Back in stock
Free At Last - Extended Edition
Revisited and remastered, with additional takes, texts and photos, here is the very first ECM session, recorded in Ludwigsburg in November 1969, featuring the great American pianist Mal Waldron, whose resume included work with Coltrane, Mingus, Dolphy and Billie Holiday. In his original liner notes, Mal wrote: “This album represents my meeting with free jazz. Free jazz for me does not mean complete anarchy… You will hear me playing rhythmically instead of soloing on chord changes.” As Jazz Journ…
Ambiances / Images
This reissue documents Knud Viktor’s only two releases on record – Images and Ambiances – both released in 1972 on the french label L’Oiseau Musicien. These records have long been out of print and are hereby made available again, gathering the two separate albums on this double-release. Mstered and produced by Jonas OlesenThe utmost care has gone into creating a reproduction that is as faithful as possible to the original works. These have been transferred from the original analog master tapes a…
Les Éphémères
First ever release. The record is accompanied by a 24-page booklet illustrated with Knud Viktor’s photos, as well as an extensive essay. Only a few weeks ago, with their incredible 10", rescueing long lost works by the artists, Lene Adler Petersen, we were singing the praises of the Institute for Danish Sound Archaeology, one of our favorite imprints in the contemporary landscape of sound. Over the last couple of years, with an array of releases by Knud Viktor, Henning Christiansen, Per Norgard,…
Characters On A Wall
*2024 stock* Louis Sclavis’s 13th ECM recording finds the French clarinetist drawing inspiration from two sources – the street art of Ernest Pignon-Ernest, and the interpretive originality of a splendid new quartet. Pignon-Ernest’s works were previously the subject of Sclavis’s highly acclaimed 2002 recording Napoli’s Walls. This time Sclavis looks at a broader range of the artist’s in situ collages from Ramallah to Rome, in search of “a dynamic, a movement that will give birth to a rhythm, a…
M.R.C.S.
Original 1991 LP edition. Singer, harmonica virtuoso, and keyboardist Karen Mantler has inherited her father, Michael Mantler's sense of whimsy and her mother, Carla Bley's musical fearlessness -- not to mention her electric-shredded-wheat hairstyle. Although Mantler's debut album was produced by Bley and new husband Steve Swallow and features fellow avant-jazz offspring Eric Mingus as co-lead vocalist and Jonathan Sanborn on bass, 1989's My Cat Arnold isn't quite jazz, but it's not exactly pop …
Bayou
*2024 stock* A fresh and open music, delicate and space-conscious, is shaped as drummer Thomas Strønen and Ayumi Tanaka, previously heard in the ensemble Time Is A Blind Guide on Lucus, resurface in a new trio with clarinettist/singer/percussionist Marthe Lea. The group first came together at Oslo’s Royal Academy of Music, where for two years the players would meet each week for exploratory music making. Strønen: “We always played freely- drifting between elements of contemporary classical music…
Lucus
*2024 stock* Norwegian drummer/composer Thomas Strønen presents a revised edition of his acoustic collective Time Is A Blind Guide, now trimmed to quintet size, and with a new pianist in Wakayama-born Ayumi Tanaka. Tanaka has spoken of seeking associative connections between Japan and Norway in her improvising, a tendency Strønen seems to be encouraging with his space-conscious writing for the ensemble, letting in more light. As on the group’s eponymously-titled and critically-lauded debut album…
Voice
The debut solo album from founding Spunk member and composer Maja Ratkje has secured her a place among the finest experimental singers. From the weird and furious to the enchanting and beautiful, this is an album rich in atmosphere, color and creative madness. First released on CD in 2002 and now available on vinyl for the first time, this is a central release in Rune Grammofon's catalogue and is an essential item in any record collection of experimental music. Composer, singer, electronic …
Kokotsu No Sekai
Clear Purple Vinyl. Although Ike Reiko was a mere 17 years of age when she recorded 1971's Kokotsu No Sekai, she was already a star in the world of Japanese erotic movies. Despite the tough-gal image, the music is pretty darn life-affirming, so don't think for a second you're getting an easy listening album here -- this is about as sexual as music can get. Throw "French Kiss" out of the window and give a kiss goodbye to your Serge Gainsbourg records, Ike Reiko is more sizzling than a branding ir…
Axiom
It will always be difficult to pinpoint where free jazz started, but it´s reasonable to say it was shaped and cultivated in New York in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Albert Ayler and Cecil Taylor were important players, as was Ornette Coleman. Axiom has significant historical importance by being what is quite possibly the first European free jazz record, even if it was not released at the time. Recorded in Copenhagen in October 1963, it should have been Tom Prehn Quartet's debut album for…
An Acrobat's Heart
A ravishingly beautiful album by one of the most mysterious, elusive and beguiling figures on the fringes of jazz. "An acrobat’s heart" features the unique vocals and piano playing of singer-songwriter Annette Peacock, performing her own compositions with the acclaimed Cikada String Quartet. If you like An acrobat’s heart, then you’d probably like: Marilyn Crispell, Nothing Ever Was, Anyway Paul Bley, Paul Bley with Gary Peacock Arild Andersen, Hyperborean Bent Sørensen, Birds And Bells Norma Wi…
The Mystery J
Yet another triumph from the legendary multi-instrumentalist, Joe McPhee, Corbett Vs. Dempsey drops "The Mystery J", their first ever full-length vinyl release, issued in a limited edition of 500 copies. Recorded in 2014 with violist Jen Clare Paulson and Brian Labycz on electronics, it writhes with bristling tension, while retaining a remarkably minimal form. Visionary experimentalism and freejazz reimagined on entirely singular terms, 'The Mystery J' encounters McPhee producing some of his bes…
Oriental Jazz
Born in 1938, and raised in Glendale, California, Lloyd Miller has had one of the most unusual careers in all of jazz. By age 12 he had declared an intent to make his living as a jazz musician, and by high school he had already begun to experiment, shunning swing music's mechanical perfection, and chafing at his parents' desire for him to nurture his talents with formal training. This tumultous relationship with his parents would eventually lead to a stint in a psychatric hospital, before reunit…
Electronic Music
Bent Lorentzen is widely considered one of the key figures and pioneers of early Danish electronic music and he was one of a few classically trained composers seeking out the possibilities of the new technology in the 1960’s. Lorentzen composed a fairly large number of electronic works, – mainly in the 60's and 70'es. Furthermore, he developed a significant educational practice in and around electronic music, conducted workshops, taught at courses, and published articles in both national and int…
fLuXkit Vancouver (i̶t̶s suite but sacred)
Tip! A radiant manifesto of artistic freedom, fLuXkit Vancouver (i̶t̶s suite but sacred) brings together a composition in four movements written and performed by Jones on alto saxophone, long-time collaborator Gerald Cleaver on drums, and four Vancouver-based string musicians: violinists Jesse Zubot and Josh Zubot, cellist Peggy Lee and bassist James Meger; with original artwork by Stan Douglas and liner notes by poet Harmony Holiday. Commissioned by Western Front, an artist-run center for multi…
Rare Soundtracks & Lost Tapes (1973-1984)
Bomb! French composer Alain Goraguer who first made a name for himself as a sideman and arranger for Serge Gainsbourg wrote very few soundtracks, but amongst them, the legendary La Planète Sauvage (1973) is an absolute staple of France’s essential music. During that same period of time, Goraguer wrote two rare and beautiful scores using the same masterclass arrangements. On L’Affaire Dominici (1975), Alain Goraguer creates a theme of great melodic clarity from a palette of breathy flutes, clavin…
Afric Pepperbird
Recorded in Oslo in September 1970, Afric Pepperbird was released on New Year’s Day in 1971. Half a century later, it still conveys the freshness and excitement of discoveries being made. The album signalled the arrival of four Norwegian improvisers – Jan Garbarek, Terje Rypdal, Arild Andersen and Jon Christensen – at the fledgling ECM label. It was the start of a lifelong association with each of the musicians, whose influence was soon to reach far beyond the borders of their homeland. In exten…
The Gleaners
*2024 stock* Larry Grenadier’s The Gleaners is a profound and highly creative album, harvesting influences from many sources, its title inspired by Agnès Varda’s film The Gleaners and I. In between his own pieces here, including a dedication to early hero Oscar Pettiford, Grenadier explores compositions by George Gershwin, John Coltrane, Paul Motian, Rebecca Martin and Wolfgang Muthspiel. “The process for making this record began with a look inward,” Larry writes in his liner note, “an excavatio…
Plastic Sun
*2022 stock* 'From the early years of Norwegian jazz, few albums have stood the test of time as well as the venturesome and subtly psychedelic Plastic Sun. It was the Svein Finnerud's second disc, and was released on Sonet in 1970. Inexplicably for an album of such beauty, it has been a hard-to-find collector's item for decades, having only been reissued once before, in 1998, as a CD on the Norwegian Jazz Federation's Odin label. In April 2018, Odin have reissued it again, this time on CD and in…
Arrival
Double LP version. Black Vinyl. 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 str…