Jazz /
Solo Orchestra In Real Time
A beautiful, dreamlike expression of spiritual jazz recorded in 1981 at City Recorders - a time when this kind of music was considered completely out of vogue. Yet here is Gary Bias, unspooling a suite of deeply soulful and profoundly far-reaching original compositions that vividly evoke the blue skies of the record's Los Angeles origins. Bias plays alto and soprano saxophone and flute with a tone and sensibility that sits somewhere between the lyricism of early Pharoah Sanders and the bold atta…
Sharps and Flats
The only album ever released under the name of saxophonist, bandleader and composer Jesse Sharps - a major, largely unsung figure in the history of jazz music in Los Angeles. Recorded in 1985 for Tom Albach's legendary Nimbus West imprint, Sharps And Flats lay unreleased until 2004 on CD and never saw a vinyl pressing until 2018. Sharps studied under Cecil Taylor at college, then returned to L.A. and took over band-leading duties from the great altoist Arthur Blythe in Horace Tapscott's Pan-Afri…
Live at IUCC
The only live recording the Pan-Afrikan Peoples Arkestra ever released - and arguably the most complete document of this extraordinary musical community in full flight. Recorded between February and June 1979 at the Immanuel United Church of Christ on 85th & Holmes in Los Angeles, where P.A.P.A. played every second Sunday, developing their sound and building an audience rooted in the community. As a culturally radical, communal big band with a visionary approach to American Black music, the Arke…
Solo Orchestra In Real Time
A singular, radical entry in the Nimbus West catalogue from one of the true pioneers of the free jazz piano. Burton Greene was there at the very beginning - co-founding the Free Form Improvisation Ensemble with bassist Alan Silva in early-60s New York, recording for ESP-Disk and Columbia, playing the legendary loft sessions at Slugs'. After relocating to Amsterdam in 1969, Greene spent decades exploring the intersections of free jazz, Indian music, klezmer and electronic composition. Solo Orches…
Nimbus West bundle six
Specially priced bundles drawn from the catalog of Nimbus West — the American label widely regarded as the greatest single depository of West Coast avant-garde jazz. With the label's future uncertain and no represses planned, this is a final opportunity to explore one of the most vital and visionary corners of recorded jazz before it disappears from circulation for good.Nimbus West bundle six contains the following LPs:
Curtis Clark "Amsterdam Sunshine"
Curtis Clark "Deep Sea Diver"
Horace Taps…
East 101
A beautiful, dreamlike expression of spiritual jazz recorded in 1981 at City Recorders - a time when this kind of music was considered completely out of vogue. Yet here is Gary Bias, unspooling a suite of deeply soulful and profoundly far-reaching original compositions that vividly evoke the blue skies of the record's Los Angeles origins. Bias plays alto and soprano saxophone and flute with a tone and sensibility that sits somewhere between the lyricism of early Pharoah Sanders and the bold atta…
Nimbus West bundle five
Specially priced bundles drawn from the catalog of Nimbus West — the American label widely regarded as the greatest single depository of West Coast avant-garde jazz. With the label's future uncertain and no represses planned, this is a final opportunity to explore one of the most vital and visionary corners of recorded jazz before it disappears from circulation for good.Nimbus West bundle five contains the following LPs:
Curtis Clark "Amsterdam Sunshine"
Curtis Clark "Deep Sea Diver"
Horace Tap…
Nimbus West bundle four
Specially priced bundles drawn from the catalog of Nimbus West — the American label widely regarded as the greatest single depository of West Coast avant-garde jazz. With the label's future uncertain and no represses planned, this is a final opportunity to explore one of the most vital and visionary corners of recorded jazz before it disappears from circulation for good.Nimbus West bundle four contains the following LPs:
Curtis Clark "Amsterdam Sunshine"
Curtis Clark "Deep Sea Diver"
Horace Tap…
Nimbus West LP bundle
Specially priced bundles drawn from the catalog of Nimbus West — the American label widely regarded as the greatest single depository of West Coast avant-garde jazz. With the label's future uncertain and no represses planned, this is a final opportunity to explore one of the most vital and visionary corners of recorded jazz before it disappears from circulation for good.Nimbus West bundle three contains the following LPs:
Curtis Clark "Amsterdam Sunshine"
Curtis Clark "Deep Sea Diver"
Horace Ta…
Nimbus West bundle two
Specially priced bundles drawn from the catalog of Nimbus West — the American label widely regarded as the greatest single depository of West Coast avant-garde jazz. With the label's future uncertain and no represses planned, this is a final opportunity to explore one of the most vital and visionary corners of recorded jazz before it disappears from circulation for good.Nimbus West bundle two contains the following LPs:
Curtis Clark "Amsterdam Sunshine"
Curtis Clark "Deep Sea Diver"
Horace Taps…
Nimbus West LP bundle one
Specially priced bundles drawn from the catalog of Nimbus West — the American label widely regarded as the greatest single depository of West Coast avant-garde jazz. With the label's future uncertain and no represses planned, this is a final opportunity to explore one of the most vital and visionary corners of recorded jazz before it disappears from circulation for good.Nimbus West bundle one contains the following LPs:
Curtis Clark "Amsterdam Sunshine"
Curtis Clark "Deep Sea Diver"
Curtis Clar…
Morgenmusiken
On Morgenmusiken, Green Cosmos expand their small‑town German jazz into a quietly epic, Coltrane‑lit cosmos, braiding modal vamps, Indian classical colour and spacious free improvisation into seven meditative journeys where silence and a single note carry as much weight as any crescendo.
The Tapscott Sessions Vol. 6
October in Los Angeles. Horace Tapscott sits down, plays for 38 minutes, gets up. No audience, no applause. Just Tom Albach and his tape machine. This is how monuments get built - one session at a time, one composition at a time, nobody watching. "Ancestral Echoes" opens - nearly thirteen minutes tracing lineages back through time, the piano as time machine. Then Roy Porter's "Jessica," a beautiful detour into someone else's melody, proof that Tapscott could interpret as powerfully as he compose…
The Tapscott Sessions Vol. 4
Solo (Steinway) piano. Los Angeles, September 1982. Just read the titles: "A Dress for Renee" - infectious melody, keeps coming back like a persistent thought. "Shades of Soweto" - South Africa seen from South Central. "The Hero's Last Dance" - whoever that hero was. "First Call of the Humming Bird" - nature breaking through concrete. And then "Forgiving" - as a closing statement, as a breath.
Horace Tapscott was a fierce critic of racial bigotry, and his music never hid it. But here there's als…
The Tapscott Sessions Vol. 3
Solo piano. Recorded March 1983, Los Angeles. Five pieces, forty-one minutes. Where Sun Ra meets Erik Satie. This is the third volume in what would become Tapscott's monumental series of solo recordings - over thirty hours captured between 1982 and 1985, documenting his own compositions alongside works by unknown Black composers in the Los Angeles area. Producer Tom Albach considered these the most important music Horace Tapscott ever made.
The titles read like chapters from a life: "The Tuus," …
The Tapscott Sessions Vol. 2
Solo piano. Recorded November 15, 1982 at the Lobero Theater, Santa Barbara. A Steinway piano and one man's soul, nothing else. Producer Tom Albach believed the solo sessions were the most important music Tapscott ever made. Between 1982 and 1985, over thirty hours of solo piano were captured - Albach made it his life's mission to release them all. This is volume two, and it cuts deep.
The centerpiece: "Struggle X, An Afro-American Dream" - nearly twenty minutes of Tapscott wrestling with the un…
Kids Mysteries
Recorded live at the Bimhuis, Amsterdam. The debut album of M.O.B. - "My Own Band" - the project that would become the main vehicle for this South African giant in exile. Eight tracks, almost an hour of music, with titles that tell you everything you need to know: "Purtles," "Ice Cream Man," "Tea and Scones," "Monkey Woman," "Beach Balls," "Kids-Trainride."
Sean Bergin (1948-2012) left Durban for Amsterdam in 1976, escaping apartheid, carrying South African jazz in his blood. Half Irish, half So…
TA
Live at the Music Academy of the West, Santa Barbara, April 12, 1987. Cello and percussion. Two Europeans conquering California with nothing but strings, drums, bones, bodhran and squeaky toys. This is the duo that gave us Cellotape & Scotchtape in 1982 - now captured live on American soil, over an hour of pure duo improvisation.
Reijseger needs no introduction: Dutch cellist extraordinaire, ICP Orchestra veteran, Clusone Trio with Han Bennink and Michael Moore, later Werner Herzog's go-to compo…
L.A.'s Unsung
Nine rare tracks from the Nimbus West archive, a map of Los Angeles underground jazz the world never heard enough of. Horace Tapscott, Nate Morgan, Jesse Sharps, Dadisi Komolafe, Roberto Miranda - the names that built UGMAA and the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, the movement that kept spiritual jazz alive in South Central for decades while the music industry looked elsewhere.
"Desert Fairy Princess," "U.G.M.A.A Ger," "Prayer Of Happiness," "Mrafu," "Calvary" - titles evoking the Pan-African consc…
Wild West
The Amsterdam String Trio emerges from Europe's most vibrant improvised music scene: Maurice Horsthuis on viola, Ernst Reijseger on cello, Ernst Glerum on double bass. No violin. An unusual configuration that delivers, as Glerum puts it, "a dark sound, a kind of obscurity, and we like that very much." Three instruments exploring music's lower registers, without the violin's brightness to lead. Recorded live at the Academy of Music of the West in Santa Barbara on December 2, 1988, Wild West captu…