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Taking Off
1995 release ** "Taking Off was first released as an LP in 1982 and re-issued as a CD by Bleu Regard in France in 1995. Wallenstein increases the size of his jazz accompaniment/collaboration, featuring Bill Chelf on piano, Charles Tyler on saxophones, Jeremy Steig on flute, and Jeff Meyer on percussion. The opening poem "Careful Bump," begins with a jolting kick and cymbal crash leading into a bop-jazz drum beat. "The Short Life of the Five Minute Dancer," which describes action in the face of f…
Jacana
LP version. The best improvisers are the ones that seem to invent and uninvent their instruments right in front of your eyes and ears. Swedish pianist Sten Sandell and Norwegian drummer Paal Nilssen-Love are two musical champions with a long experience of doing exactly that. Jacana, the latest in Rune Grammofon's occasional series of unusual duo combinations, features the pair's sparkly improvised set captured at the 2013 Kongsberg Jazz Festival in southern Norway. Sten and Paal have been …
Azimuth
Recorded in 1977 and now reissued in ECM’s audiophile Luminessence vinyl series, the debut album of the Azimuth trio was truly ahead of its time. Formed by adding Canadian-born trumpeter Kenny Wheeler to the British duo of pianist John Taylor and vocalist Norma Winstone, the group’s futuristic musical palette embraced hypnotic, minimalistic pulse patterns, otherworldly synthesizer sounds, songs, collective improvisation and solo flights. In recent seasons, the number of listeners under Azimuth’s…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Requies
A monstrous blast of jazz noise energy by the combustible trio with Sunn 0)))’s Stephen O’Malley and David Sandström of hardcore punks, Refused, on the mighty Rune Grammofon.
Skala
*2024 stock* Mathias Eick’s intensely melodic trumpet occupies the centre-stage in this album of self-penned tunes which will appeal to an audience beyond “jazz”. Against the powerful backdrops offered by his sleek, modern band, driven by two drummers, he delivers richly lyrical soliloquies.
Midwest
*2024 stock* Mathias Eick reflects on distances travelled in this intensely melodic set of original compositions, which makes an imaginative journey from Hem, the tiny Norwegian village where the trumpeter grew up, to the vast plains of Dakota in the American Midwest. It was to the Midwest that hundreds of thousands of Norwegians travelled by sea in the 19th and early 20th centuries – and naturally they took their music with them. In similar spirit Eick, a Norwegian improviser-composer strongly…
Friday Night
Livy Ekemezie’s Friday Night is widely recognised by DJs and afro-funk aficionados as a UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) grail record. It is one of those rare dance music albums that sounds like a record of its’ time but also has a timeless quality that makes each listen an immensely rewarding experience. Fueled by teen spirit, every track slaps leaving little or no opportunity to skip. The song concepts circle around sweaty, afropolitan nightly excursions into the nightclubs of Aba, Port Harcou…
Ghost Notes
1998 release ** "This CD represents the pinnacle of IST's achievements so far. Phil Durrant's Sowari For Ist, concentrates upon texture and timbre as opposed to pitch and rhythm. The resulting music is detailed, fragile, abstract and beautiful, pushing acoustic instruments further into a sound-world more often associated with acousmatic forms. In Mark Wastell's Ritmico the emphasis is upon rhythm and the particular sonorities produced by the percussive possibilities of the wooden parts of each i…
crows of the world vol 1
2007 release ** "First entry in an on-going 'annual report' style compilation, programmed with the same sensibilities as 2005's Invisible Pyramid compilation by label guru Chris Moon. This entries' line-up includes: Keijo's Free Players, Brad Rose's North Sea, Western Automatic, the Ilya Monosov / Preston Swrinoff duo, Andrea Belfi (previously heard on the Invisible Pyramid comp), Paper Wings (Antony Milton + Anthony Guerra), Northern Cross (new Geoff Mullen + Kris Lapke duo), Brasil & the Gallo…
Entupadas
1988 release ** "Sometimes with a touch of disdain, but it’s merely poetic, political reflection on an incomplete world—the only one we know. Beauty and cruelty, joy and sorrow. The piano, mastering every language, responds to the glowing voice of the singer: Romansh, German, English, French. Sweet, strict, harsh, thrilling, playful."
Wave Of Sorrow
*2024 stock* "An evocative, lyrical recording.... The two draw heavily on Slavic folk influences, even as they mine the kind of airy, contemplative jazz harmonies associated with the ECM school." - David R. Adler, AllMusicWave of Sorrow is an album by Soviet-Norwegian jazz pianist Mikhail Alperin and Russian brass player Arkady Shilkloper recorded in July 1989 and released on ECM the following year.
Winter Canabinol Essence
2009 release ** ""Winter Canabinol Essence" is the debut album to be released by the Moscow based label Nihil Art. The Russian project Obozdur, unknown for us'till this release, offers here six tracks at the cross between "old-school" harsh noise, cut-up noise and experimental music. Using radio-waves transmissions, tapes, rythm'n box, processed vocals or tape-voices, processed guitar or bass, various analog effects, all used in a "non-musical" way, Obozdur creates long tracks of cut-up dada noi…
Up And Coming
*2024 stock* Guitarist John Abercrombie – who has recorded as a leader for ECM since 1974 – returns with a second album by his quartet featuring Marc Copland on piano, along with longtime rhythm partners Drew Gress and Joey Baron. Extolling 39 Steps, the group’s 2013 album, the Financial Times said: “The emphasis is on subtle intrigue, flowing lyricism and the interplay between the leader’s warm, cleanly articulated guitar and Copland’s piano… with bassist Gress and drummer Baron equally supple …