Jazz /
Maya
*2026 stock* Trumpeter Shunzo Ohno spent much of his career moving between the Japanese scene and the New York post-bop circuit, a player whose résumé runs through American bandleaders alongside his domestic work, and whose tone bears the marks of both worlds. His quintet date for Three Blind Mice is one of the records where he sounds most explicitly engaged with the modal and spiritual currents of seventies American jazz: Coltrane shadows everywhere, but absorbed into a particular Japanese pois…
Mine
The very first record released on Three Blind Mice, a debut for both label and bandleader. Recorded in Tokyo in August 1970, Mine announces the saxophonist Kosuke Mine and sets out, in advance, the editorial stance the label would hold for the next two decades: serious post-bop with European clarity, Coltrane-era heat, and a particularly Japanese sense of restraint that lets the most intense solos hold their shape. Mine's quintet pairs his alto and soprano with trombone, the great Hideo Ichikawa…
Fragments: The Complete 1969 Salle Pleyel Concerts
On Fragments: The Complete 1969 Salle Pleyel Concerts, The Cecil Taylor Unit detonates across two uncut Paris sets: a newly unearthed, vividly mastered document of Taylor, Sam Rivers, Jimmy Lyons and Andrew Cyrille stretching free jazz into an overwhelming, architectural storm of sound.
Inception
Using the crème de la crème of sound engineers and the unsurpassed production quality of Quality Record Pressings, the Acoustic Sounds series is mastered from the original tapes, pressed on 180-gram vinyl and packaged in high-quality gatefold covers produced by Stoughton Printing Co., where — as was customary on records of the era — the printed paper sheet is applied to the cardboard (so the cardboard itself is not directly inked). All this is overseen by Chad Kassem, CEO of Acoustic Sounds, the…
The Prisoner
Recorded and released in 1969, Herbie Hancock’s last Blue Note album The Prisoner is a powerful but overlooked masterpiece. A moving tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, this nonet session features some of the most exceptional instrumentalists in jazz including Joe Henderson, Johnny Coles, Hubert Laws, Garnett Brown, Buster Williams, and Albert “Tootie” Heath. Hancock said of The Prisoner: “I've been able to get closer to the real me with this album than on any other previous one.”
Blue Note Tone …
Jazz Mood
The debut album from jazz multi-instrumentalist Yusef Lateef, Jazz Mood was originally released in 1957 on New Jersey’s Savoy label. Featuring five Lateef originals the album included Curtis Fuller (trombone), Hugh Lawson (piano), Ernie Farrow (bass), and Louis Hayes (drums). This new edition of the album is released as part of the Original Jazz Classics Series on 180-gram vinyl pressed at RTI with all-analog mastering from the original tapes at Cohearent Audio and a Stoughton Tip-On Jacket.
Iapetus
Wewantsounds continues its reissue program of Bob Shad's cult jazz label, Mainstream Records, with Hadley Caliman's superb 1972 album, Iapetus. Recorded in LA and featuring a heavyweight lineup of West Coast players including Todd Cochran, Woody “Sonship” Theus, Luis Gasca, and Victor Pantoja, the majority of the album was composed by Todd Cochran (aka Bayeté) soon after he had composed Bobby Hutcherson's Blue Note classic, Head On. A true hidden treasure, it is reissued here on vinyl for the fi…
Des Femmes Disparaissent
Art Blakey was the new hero on the Paris jazz scene, thanks to his Olympia concert on November 22nd 1958, and his subsequent appearances at the Club St. Germain. People swore by his 'Blues March' and 'Moanin', so why not get him to do the soundtrack for the film Molinaro just finished? The only problem, albeit a major one, was that time was short, so an original score was out of the question: the Jazz Messengers would have to preach the good word by other means. Fortunately, the band's tenor and…
Firebirds Live At Berkeley Jazz Festival Vol I
On Firebirds Live At Berkeley Jazz Festival Volume 1, Prince Lawsha convenes a dream quintet with Hadley Caliman, Bobby Hutcherson, Buster Williams and Charles Moffett, igniting a front‑line of reeds over vibraphone‑lit rhythms that balance spiritual uplift and fierce swing.
France 1965: The Complete Concerts
4LP set. Gatefold sleeve with photographs, concert poster, and new liner notes. Centenary edition. Limited to 2,500 copies worldwide. June 28, 1965: John Coltrane records Ascension at Van Gelder Studio - forty minutes of collective free improvisation that detonates every remaining convention in jazz. July 2: New Thing at Newport. July 6-18: a two-week residency at the Village Gate, doubling with Thelonious Monk. July 26: Coltrane walks onto the stage of the International Jazz Festival at Juan-le…
In Concerts
On In Concerts, Mujician - Keith Tippett, Paul Dunmall, Paul Rogers and Tony Levin - are caught across 17 years of pure, pre‑verbal improvisation, four voices moving as one organism, forever searching and sometimes touching the truly uncanny.
Tetragon
On Tetragon, Joe Henderson sharpens his post‑bop language to a diamond point, driving a powerhouse band through knotty tunes and reworked standards that already hint at the spiritual depths he’d soon explore more fully.
Niebla
New York City-based, Puerto Rican-born guitarist, composer, and visual artist Gabriel Vicéns releases his fifth studio album, Niebla, a boundary-defying work that merges the vibrant rhythms of Afro-Puerto Rican folklore with the harmonic richness of modern jazz and the fearless spirit of avant-garde experimentation.
Niebla (which translates to “fog”) is a sonic journey through the cultural and emotional depths of identity, tradition, and innovation. Rooted in the rhythms of bomba and plena, the …
Live at Yoshi's 1994
On Live at Yoshi’s 1994, Mal Waldron and Steve Lacy turn a decades‑deep partnership into a single, extended act of listening, folding Monk, Ellington, Strayhorn and their own themes into a stark, tensile dialogue where every note feels earned.
Africa / Brass
In 1961 John Coltrane joined the newly founded Impulse! label. The great saxophonist was coming off several impactful albums (Giant Steps) and a very notable — even commercial — success: that My Favorite Things which had made his soprano sax one of the “new sounds” that marked a turning year for jazz, the fateful 1959. Some people — despite obvious clues to the contrary — speculated a turn, if not toward commerciality, at least toward more palatable music: a Coltrane in some ways comparable to P…
Karma
Karma is Pharoah Sanders' third recording as a leader, and is among a number of spiritually themed albums the Impulse! Record label released in the late 1960s/early 1970s. Although it is followed by the brief "Colors", the album's main piece is the 32-minute-long "The Creator Has a Master Plan", co-composed by Sanders with vocalist Leon Thomas. Some see this piece as a kind of sequel to Sanders' mentor John Coltrane's legendary 1964 recording A Love Supreme (whose opening it echoes in a muscular…
Daguri
On Daguri, Kosuke Mine Quintet channel early‑70s Coltrane fire into a distinctly Japanese voice, fusing spiritual intensity, modal lyricism and subtle exotic color into a taut, forward‑rushing statement that stands among Mine’s finest recordings.
The Almoravid
Terrific session just released in 1974 on influential independent Muse. A modal masterpiece verging on spiritual jazz with a series of excellent players: from Richard Davis and Cecil McBee on bass to Ray Mantilla on congas and percussion, through Harold Vick distinctive flute and tenor sax. The major voice on this record belongs to the traps of Joe Chambers. The enormous potency combined with complete authority and tonal clarity that Chambers brings to the drums has made him one of the more dist…
Reference: Albert Ayler Spirits & Spirits Rejoice
The album "Spirits," released by a debut label based in Copenhagen, marked the first opportunity for Ayler to record his "free music" in February 1964 in New York. The musicians selected by him included notable figures such as Cecil Taylor (with drummer Sunny Murray), members from Sonny Rollins' band (bassist Henry Grimes), and musicians from his Cleveland period (trumpeter Norman Howard, bassist Earl Henderson). This work also represents his first focus on his own compositions, which includes H…
The Straight Horn Of Steve Lacy
Originally released in 1962 on Candid Records, The Straight Horn of Steve Lacy finds a young Steve Lacy stepping forward with quiet confidence and a sound unlike anyone else at the time. Stripped of excess and focused on tone, space, and intent, these sessions reveal a musician already thinking beyond convention. The soprano sax cuts clean and direct, moving between sharp angles and lyrical calm, with a small group that listens as closely as it plays. Nothing here feels rushed or ornamental, jus…