Jazz /
In Transverse Time
*2022 stock* "Saxophone quartets can be an acquired taste, especially if their members are content playing supper-time jazz. However, Rova’s commitment to pushing forward, and challenging themselves and their audiences accounts for much of their perseverance. That, and talent. Their latest recording, In Transverse Time (Les Disques Victo), finds the quartet in meticulous harmony, with each player taking a measured approach to their solos. The Quartet’s members play multiple horns, but each settl…
Solo (Victoriaville) 2017
On the 30th anniversary of the Victo Festival Anthony Braxton took to the stage for a magnificent solo performance on the alto sax, performing 8 spontaneous compositions and an 8+ minute version of "Body and Soul", seamlessly crossing lyrical and complex approaches to the horn using his unique intervallic, trimbral and diagrammatic language, a stunning and embraceable accomplishment.
Hello, I Must Be Going
Two masters who rarely play together--guitarist Fred Frith and saxophonist Evan Parker--performing together as a duo at the 30th Musique Actuelle Festival in Victoriaville, Canada for an amazing exchange of ideas and intensely subtle dialog.
Peachinguinha
**Numbered edition of 200** Silent Water presents Peachinguinha by Peachfuzz, who are João Almeida: trumpet, Norberto Lobo: electric guitar, João Lopes Pereira: drums. recorded by João Almeida at Fonte Santa, Alandroal, march 2021
3 Points And A Mountain
"A real cause for celebration. A performance distinguished by gleeful energy and audacious dada wit. It possesses a vigor of discovery and invention that makes it sound timeless." - Cadence "A great and enjoyable session from three of the most creative and unique musicians in European avant-garde music." - All Music Guide"Wonderful, intoxicating stuff. Together theses three troubadours tiptoe exaggeratedly through pastiches of bop, cabaret, baroque, and lounge, and work through dozens of mood ch…
Historic Music Past Tense Future
Black Editions presents “Historic Music Past Tense Future”, the first ever album to feature the meeting of Peter Brötzmann, Milford Graves and William Parker. Three of the towering figures in the history of Free Jazz forge an incredibly vital free music born from lifetimes of uncompromising, ceaseless artistry. “Historic Music Past Tense Future” is the inaugural release by Black Editions Archive and the first in a series of records that will present previously unreleased works featuring Milford …
Hear And Now
Hear and Now's cover depicts a smiling Cherry posing like Buddha, and holding a trumpet with a bent mouthpiece -- an indication of some meditative sounds, but it's really a mishmash of styles with a leaning toward African rhythms. An underlying social message runs through the album of Cherry compositions (except one) produced by Narada Michael Walden. Cherry plays very little trumpet on "Universal Mother"; the African-based excursion is carried by Neil Jason's bass, Sammy Figueroa's congas, and …
Eternal Now
Something of a sequel to Eternal Rhythm, his classic meeting of free jazz and world music from five years prior, Eternal Now found Don Cherry entering the studio for the tiny Sonet label, once again with members of the European avant-garde scene (this time from Sweden).
This time around, though, the focus swings decidedly to the world-folk end of things: The only standard Western instrument is the piano, featured on only two of the five pieces (one of which is a non-traditional, African-styled r…
The World Of Shuko Mizuno
"This is a live recording of "Shuko Mizuno's World Evening" on the fourth day of "5 Days In Jazz 1976", which made the genius Shuko Mizuno known to the world. The massive, fast-paced jazz-rock piece "Concentration" and "Jazz Orchestra '75 Part II" are breathtaking performances. Katsumi Watanabe's superb solo is also noteworthy!" - Koki Hanawa
Ode To Birds
"Hideto Kanai's first album is fairly hit-or-miss free jazz, but here he's in full-blown Black Saint and the Sinner Lady mode. There are twenty three musicians on this album (twenty three!), and while the undercurrent of free jazz is still running through, it's much closer to experimental big band or avant-garde jazz. And it's extremely compelling. Two side-long pieces, both of which go in and out of being quite elaborate and being complete chaos. There's some unusual and dissonant guitar and sy…
Words Fail
*200 copies edition* The debut release from the trio of Chris Abrahams (piano), Clayton Thomas (bass & preparations), & Miles Thomas (drums & percussion), Words Fail is an intergenerational meeting of the minds. Despite the quintessential trio format, the sound world subverts the instrumentation across four expansive improvisations. Beginning with a lone piano note, repeating like droplets of water on a glassy lake, the interwoven textures of Clayton Thomas’ prepared double-bass & Miles Thomas’ …
Steve Kuhn
**50th Anniversary Edition. In process of stocking** Quoting Dustygroove, this is an incredibly inventive album from pianist Steve Kuhn – one that takes his earlier modern style, and fuses it with a warmer sort mode for the 70s! The approach is quite unique – in that Kuhn's core trio style is augmented both by additional percussion from Airto, plus occasional string quartet backing – for a sound that's fresh and different on each new tune! Some tracks feature Fender Rhodes, but most are acoustic…
Vibration!
"For the years Columbus was lucky enough to call him ours, drummer Ryan Jewell was our leading proponent of Emily Dickinson’s maxim “tell the truth but tell it slant.” He placed an idiosyncratic, indelible, and always swinging stamp on any context he assailed, from the insidiously catchy quirk of Terribly Empty Pockets to the righteous brainy scuzz-punk of Pink Reason to spacy evocative noise with collaborators like Mike Shiflet and C. Spencer Yeh to shepherding Psychedelic Horsehit through thei…
Sclupperbep
Detroit saxophonist Skeeter Shelton and Chicago percussionist Hamid Drake didn’t know each other before Skeeter was subbed into a duo gig at Trinosophes (Detroit) after Hamid’s partner fell ill. Shortly before the performance, it was discovered that Skeeter’s father, Ajaramu Shelton, was Hamid’s drum teacher and mentor at Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. There was an instant bond. The set that night was fire. This should be no surprise, as keeter, through his fath…
Codebreaker
Matthew Shipp takes an introspective turn on his latest solo piano album, continuing to discover new territory for his singular cosmic pianism. Codebreaker encrypts rich harmonies, cloud-like clusters, and the unlikely confluence of Bill Evans and Bud Powell. Within the voluminous catalogue that pianist Matthew Shipp has created over the last three and a half decades, his solo piano work has charted a unique and compelling pathway for the evolution of the instrument’s vocabulary. On his latest a…
Village Mothership
In the late 1980s / early ’90s, pianist Matthew Shipp and drummer Whit Dickey were young musicians taking part in the cultural ferment happening on New York City’s Lower East Side, a place where free jazz, avant-rock and all manner of creative arts and political causes were colliding and combining to further the area’s legacy of progressive action. William Parker – although just 2 years older than Dickey – had been part of that progressive action since the mid-70s, and was already a world travel…
FMP Free Music Production - The Living Music (Book)
Super Tip! * English version. 400+ pages, large-format book, very heavy * This book is dedicated to the history of the music label Free Music Production (FMP), which from 1968 to 2010 achieved incomparable things as a Berlin platform for the production, presentation and documentation of music. Based on many conversations from over thirty years with key protagonists such as Peter Brötzmann or Jost Gebers, Markus Müller tells the success story of a musicians‘ initiative that emerged in the context…
Spirits Rejoice! Albert Ayler and his message (Book)
No music swung as erratically between extremes as his: folk song, march or acoustic apocalypse – anything was possible in the cosmos of Albert Ayler’s soundscapes. With his furious instrumental glossolalia and his pathos-laden ballads, the musician from Cleveland, Ohio quickly became the most radical of the Sixties free jazz expressionists. In his hands the saxophone became a different instrument and even John Coltrane’s late work was unmistakably shaped by the influence of his younger colleague…
Marjassa
Marjassa LP is reminiscent to 60s American avant-garde free jazz movements both soundwise and musically. Think a Finnish versions of Ornette Coleman/Don Cherry stuff (or perhaps Noah Howard/Ric Colbeck).
Free Dirt (Live)
Skeleton Crew was founded in the early 1980s by Fred Frith and Tom Cora. The original idea was to create a new group out of the ashes of Massacre. Hey started experimenting with what they could achieve by themselves, recorded the fantastic debut album Learn to Talk and finally decided to take the new project out on the road. After several years of searching for recordings, mixing and mastering, and held up by the global pandemic, we are proud to finally offer you this double CD of live recording…