky trio from Brussels. Recorded in Vilvoorde, on the outskirts of the Belgian capital, this album probes impressions of relative distances within a sound space. morosphinx projects us into a musical context that is both strange and familiar, where sounds blend together and define their own landmarks. The A side of Vilvoorde is experienced as a long, unresolved breath. Silence is its latent base and reminds the listener of it …

2005 release ** "Painter, guitarist, composer, and free author Steffen Basho-Junghans lives in Berlin and Thuringia, Germany. He has been highly influential on the eastern German guitar scene since the late '70s. Largely a self-taught artist and musician, his style is best categorized as eccentric and highly personal. Junghans uses steel-string acoustic guitars, combining archaic sounds with altered tunings and a plethora of divergent connections. Traditional European, American Indian, and Asian…

1999 release **

"Finnish saxophonist Harri Sjöström has been calling Berlin home for nearly 40 years, and for over 10 of them, he has been organizing concerts at venues around the city, featuring a who-is-who of the city's rich improvisation scene and beyond, under the title "SoundScapes." Starting in 2016, he extended the concept and held the first two SoundScapes Festivals in Helsinki, followed by one in Munich, and then, finally, in his adopted hometown. SoundScapes #4 was held over two mid-autumn nights in …

This year we are celebrating the 10th birthday of our label. On this occasion, we have prepared a lot of surprises and very unique musical offerings for you. Here is the first one! What you can expect from the music is perfectly reflected in the album title. Parallel aesthetics which, however, when listened to together become a new perhaps the third aesthetic!One of the most active and respected saxophonists and improvisers on the American jazz scene. An American, Brazilian-born, Jewish-born mus…

Simon Nabatov - piano, live electronicsMark Helias - bassTom Rainey - drums All music by Simon Nabatov (GEMA) except collectively improvised tracks 4,8,10,12

"Although alto saxophonist Noah Howard never quite managed to garner the reputation that several of his more well-known playing partners did, to those 'in the know', he was every bit as essential and extraordinary as Archie Shepp and Albert Ayler. A player and composer of direct and emotionally charged music, Howard's career saw him bear witness to some of the most tumultuous periods in jazz, giving voice to the cry for freedom – both musical and political – that characterised the late 1960s and…

"Christian Weber said in an interview for “Jazz’N’More": No matter how I move along the timeline, my attention is focused on what is to come. At the same time, I always keep in mind what happened before, without analyzing. This way, I avoid the improvisation becoming arbitrary. Both arbitrary openness and narrow restriction, neither suits me." And therein lies the whole secret of this record and ultimately the definition of great art: it is the ability of a musician to have control over space an…

2007 release  ** "NEWS is a new work, whose ingredients, on the surface, are quite simple. Lukas Simonis wrote the music, while Takayuki Kawabata wrote the lyrics, which are featured on the CD cover, and also spoken or sung, in Japanese or in English. Simonis plays the guitar, which mostly appears as "sound" (the main exception being an arpeggio sounding halfway between Thinking Plague and Pink Floyd which appears more than once in the track titled Original NEWS), and also "effects", which judgi…

1998 release  **

2010 release  ** "In the late 1990s, New Yorkers became enamored with a brash group of freewheeling improvisers from Atlanta going under the name Gold Sparkle Band. The chemistry of their fresh and ambitious style clicked with the New York establishment, and the group members soon began integrating with the entrenched Downtown musicians in taking the music forward at events like the Vision Festival and venues where free speech was practiced. Drummer Andrew Barker and reed player Charles Waters a…

2007 release  ** "Trapping captures BTT virtually live in the studio - from memory, only the vocals were overdubbed - , and reveals a tight band which constantly rehearsed and modified it's music always with the next gig in mind. The recording covers the whole range of the band's music from free improv to RnB influenced pop. The disc kicks off with "Sanctified", which combines Pete and Paul's stop/start riff with a horn part I ripped off from John Lee Hooker's VeeJay recording of Green Onions ad…

Previously unreleased. Stereophonic sound. 1-4 recorded 11th November 1973.5-8 recorded 22nd December 1974. Lineup:Kenny Wheeler - flugelhornGreg Bowen, Ian Hamer, Dave Hancock (1-4), Alan Downey (5-8), Henry Lowther - trumpetsBobby Lamb (1-4), Keith Christie (1-4), Dave Horler (1-4), Chris Pyne, Malcolm Griffith, Cliff Hardy (5-8), Jim Wilson (5-8), Pete Smith (5-8) - trombonesAlfie Reece (1-4), Cliff Bevan (5-8) - tubaDuncan Lamont (1-4), Stan Sulzmann (5-8) - tenor/soprano saxophoneNorma Wins…

At the crossroad of different worlds, Hubbub comprises five musicians with activities in various fields. Together, they work on the sound matter to create a moving electro-acoustic space inhabited by layers, distensions, imbrications, pulsations, dots and lines. Thanks to the longevity of the group, Hubbub has developed its own universe, which is more than just the sum of its parts.

Jim Hobbs and Timo Shanko were founding members of the Fully Celebrated Orchestra in 1989. This is their first duo record. Their decades of playing together can be heard in these pieces.

Exceptionally virtuosic and sensitive, South African harpist Jacqueline Kerrod is perfectly at home across multiple genres. This is her first recording with American guitar maverick Joe Morris. These are sublimely adventurous improvisations for pedal harp and guitar.

A compelling collaboration between guitarist Fred Frith and innovative harpist Shelley Burgon — known for her work with Anthony Braxton, Trevor Dunn, and Okkyung Lee — in a series of concise and precise improvisations recorded in Oakland, CA, in 2002 and 2005, as Burgon blends seamlessly with Frith's acoustic guitar to create seemingly telepathic synchronicity and an expansive sonic palette.

Sudden Dusk is the recorded debut of Archer, a working band comprised of four singular voices on the international improvised music scene.

2010 release ** "Firehouse 12 Records welcomes esteemed pianist/composer Myra Melford to its roster with the release of The Whole Tree Gone (FH12-04-01-012), her first recording as a bandleader since 2006. Recorded in the label's own state-of-the-art studio, this is Ms. Melford's second release featuring her eclectic ensemble, Be Bread, a longstanding collection of frequent collaborators that currently performs as an all-acoustic sextet. The Whole Tree Gone documents the latest evolution of eigh…

Tip! *2025 stock* Segaki is the second album of the Norwegian-Malaysian trio Hungry Ghosts, consisting of Malaysian tenor saxophonist Yong Yandsen accompanied by the Norwegian powerhouse duo of Christian Meaas Svendsen on double bass and Paal Nilssen-Love on drums. Their debut record has been described as an album with an «unstoppable energy» and like actual hungry ghosts — the unfortunate souls who are reborn as pitiful creatures into their own miserable realm, punished for their mortal vices —…

*2025 stock. 300 copies limited edition* Motvind Records continues to collaborate with musician and composer Signe Emmeluth in an attempt to present art music that emphasizes deep listening, reflection and expressive emotions. Vossajazz is a really cool jazz festival, it has a rich program history and are still holding the line. They’ve commissioned many works from composing jazz musicians, and one of the more unpredictable and surprising pieces that has come in recent years was Banshee by the a…

Chihei Hatakeyama, who has become a leading figure in the ambient/drone music scene in Japan, has now announced his second collaboration with jazz drummer Shun Ishiwaka. The two had been sharing the stage together in live performances since meeting on a radio show recording, and in May 2024 they released the first of a two-part series, "Magnificent Little Dudes Vol.1", and this is the second installment.This album includes the album's opening track, “M3,” featuring award-winning British cellist …

1998 release (RARE) ** "This is a wonderful release capturing a live duo performance of percussionist Susie Ibarra and her mentor Denis Charles, who was active in free jazz from the time of recording on Cecil Taylor's earliest albums until his death just two months after this concert. Warm, intuitive, and often lovely, the music created by the two percussionists this day is worth sitting down and getting hypnotized by for awhile; a touching document of Charles and his legacy."

2005 release ** "Founded by Village Voice icon Greg Tate and co-led with Dayton Ohio monster bassist Jared Michael Nickerson since 1999, Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber is a sprawling band of musicians whose prodigious personnel allows them to freely juggle a wide swath of the experimental soul-jazz-hip hop spectrum. Burnt Sugar was originally conceived as a forum for the New York area improvisational musician to compose, record and perform material which reflects the breadth and depth of Ameri…

2004 release ** "Founded by Village Voice icon Greg Tate and co-led with Dayton Ohio monster bassist Jared Michael Nickerson since 1999, Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber is a sprawling band of musicians whose prodigious personnel allows them to freely juggle a wide swath of the experimental soul-jazz-hip hop spectrum. Burnt Sugar was originally conceived as a forum for the New York area improvisational musician to compose, record and perform material which reflects the breadth and depth of Ameri…

Hans Dulfer is an internationally acclaimed Dutch jazz musician famous for playing the tenor saxophone. Since he was only seventeen years old, he was playing the saxophone professionally. In 1971 Dulfer released his album El Saxofón, which features members of Ritmo Natural. Together with Ritmo Natural, they released three albums in total, with El Saxofón being the last out of three. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of this rare, but iconic jazz album, the album is being released on colored viny…

Recorded in Paris in 1966, this double album by Cecil Taylor explores avant-garde free jazz improvisations with Jimmy Lyons, Alan Silva and Andrew Cyrille. Taylor, with his percussive playing, goes beyond the limits of traditional jazz, offering an intense and revolutionary sonic experience, marking his contribution to the genre. Double LP in blue and white, limited to 1,000 copies.

2025 stock 180g virgin vinyl limited edition - the complete LP + 2 bonus track. The only album ever reuniting pianist Cecil Taylor and saxophonist John Coltrane, Stereo Drive was released in 1959. Taylor wanted to use Ted Curson on trumpet, but the recording company insisted on using Kenny Dorham. Relations between Taylor, who favoured a very avant-garde approach, and Dorham, who verbally disapproved of Taylor's "way-out" tendencies, were strained, and the session is a unique tour the force.

A limited edition book of Michael Gregory Jackson's poetry. Limited to 200 copies

A collection of some of McCoy Tyner’s best Montreux Jazz Festival live performances!  The audio has Expertly restored and remastered in superlative HD audio; The Montreux Years is released on superior audiophile heavy weight vinyl and MQA quality CD. The release includes brand new liner notes and rare photos from his Montreux shows.

The intrepid free jazz pianist Cecil Taylor produced some of his best work for Blue Note Records, including his explosive 1966 label debut Unit Structures featuring Eddie Gale on trumpet, Jimmy Lyons on alto saxophone, Ken McIntyre on alto saxophone, oboe, and bass clarinet, Henry Grimes and Alan Silva on bass, and Andrew Cyrille on drums. Over the course of four extended original pieces by Taylor—“Steps,” “Enter, Evening,” “Unit Structure/As Of A Now/Section,” and “Tales (8 Whisps)—the band sca…