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Aida
Continuing their ongoing series of reissues of music by Derek Bailey, Honest Jon's Records present a first vinyl reissue of Aida, originally released on the guitarist's own Incus label in 1980. Expanded for this release, the present version of this masterwork adds two hitherto unreleased gems recorded solo for Charles Fox's Radio 3 program Jazz in Britain, in the same few months of 1980 as the stunning original performances. The phrase "in the moment" is often bandied about with reference to fre…
Lot 74 Solo Improvisations
Reissue of Derek Bailey's 2nd Incus LP from 1974, fully remastered to bring Derek Bailey's uniquely personal improvisation style clearly into the 21st century. "In 1974, when Derek Bailey was planning his second solo LP on Incus, he decided to include a side-long solo using his stereo electro-acoustic set-up. Unfortunately, he never seemed to have a 20-minute stretch of time free of interruptions in his home, so he asked if he could record it at my place. After a fairly lengthy drive across Lond…
Royal
2018 small repress. Honest Jon's Records present a reissue of Derek Bailey and Anthony Braxton's Royal, expanded to include both intended volumes. Volume 1 was originally released in 1984; the second volume was never issued. The second release in a series of collaborations between Honest Jon's Records and Incus: three double-LPs of the legendary free-improvising guitarist Derek Bailey, solo (HJR 200LP) and in duos with Anthony Braxton and Han Bennink (HJR 202LP), augmenting the original releases…
Duo
Continuing the series of collaborations between Honest Jon’s and Incus. As throughout the series, the recordings are newly transferred from tape at Abbey Road, and re-mastered by Rashad Becker. And here we have this incredible duo from underrated cellist Tristan Honsinger and Derek Bailey, originally released on Incus in 1976. There are parralels between this record and fellow sometime Parisian string pkayer Joelle Leandre's Taxi, but really, Honsinger's voice is like no other - there's less rev…
Dart Drug
Percussionist Jamie Muir was a member of King Crimson during the recording of Larks’ Tongues In Aspic, in 1973. Staying less than a year with Robert Fripp, the Scot had already cut his teeth with another master guitarist, Derek Bailey, as part of the Music Improvisation Company, along with Evan Parker, Hugh Davies and Christine Jeffrey, whose eponymous 1970 album was one of the first releases on ECM. Muir and Bailey recorded Dart Drug eleven years later, in 1981.There’s no shortage of great perc…
Cyro
When Cyro Baptista moved to New York in 1980 from his home city of São Paulo, he brought with him an arsenal of percussion instruments, including the cuica (friction drum), surdo (the booming bass drum associated with samba), berimbau (single-string bow with resonating gourd), and cabasas galore, in the next few years deploying them most notably in numerous ensembles curated by John Zorn, who helped set up this studio session in 1982.As you might expect from someone whose infectious grooves have…
Time
Multi-reedist Tony Coe was born in 1934, four years after guitarist Derek Bailey. He cut his teeth as a career jazzman with Humphrey Lyttleton, before an extended stint with the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band. On this rare 1979 duo outing, he sticks to clarinet. And though that instrument has an illustrious jazz pedigree, Coe’s playing here is something else. It’s worth noting that the clarinettist has also played under the baton of arch-modernist Pierre Boulez, the kind of composer Derek B…
Epiphanies I-VI
Derek Bailey’s guests for Company Week at London’s ICA in July 1982 were contemporary classical pianist Ursula Oppens, folk/jazz singer-turned-improviser Julie Tippetts and her partner pianist Keith Tippett, violinist/electronics wizard Philipp Wachsmann, guitarist Fred Frith, trombonist George Lewis, harpist Anne LeBaron, and from Japan free jazz bassist Motoharu Yoshizawa and sound artist Akio Suzuki. Altogether they performed the stunning extended improvisation Epiphany. In different, more i…
1983
Wonderful, previously unreleased recordings by Derek Bailey and his guests at Company Week in 1983. What's remarkable throughout this album is the respect and affection the musicians show for each other, exemplifying the dictionary definition of "company" as "the fact or condition of being with another or others, especially in a way that provides friendship and enjoyment." It starts with "Landslide", a brilliant, spiky, spluttering, twanging reunion of Music Improvisation Company members Evan Pa…
1981
Previously unreleased recordings by various line-ups drawn from Derek Bailey, Tristan Honsinger, Christine Jeffrey, Toshinori Kondo, Charlie Morrow, David Toop, Maarten Altena, Georgie Born, Lindsay Cooper, Steve Lacy, Radu Malfatti, and Jamie Muir. Journalists often make the brief history of free improvisation conform to the idea that the history of music is a nice straight line from past to present: Beethoven... Brahms... Boulez. Thus Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, and John Stevens -- together wit…
1969, 1970
**Available next week** "The original concepts of vocal and instrumental music are utterly different. The instrumental impulse is not melody in a 'melodious' sense but an agile movement of the hands which seem to be under the control of a brain centre totally different from that which inspires vocal melody. Altogether, instrumental music, with the exception of rudimentary rhythmic percussion, is as a rule a florid, fast and brilliant display of virtuosity... Quick motion is not merely a means t…
Diamorphoses / Concret Ph / Orient Occident / Bohor
Iannis Xenakis's early electroacoustic works define already the compositional space he is using later in his mature, almost one-hour long works like Persepolis or La Légende d'Er. After arriving in Paris as a Greek refuge in 1947, Xenakis quickly found a work as construction engineer with the architect Le Corbusier. He tried in vain for several years to become a member of the Groupe De Musique Concrète (GRM) and thus to gain access to the electroacoustic studios at the French radio. Pierre Schae…
Epiphanies VII-XIII
More buried treasure from Company Week 1982: seven previously unissued Epiphanies by lineups involving Derek Bailey, Ursula Oppens, Julie Tippetts, Keith Tippett, Philipp Wachsmann, Fred Frith, George Lewis, Anne LeBaron, Motoharu Yoshizawa and Akio Suzuki. Fred Frith is a stellar improviser — 1974’s Guitar Solos is still a seminal album of free improv — and he has three opportunities here to showcase his considerable talents. Eleventh is a tour de force of extended technique, with George Lewis…
Maki Asakawa
2019 Repress. A stunning survey of the 1970s heyday of this great Japanese singer and countercultural icon. The “Queen of the Japanese Underground” stuck to her unique personal style – long black dress, dark glasses, cloud of cigarette smoke…Deep-indigo, dead-of-night enka, folk and blues, inhaling Billie Holiday and Nina Simone down to the bone. A traditional waltz abuts Nico-style incantation; defamiliarised versions of Oscar Brown Jr and Bessie Smith collide with big-band experiments alongsi…
Hibiki Hana-Ma / Mycenae Alpha / Polytope De Cluny
*Restocked, reduced price* "Hibiki Hana-Ma" was created in 1969 for the Steel Pavilion of the Japan Iron and Steel Federation at the Expo 1970 in Osaka as musical part of a multimedia show. Even though the work does not bear the designation in its title, it can be already regarded as a Polytope: it was created for a specific architectural location, lasers and mirrors have been installed: a light choreography by the Japanese artist Keiji Usami accompanied the spectacle. This concept of synchroniz…
Power Failures
Huge Tip! The New York based duo of Che Chen and Rick Brown, 75 Dollar Bill, return with Power Failures, their first full length since 2020. Issued as a beautiful double LP by Karlrecords, and possibly their best record to date - taking on expanded explorations and a greater sense of abstraction - across its four sides we encounter Chen and Brown interweaving hypnotic polyrhythms and complex tonal collisions, with occasional (and brilliant) contributions from "Little Big Band" mainstays Steve Ma…
At Sound 323
Originally released by Confront in 2013 on compact disc as The Complete August 15th 2001. Now freshly remixed and remastered in 2023 for release on a delux double 180g white vinyl LP set and digital. Recorded at Sound 323, London by Tim Fletcher on 15 August 2001
Frammenti
Francesco Gennari is trained as a classical pianist and he commits himself to sound exploration through modular synth practice as further evolution of his musical journey. Gennari's origins are with black and white keys, noise-punk bands and DIY instrument building. This stunning debut, titled Frammenti, is the culmination of all of Gennari's interests. Through simple ideas developed with classical techniques like counterpoint and harmonic expansions, Francesco uses the modular setup as a virtua…
Buchenwald
The seminal classic first Whitehouse album released in 1980, one of the most important and influential records from the embryonic field of electronic and industrial music
Jazz Border - La Scena Jazz Italiana (Book + DVD)
* Italian Language Edition * 2024 Stock* La scena jazz italiana in un video e un libro di Claudio Chianura, con la partecipazione dei maggiori e più interessanti protagonisti in attività…Interviste e riprese originali con Francesco Bearzatti, Stefano Bollani, Claudio Cojaniz, Franco D'andrea, Zeno De Rossi, Maria Pia De Vito, Stefano Di Battista, Furio Di Castri, Paolo Fresu, Rita Marcotulli, Christian Meyer , Roy Paci, Enrico Rava, Antonello Salis, Gianluigi Trovesi, Stefano Zenni.