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Streams
*2024 stock* On his second leader album for ECM – following on from the prizewinning Gefion – Danish guitarist Jakob Bro continues to refine his trio project, with its emphases on melody, sound, space, layered textures and interaction. The rapport between Bro and Thomas Morgan (Bro calls him “my musical soul mate”) has become something extraordinary, and often guitarist and bassist develop improvisational ideas in parallel. There’s an historical aptness, too, in the choice of Joey Baron as the b…
Big Vicious
*2024 stock* Charismatic trumpeter Avishai Cohen launched his exuberant, home-grown band Big Vicious six years ago, after relocating from the US to his native Israel, rounding up players to shape the music from the ground up, and co-authoring much of its newest material together with them. The group is an association of old friends. “We’re all coming from jazz, but some of us left it earlier”, Avishai says, summing up the stylistic reach of his cohorts. “Everyone’s bringing in their backgrounds…
Naked Truth
There is a searching, yearning quality to Naked Truth, and a raw beauty and vulnerability in Avishai Cohen’s trumpet sound on his most improvisational ECM recording to date. Very much music-of-the moment, found and shaped in the course of a remarkable recording session in the South of France, Naked Truth takes the form of an extemporaneous suite. For most of its length the Israeli trumpeter painstakingly leads the way, closely shadowed by his long-time comrades – pianist Yonathan Avishai, bassi…
Vermillion
Kit Downes joins forces with long-time collaborators Petter Eldh on bass and James Maddren on drums for a carefully assorted piano trio programme that treads gentle lyricism and bold creative outbursts in equal measures. Downes, whose prior ECM offering Dreamlife of Debris was termed a “work of otherworldly beauty” by BBC Music Magazine, carves out some of his most compendious pieces to date on Vermillion. Replete with subtle twists and turns, the trio offers its idiosyncratic take on the piano …
Old And New Dreams
Hot on the heels of Old Friends, New Friends comes Old And New Dreams, an operation meant as a new flagship for Ornette Coleman, whose lack of enthusiasm for the project left a gap duly filled by Dewey Redman. The result is this delightful excursion into post-bop outlands that sounds as alive as ever. Two Coleman pieces comprise nearly half of its duration—which is saying much, for like many of ECM’s joints of the 70s, this one breezes by in under 50 minutes. The first Coleman piece, “Lonely Wom…
Romaria
*2024 stock* Andy Sheppard’s quartet extends the musical explorations begun on the 2015 release Surrounded By Sea, an album praised by Télérama for its “poignant serenity.” In this new programme of compositions by Sheppard (plus the title track by Brazilian singer-songwriter Renato Teixeira), the drones and washes of Eivind Aarset’s guitar and electronics – aided by the generous acoustics of Lugano’s Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI – help to establish a climate in which improvisation can take place. T…
En Attendant
*2024 stock* “There’s a galaxy of piano trios in today’s jazz universe,” the BBC Music Magazine has noted, “but few shine as bright as Marcin Wasilewski’s”. On its seventh ECM album the multifaceted Polish group illuminates a characteristically wide span of music. On En attendant, collectively created pieces are juxtaposed with Wasilewski’s malleable “Glimmer of Hope”, Carla Bley’s timeless “Vashkar”, The Doors’ hypnotic “Riders On The Storm” and a selection from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg…
Lonely Shadows
After critically-acclaimed ECM recordings with the Maciej Obara Quartet (Unloved, Three Crowns), Polish pianist Dominik Wania delivers a solo album recorded in November 2019 in Lugano. Wania’s sensitivity to touch, tone and texture is informed by his classical background. But he also has the in-the-moment instincts of a great improviser, acutely focused on the unfolding details of the music in the responsive interior of the Auditorio Stelio Molo studio. The balancing of influences from both disc…
Gnu High
A vinyl reissue, in Ecm new audiophile Luminessence series, for Kenny Wheeler’s sensational ECM leader debut. Recorded in New York in 1975, and produced by Manfred Eicher, Gnu High brought Canadian trumpeter Wheeler to a new level of international acclaim, for both his impassioned playing and his profoundly lyrical writing. Here Kenny is fronting an extraordinary quartet, with Keith Jarrett, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette, all masterful improvisers who had shaped their intuitive collective und…
Belonging
Tip! "Belonging is a studio album by American jazz pianist Keith Jarrett, recorded over two days in April 1974 and released on ECM later that year—the debut of Jarrett's "European Quartet", featuring saxophonist Jan Garbarek and rhythm section Palle Danielsson and Jon Christensen. Because Jarrett's contract with ABC/Impulse! prevented him from performing with the quartet under his own name, the group became known as the 'Belonging' quartet." - Wikipedia
Seven Songs For Quartet And Chamber Orchestra
Sounding as fresh today as it did in 1973, Seven Songs places the Gary Burton Quartet in an orchestral context, with compositions of Michael Gibbs – inspired by Messiaen and Charles Ives as well as Miles and Gil Evans – and exceptional soloing by Mick Goodrick, Steve Swallow and Burton himself. The production is exemplary: Seven Songs set a new standard for recordings of orchestral jazz.
While there is still a handful of ECM titles from vibraphonist Gary Burton that remain unreleased on CD, perh…
My Cat Arnold
Original 1989 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 …
Alien
Original 1985 LP edition. This one is a bit of an outlier. More a showcase for keyboardist Don Preston’s (The Mothers Of Invention) array of 1980s synthesizers and drum machines than a jazz album. As the story goes composer Michael Mantler wrote this music for a conventional orchestra with the solo trumpet part, but then decided to transpose orchestral partitions to Preston’s gadgetry. It is not known if this move was informed by the budgetary constraint or perhaps creative or even financial inc…
Sfere Luminose
Huge Tip! Sfere Luminose is a rare and breathtaking masterpiece that stands as a pinnacle of Italian Library music. Featuring the mesmerizing vocals of Nora Orlandi and the legendary jazz drumming of Franco Tonani, this album is an essential gem from the cult label Record TV - Firmamento, a name revered for iconic releases from the late 1960s to early 1970s. The album is produced by maestros Giancarlo Gazzani and Roby Poitevin, with contributions from the acclaimed studio group I Marc 4 and Ales…
Interactions A Guide to Swiss Underground Experimental Music
Interactions: A Guide to Swiss Underground Experimental Music, a double-LP compilation curated by Luis Alvarado and published by Buh Records, brings together 27 works by more than 30 artists from the current experimental music scene in Switzerland, in a variety of sounds, ranging from free improvisation, ambient, and industrial music, to synthesizer music, sound collage and more. It gives an account of the intense creative activity in the Swiss underground that runs through cities such as Zürich…
Madagascar Now - Maintenant 'Zao
** First ever standalone vinyl reissue. Carefully remastered. 4 page booklet with rare and unpublished photos. Heavyweight 180 gr. LP ** While he was working on the repertoire for the new version of his group Malagasy, with young Malagasy musicians he had met in Paris in 1972 (and who can be heard on the album "Malagasy At Newport-Paris"), Jef Gilson realised that two of his new discoveries, in addition to being established polyinstrumentalists (who both had sharpened their skills in the legenda…
Solaire
Reissue, originally released in 1971. Solaire, Siegfried Kessler, that is the least you can say! Aged four: learns piano. Aged six: his first concert. After this: studies classical music like everyone else... until the jazz of Jack Diéval and Stan Kenton turned everything upside down. So, it was goodbye to Bach... And hello to Dexter Gordon, Joe Henderson, Ted Curson, and Archie Shepp (who he would accompany over a long period). In 1969, with Yochk'o Seffer, Didier Levallet, and Jean-My Truong, …
Archipel
Deluxe edition. Comes with obi strip with 12 pages booklet. 700 copies. Souffle Continu Records present the first ever reissue of Dharma's Archipel, originally released in 1973. "Do your own music!" was Albert Ayler's advice, received loud and clear in France. Cohelmec Ensemble, Workshop de Lyon, and the Dharma Quintet, three groups close in spirit, which would each illustrate, in their own way, a local principle: to get some distance from American free jazz. As far as Dharma is concerned, the c…
Untitled
* Deluxe reissue, with obi strip + 4 page booklet, 180g vinyl* In November 1976, Jef Gilson’s phone rang. What a surprise! It was Serge Rahoerson, one of the musicians he had met in Madagascar at the end of the 60s and who had played on his first album “Malagasy”. Rahoerson announced that he was in Paris for a few days. Immediately, Jef wanted to organise a recording session, starting the next day. He thought of a trio including Serge, Eddy Louiss on organ and cellist Jean-Charles Capon, who ha…
Évohé Bègue
"Evohé, the song of the bacchants, is multiple and dangerous, its cult is not based on any catechism. Bacchanalian song is about intrusion, it knows neither beginning nor end, and refuses to take the stage that is set for it. Evohé is thus a permanent discipline of aggression of the ritual by the real. A cult of the dangerous object, of time gnawing at flesh, of redemption through intoxication."
French Chanson, Noise, echoes of music from faraway and long ago, modified radio transistors and oth…