Jazz /
Ballads & Blues
Patryk Zakrocki - one of the most important improvisers, composers, and sound artists in Poland, and last time also guitarist as well as bassist Maciej Garbowski and drummer Krzysztof Gradziuk, known as the pillars of the best piano trio RGG on the Polish scene, are musicians representing completely different musical worlds. Their first studio meeting is an intimate oneiric improvisation framed by the conventions of ballad and blues. An astonishing encounter bringing music that is not made every…
Wildlife
Legendary saxophonist and one of the most important musicians on the British improvised scene. Member of great bands led by Keith Tippet and Barry Guy including the London Jazz Composers Orchestra, Paul Dunmall on one hand. On the other hand double bass virtuoso, known in the past as a musical companion of legendary trombonist Paul Rutherford and a crucial on the European free improv scene band Mujician, Paul Rogers. On drums Mark Sanders, for sure a key person in the British and European free m…
Scratching Fork II
On a perfectly smooth surface of silence, three hurled stones create their patterns of waves. The lines intersect, unite, cancel out, or reinforce each other. Sometimes, they form together a harmonious pattern. At other times, they express the beauty of chaos and entropy. But they always remain in relation to each other - no movement goes unanswered. No energy escapes into nothingness. These three stones are Scratching Fork. Three musicians with different characters, histories, and registers. Ma…
A Vol D'Oiseau
"There are many illusive or ephemeral descriptions that are often part of how words seek to elucidate the listening experience. In the music we have on this recording from Florestan and the trio he has formed to venture his musical initiatives, words such as space, transparency, suspension, stasis, momentum, tension, multiplicity, flow, cohesion, dimension, release are some of the ingredients that come to mind to articulate the musical experience this recording offers. To me, Florestan’s musical…
Earth's Frequencies
Time to start the new year. Legendary trumpeter and jazz great, runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize, winner, Guggenheim Fellowship winner, NEA Jazz Masters recipient, Wadada Leo Smith and one of the greatest authorities on improvised music, educator, our friend, guitarist, and double bassist Joe Morris together! The album is a recording of a concert the two artists gave earlier this past year, on 12 February, during the famous ImprovisatioNOW concert series at Real Art Ways in Hartford, where audie…
Capt's Look
2024 stock. This performance is a second coming together of a rather unusual but wonderful pair; Dame Evelyn Glennie, a household name in percussion, and Szilárd Mezei, a prolific free improviser, multi-instrumentalist, and composer. In 2018, these two artists came together in the Core-tet Project, one of Dame Evelyn’s significant forays into free improvisation. Since then, she also worked with TRIO HLK, but this live performance with Mezei and his quartet is a much different kind of performing…
Doppelgänger ga boku wo
LP ltd to 315 copies. An’archives is proud to present the latest album by Japanese free saxophonist and vocalist Harutaka Mochizuki, Doppelgänger ga boku wo. Since the early 2000s, Harutaka has quietly, yet steadily, released a string of solo and collaborative releases that have allowed multiple perspectives on one of the most singular voices in modern music. In collaboration, he seems to prefer the duo format, and digging through his discography, you’ll find releases where he pairs with Tomoyuk…
Glimmers of Quintessence
2024 stock. Claude & Ola return to the Steep Gloss label with Immara. Recorded from autumn of 2021 into 2022, this collaboration introduces new sounds and textures into each artist's catalog, while retaining and amplifying the varying degrees of abstraction inherent in their unique approaches. Claude and Ola Aldous are experimental musicians residing in the northern reaches of New York state in the US. They have previously released music on the Steep Gloss, TQN-Aut, Tone Burst, and Noise á Noise…
GNASH
"This overdue duo record by longtime colleagues Tashi Dorji (guitar) and Dave Rempis (saxophones) is a monument to the endless musical curiosity that links them. These two come at it from remarkably different backgrounds – Dorji combining his Bhutanese ethnicity with a love for metal, punk, American blues and folk, and anarchist political theory, with Rempis riding the outer edges of the jazz world throughout his career, while also inspired by his Greek ethnicity and a longstanding interest in f…
Eye of the Universe
Eye of the Universe" is the latest offering from Finnish sax player and composer Markus Holkko. Grounded in his musical heritage, the album explores a range of influences, from straight to Latin and spiritual jazz, with subtle hints of west coast cool and psychedelia.
Infinite Love Infinite Tears
In 1975, the New York City alto saxophonist Alan Braufman released his debut album, Valley of Search on the India Navigation label. Recorded at the now legendary 501 Canal St. loft, the album was heralded by Village Voice jazz critic Gray Giddins, who wrote, "These are the musicians who are taking the chances today and their gifts and commitment ought to be attended." Braufman went on to record and tour with everyone from Carla Bley to The Psychedelic Furs, and didn't release another album under…
Nightcap
Tip! *300 copies limited edition* {scope} came to life in 2020, when musicians Laura Agnusdei, Matteo Pennesi and Luca Sguera got selected for Holydays Festival, an artist residency in Scopoli, a small village in Umbria, central Italy. Despite having never played together before, the musicians found a common musical language which emerged in their first album "A week from Monday", recorded during the residency and released by ViaIndustriae and Rous Records. At the start of 2022 a new opportunity…
Ganzfeld
After the resounding success of their last album "Garden Island," released in 2021, the octet hailing from Tenerife is back with a new album titled "Ganzfeld." While "Garden Island" drew inspiration from the philosophy of César Manrique and his groundbreaking ecological work on the island of Lanzarote, for this new album, Gaf & The Love Supreme Arkestra turn their creative gaze to the lowland areas of northern Tenerife aka Isla Baja (the low island). Here, they envision a retro-futuristic soundt…
You Can Blackmail Me Later
"It is not easy to find a description of what constitutes “the art of the duo” in jazz or improvised music. Suffice to say that any credible description would have to encompass the duo of Gallio and Turner, their approaches to playing together and the contents of You Can Blackmail Me Later." - John Eyles
Song For Biko
"Repress of Johnny Dyani's 1979 LP Song for Biko, recorded in the summer of 1978 with the powerful front line-up of Don Cherry and Dudu Pukwana, the album was dedicated to the martyred South African activist against apartheid Steve Biko (1946-1977). Johnny Mbizo Dyani (bassist/composer) was born in East London, South Africa in 1945 and became one of South Africa's most internationally acknowledged musicians. Since his arrival in England in 1965 as a member of South African jazz group called The …
Threnody for the KhoiSan
Garth Erasmus is an artist and musician based in Cape Town, South Africa. 'Threnody for the KhoiSan' is his first album under his own name. Since 1985 his artistic interests have broadened to include music-making, designing and making his own instruments based on indigenous KhoiSan knowledge. From 1999 to 2012 he was a member of the South African First Nation activist group Khoi Khonnexion. In the past couple of years Garth Erasmus has also been a pivotal part of various international performanc…
Towards The Flame, Vol. 2
*50 copies edition* "Three of Europe's most acclimated and proven improvisers—pianist Robert Mitchell (Steve Coleman, Greg Osby), bassist Neil Charles, and drummer/percussionist Mark Sanders (Jah Wobble, Rachel Musson)—band together as The Flame for the first time and emerge from pandemic isolation, and the forever wars and broken civics that accompanied it, with a hypnotic performance captured absolutely live on Towards the Flame.
Recorded at London's Cafe Otto in February of 2022, The Flame co…
This Is British Progressive Jazz
Nine previously unreleased tracks from the golden era of British jazz. Featuring the cream of players and composers from the period. Stereophonic sound.All tracks original source - public domain. These restorations and remasters by British Progressive Jazz © 2024
Solo Bern 1984, First Visit
"In its entirety, the concert is lively and penetrating evidence of Braxton’s remarkable facility, powers of invention, and commitment to his principles at this point in time, with special emphasis on saxophone techniques energizing variables of tone color, texture, and timbre to affect separate phrases, extended lines, and sectional contrasts." – Art Lange
Producer’s note: "I experienced over many years Anthony Braxton different performances. His solo performance 1984 in Bern belongs into the …
The Human Factor
"It is a message, and you will hear it sounding firmly through the various pieces that make up The Human Factor, that tells us much about how we might live together: sharing, giving way, simple giving, lifting up, helping ... above all, listening ..." - Brian Morton