Jazz & Improvisation / Free Jazz

White double LP version. Their first two albums, Exit and Enter, were presented with sizable and ambitious line-ups of 28 musicians. Ritual saw it reduced to 21 and with Arrival it's been trimmed down to a "mere" 14, with the core trio of Fire! (Mats Gustafsson, Johan Berthling, and Andreas Werliin) and the two singers Mariam Wallentin and Sofia Jernberg being the only constant members since the beginning. Apart from this reduction, the main line-up difference is the introduction of a string qua…

Recorded in November 1969 at the US Embassy, Live In Ankara saw the adventurous jazz trumpeter Don Cherry performing with saxophonist Irfan Sümer, bassist Selçuk Sun, and drummer Okay Temiz, with arrangements by trumpeter Maffy Falay, who had introduced Cherry to Temiz in Stockholm. Mostly comprised of Cherry originals and adaptations of Turkish folk songs, there are one-off takes of compositions by Ornette Coleman and Pharoah Sanders as well, the sparse musical ensemble giving Cherry ample room…

Black Editions Archive is ecstatic to announce the next chapter in the Milford Graves Archive series, the double LP Children of the Forest, previously unreleased 1976 sessions with Hugh Glover and Arthur Doyle that re-write the book on Milford Graves' ensemble music of the 1970s. Graves recorded these sessions himself in his legendary Queens basement laboratory and workshop in the months immediately leading up to the March 1976 session that produced what many consider his most iconic album, Bäbi…

*200 copies limited edition. 2023 stock* "A great performance by the Nordjazz Quintet -- a cool mixed electric/acoustic combo that features sax and flute from Pekka Poyry, guitar from Nils Petter Nyren, keyboards from Ole Kock Nahsen, bass from Kjell Jansson, and drums from Petur Ostlund -- a combo who work on long tracks that are a nice extrapolation of some of the fusion modes explored by the Love Records label during the same time! The tunes here get especially soulful in the longer stretches…

* Edition of 300 numbered copies * The Sam Rivers Archive Series looks to be a beautiful physical manifestation of the love and respect that NoBusiness Record's Danas Mikailionis has for NYC loft era free jazz (we're working with PDFs and digital files but I, for one, have my copy on pre-order!). Over the years, NoBusiness has been dedicated to unearthing and releasing long-unheard music from a number of musicians (like Peter Kuhn, Billy Bang, Jameel Moondoc, among others) and quite notably, in …

"How magical that in an improvisation recorded in a former hospital funeral chapel, we hear the sounds of life. We hear the sounds of breath. Not only the gentle sibilance of the air spilling from the edges of the mouthpiece, as it escapes life as a note; not only the airiness of those low drums: but also the sound of the music being allowed to breathe within the space’s very special acoustic. We hear the sounds of the heartbeat in Cornelia Nilsson’s low drums, now urgent, now reassuring. And we…

Paul Dunnall’s dynamic Birmingham quintet’s release Yes Tomorrow was a Discus highlight of 2022. We enjoyed the release so much that we took the unusual step of suggesting he add Julie Tippetts and Charlotte Keeffe to the group to make a second release. Paul embraced the idea with enthusiasm, and came up with this suite for the expanded group. The result is a freewheeling set with a great “live gig” feel, which gives plenty of space for each player to shine, and which mixes some tight compositio…

Recorded directly to two-track digital Mitsubishi X-80 tape recorder at Rudy Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ on June 4th & 5th, 1987.

A great live Cd by drummer giant Roy Haynes. Roy Haynes's very active and his different approach to drumming comes out very well - hard swinging and with a lot of joy and very spontaneous.

Mats Gustaffson and the Fire! Orchestra return with an album recorded in the company of Jim O'Rourke entitled Echoes and to be released on 14 April 2023 by Rune Grammofon. For the 14th anniversary the Fire! Orchestra presents itself with a gigantic line-up of 43 elements. Within the big band we also find the confirmation of singer Mariam Wallentin, as well as the addition of the voices of David Sandström and Joe McPhee (also present as tenor sax). Echoes is a new chapter within the discography o…

“Ethiobraz” documents the meeting of Paal Nilssen-Love’s Large Unit big band and Ethiopian dance/music ensemble Fendika at Molde Jazz Festival in 2018. Joining them as a special guest is guitarist Terrie Ex, who was a key component in getting making the meeting happen with his long involvement with the Ethiopian music scene. And, Paal Nilssen-Loves’s first travel to Ethiopia was with The Ex in December 2009. This changed his life. Paal’s first travel to Brazil was in June 2013. This also changes…

*2023 stock* Drummer and multi-instrumentalist Salah Ragab was a central figure in the history of jazz in Egypt. A sometime collaborator with Sun Ra, Ragab founded the Cairo Jazz Band in 1968, the same year that he became the head of the Egyptian Military Music Department. The Cairo Jazz Band was Egypt's first big band, mixing American jazz with North African music, combining jazz instrumentation and musical style with indigenous melodies and instruments, like the nay (bamboo flute) and the baza…

Co-released in 2011, this 7" features alto saxophonist Paul Flaherty, a major American alto saxophonist active since the 1980s, and Bill Nace, head of Open Mouth, an experimental label in the same country. Includes two improvised tracks with alto and guitar, DL code included.

*2023 stock* "A masterful statement from the Peter Brotzmann Tentet – a large group, but one that's capable of a rich array of sounds and sentiments – maybe given best exposure here in this key recording from the prime years of the ensemble! Ten players can be a huge number, especially when improvising so much – but these guys all have ears that are beautifully tuned to each other, and which really seems to not only bring out the best in each member, but also push the whole group together with a…

*2023 stock* The Dried Rat-Dog is a free jazz energy wallop from the duo of multireedist Peter Brotzmann and percussionist Hamid Drake. It kicks off with the title track, a cavorting of saxophone and drums that tears off, speeding over the hills and through the woods with fierce intensity. Both musicians are in excellent form and incorporate all sorts of techniques from their vast respective vocabularies. The energy inverts for the next piece, "It's an Angel on the Door," as Brotzmann holds note…

*2023 stock* "Peter Brotzmann's Chicago Tentet combines some of the finest avant improvisers out of Chicago and Europe. For a such a logistically and musically complex multi-member outfit they've had a rather long and significant life. And they still flourish today, as witnessed by their recent European tour. We turn the clock back to 2004, and a Tentet gig recorded at Wall to Wall in Chicago. It was auspicious and fortuitious that the mikes were in place, the “tapes" running that day, because t…

*2023 stock* This live recording from a 1996 Austrian music festival is a powerful interaction of three musicians from different countries, each of whom have extraordinary improvisational abilities and deep, grounded technique. A somewhat unusual instrumentation is heard from this free jazz trio: German saxophonist Peter Brotzmann also performs on e-flat clarinet and tarogato (a Hungarian single-reed woodwind), American percussionist Hamid Drake plays a drum kit, a frame drum, and tablas, and Mo…

Featuring Ken Vandermark & Mats Gustafsson. Recorded live at Victoriaville in May of 1999. Fantastic live material from a very unique group – the instantly-legendary meeting of reedman Peter Brotzmann with the leading lights of the Chicago avant jazz scene in the 90s – brought together into a tremendous tentet that's maybe even better than the sum of its parts! The group features Brotzmann on tenor and clarinet, Ken Vandermark on tenor and bass clarinet, Jeb Bishop on trombone, Fred Lomberg-Holm…

Joshua Abrams' Natural Information Society expanded into a larger community ensemble with Chicago tenor saxophonist Ari Brown, Hamid Drake, harp, cornets and saxophones around the core of guimbri, harmonium, drums and bass clarinet.

Florida-born saxophonist, composer, poet, actor and playwright Archie Shepp was one of the most articulate exponents of politicized black culture in the late ‘60s, a time of enormous upheaval and radical thought. Relocating to Paris he made a number of highly influential albums, such as Blasé, that broached the essential themes of freedom and racial equality, and tapped into the bedrock of African-American music. Gospel and blues were a major part of the work, which also had a strong avant-garde…

*2023 stock* After a duo album and two trio albums by Shipp and Walerian, all for ESP-Disk', we get a quartet album from them that continues their strategy of working with different musicians each time out. Bisio and Dickey are long-time collaborators with Shipp, but the addition of Walerian's Zen style changes the dynamics of their interactions. Walerian and Dickey, masters of restraint, were a match waiting to be made, and their instant rapport is one of the attractions of this album.

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.

Temporary Super Offer! "The title Ornette at 12 is something of a misnomer. Although Ornette is Denardo’s middle name, why wasn’t the album called Denardo at 12, his age at the time of the concert? Is there a hidden meaning related to Ornette’s own childhood? According to John Litweiler’s book A Harmolodic Life, he was either 13 or 14 when he received his first horn. If the year 1956 is meant to represent a significant event in Ornette’s musical life, it does mark his meeting with Don Cherry and B…

Original issue of this obscure French experimental free jazz combo.

The Wrocław band Ślina returns with their third studio album, this time recorded with Mikołaj Trzaska. This is not the album of Trzaska + Ślina or Ślina + Trzaska. This is Ślina Trzaska (a kind of wordplay in polish, means: The saliva cracks). A kind of full, new band that was created in the outstanding Sudeten studio Monochrom and is sometimes continued live. Free improvisations and Krautrock motility are still the hallmark of Ślina, but the organic, radical sound of Mikołaj Trzaska's saxophone…

"The edges of Schlippenbach’s trio/quartet music have gradually feathered over the past dozen years, a process benchmarked by “Anticlockwise”. Evan Parker’s careening tenor prompts a dramatic sweep from the group that echoes Coltrane’s last period, as on Ore; his multiphonic-oriented soprano style elicits a more spiky rapport. The exceptional American bassist Alan Silva makes an intriguing debut with the quartet, his incisive phrasing and nuance-filled arco technique serving as a lynchpin betwee…

Recorded at ADA in Peter Brötzmann’s hometown Wuppertal as part of his 80th birthday concerts, Naked Nudes brings together two of his most unusual collaborators, Heather Leigh (pedal steel guitar) and Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello) for one of the most elegiac releases in his discography. The relationships between the players are tonally odd: woozy, mournful, almost baroque blues or even more chamber music in feel, the quality of the interplay is subtle and natural, like modern ballads. In the recordi…

* Edition of 300. Spectacular four-panel gatefold cover * Since the early 1980s, the Nexus creature has represented one of the most interesting realities of the Italian jazz scene. Daniele Cavallanti (Aktuala) and Tiziano Tononi (Moon On The Water and D.O.M Alia Orchestra) realize a sensational mix of orchestral praxis and impro-free jazz. The strength lies in the ensemble's variety of timbres, in that precise hybrid of styles reminiscent of the cross-sectional experiences of the 1970s of Zappa,…

This is tenor sax giant Pharoah Sanders caught live in France in summer 1971, when the man was still in full post-Coltrane mood. At the head of a strong quintet featuring: Lonnie Liston Smith - piano, Cecil McBee - bass, Jimmy Hopps - drums, and Lawrence Killian - congas, Pharoah delivers two very intense yet serene versions of his milestone piece "The Creator Has A Master Plan" and "Let Us Go In The House Of The Lord", a traditional gospel hymn arranged by Lonnie Liston Smith. This is deep spir…

*2023 stock* "Don’t follow.” That’s the admonition saxophonist and composer Roscoe Mitchell (b. 1940) was known to give his students at Oakland’s Mills College in one-on-one sessions. In musical communication and creation, not following or directly responding to others is central to Mitchell’s philosophy and approach. As he said to me in a recent conversation, “I just let things develop with my intent, with my work, and I’ve never been a person that went around looking for people to play with. I…

*In process of stocking* Recorded in Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire, UK, December 1976. Private session. Previously unheard. Available in digital format and limited edition CD. The amazing lost Dean, Miller, Pyle private tapes from 1976: featuring the very first recorded meeting of these three extraordinary pioneering talents of British Jazz/Rock, performing four magical co-composed pieces, none of which have ever been issued in any form. This album was originally intended to be released by Mike …

Iconic musician and political activist makes a typically thought-provoking statement on historic 1969 recording.

** Edition of 300. In process of stocking ** Recorded in Supraphon's Prague studios in Dejvice in March 1970. Jointly created by the bands Blue Effect and Stivin's Jazz Q Praha. The result of this process is forty minutes of music in which the influence of external environments, the immediate ability of each participant, and the predetermination in regard to traditions which shaped their musical development to-date, are expressed by new beauty which contains both logic as well as free, imaginati…

*In process of stocking* 'This album pays homage to being, existing, and becoming Ancestors in the Universe. It is a dialogue between an Elder Griot and a young Jali. The story is about each and everyone that gives life, becomes life and ascends through all of our struggles. It is in the House of Good Spirit, that we present an acknowledgement within the African Oral Tradition which represents who we are. A legacy of sound that will give everyone a message. Ashe.' - Neo Griot and the Afrocentric…

*In process of stocking. 2023 stock* Devin Daniels’ Trio Exposition is a bold yet vulnerable body of work that highlights his unique sense of rhythm and harmony through relatively obscure songs by jazz greats. Joined by bassist Logan Kane and drummer Christian Euman, the lack of a harmonic instrument gives the three musicians space to fully explore and push each other. Very rarely do saxophonists choose this instrumentation- especially as their breakout record as a bandleader.

*In process of stocking* "Sting And Grid is an album of great joy and great sensitivity which bears repeated listening due to its relatively calm nature. A real delight for any improv lovers." – Mr Olivetti, FREQ Two world class players from the Manchester UK free improvisation scene deliver here a beautifully recorded set of pieces founded on pure instrumental skill. Hanslip's elegant, singing lines are delivered with calm and precision, driven by Cheetham's multi-textural percussion.

*2023 stock* "A few rare albums fit perfectly into your emotional state of mind and capture the fragility of our impermanent lives so beautifully as Another Way of the Heart by Norwegian reeds and trumpet player Torben Snekkestad and Danish pianist Søren Kjærgaard. Both Snekkestad and Kjærgaard were associated with the Danish label-musicians cooperative Ilk Music but, unfortunately, their discographies, especially in recent years, don't match their great creative potential. Snekkestad and Kjærga…

*2023 stock* The trio of Kieran Adams (sampler, drum machine, drums), Matthew “Doc” Dunn (keyboards and electronics), and Andy Haas (reeds and electronics) is a subset of Toronto spiritual jazz practitioners The Cosmic Range. Where their parent-group tends to anchor itself with a firm pulse, the trio veers into various flavours of abstraction. Some pieces furnish nervy ambient waft, whereas others are more gestural—sometimes violently so. Meanwhile, on the title track, a synth bass ostinato lays…

*2023 stock. Edition of 100 copies* Brodie West draws upon a vast array of experience to formulate his unique take on jazz. West was a member of Dutch avant-punks the Ex during their collaboration with Ethiopian saxophone legend Getatchew Mekurya, recording and touring worldwide. He's also worked extensively with drummer Han Bennink, appeared alongside the likes of Hamid Drake, Achim Kaufmann, and Sandro Perri while fronting the octet Eucalyptus and collaborating in the duo Ways with drummer Eva…

"This album is dedicated to those who recognize living as a heroic act: the occupiers of sunup barstools; the cubicle-planted; the ghosts of Greyhounds; the reasonably sketchy. A burlap hero is one who marches—consciously or not—back to the sea in hopes of making no splash, who understands and embraces the imperfection of being, and in that way, stretches the definition of sainthood to fit." - Nate Wooley