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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…
The Indeterminate Existence
2008 release ** "Jack Wright lays down a whole disc's worth of monumentally impressive solo alto sax recordings on The Indeterminate Existence, taking some cues from the idiom-expanding sonic experimentation of Evan Parker, whose vocal-styled squawks and splutters are incorporated into Wright's impressive sense of melody and bebop fluency. Clocking in at over an hour , only the bravest of free improv explorers need apply, but the reward will be ample. Anyone who was floored by Paul Flaherty's un…
Der Maurer, Vol.1
2010 release ** "A multifaceted personality and artist in ethics, as well as aesthetics, Enrico Gabrielli has collected in the space of a few years what an average independent musician collects in a lifetime. Specifically, a series of important collaborations with the major world (Afterhours, Vinicio Capossela, Niccolò Fabi, Morgan), esteem and excellent feedback for shared projects (Mariposa and Calibro 35) and a status as a third-party arranger universally recognized in the Italian musical env…
On Top Of Your Head
2002 release ** "With a curriculum vitae as one of the original New Thingers stretching back to 1960s membership in the New York Art Quartet (NYAQ) and an appearance on John Coltrane’s ASCENSION, reedman John Tchicai has never lacked for playing partners. Adapting orchestral sequencing plus variations on different ethnic musics to a formula that already reflected his Danish-Congolese background and American experience; Tchicai was a unique presence on the scene. Moving back and forth from Europe…
Diciannove Calefazioni
1999 release ** "Very idiosyncratic and very beautiful improvisations by one half of the Takla Records collective, these nineteen pieces sound like nothing much else on the planet. Individual notes hang in the air; no particular statement lasts for long, and yet the duo manage to sustain a sense of momentum across the silences. They've programmed unusually long pauses between the tracks, perhaps in an attempt to encourage the casual listener to hear distinct pieces. On in the background, these p…
Agartha: Personal Meditation Music
Building on their long-standing efforts to illuminate the historical Ambient and New Age movement’s connections to minimalism and experimental electronic music, the venerable Important Records returns with the astoundingly ambitious “Agartha: Personal Meditation Music”, gathering an incredible body of music produced by Meredith L. Young-Sowers during the mid-1980s to aid meditation and spiritual healing. Resonating deeply with the work of Eliane Radigue, Pauline Oliveros, Stuart Dempster, Brian …
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 …
You Never End
You Never End is the third album from Valentina Magaletti, Tom Halstead and Joe Andrews (Moin) out via AD 93 on the 25th October. Its title alone expresses the teetering and shifting nature of both the album and band. This record marks the Moin’s shift into a new phase with vocal collaborations across the album from Olan Monk, james K, Coby Sey and Sophia Al-Maria.
The album’s collaborators all have voices that are alluring in their own right whilst hard to pin down: from james K’s ethereal, rev…
Aire Du Maquis D'Em
*2025 repress* "Across two sides that sweep the wildest part of her live-played sonic imaginarium, Gaël Segalen entices us down the road of sensory enlightenment and shamanic abstraction. Caught in a web of tormented, exotica-laced visions and off-piste electronic ramblings, we’re faced with a layered and complex labyrinth of sound, bristling with strange solar-powered flora and the most elusive of e-faunas. Threading our way into these uncharted nooks and crannies as if on a speleological excur…
Temporary Kings
*2024 stock* With Temporary Kings two of the most distinct voices on today’s jazz scene present their debut on record as a duo. Engaging in inspired dialogue Mark Turner and Ethan Iverson here explore aesthetic common ground in the atmosphere of a modernist chamber music-like setting at the Auditorio Stelio Molo RSI, Lugano. The saxophonist and the pianist had begun their association in the Billy Hart Quartet, where the two players featured sympathetically on two ECM albums by that band.
The ne…
Human
In its review of pianist Shai Maestro’s ECM leader debut The Dream Thief, All About Jazz spoke of “a searching lyrical atmosphere, emotional eloquence and communal virtuosity that serves the music.” All of which also applies to Human, where Maestro’s outgoing, highly-communicative band with fellow Israeli Ofri Nemya on drums and Peruvian bassist Jorge Roeder becomes a quartet with the inspired addition of US trumpeter Philip Dizack. Shai’s expansive pianism is well-matched by Dizack’s alert, …
My Prophet
On My Prophet, Oded Tzur together with his quartet of pianist Nitai Hershkovits, bassist Petros Klampanis and the new group member Cyrano Almeida on drums, continues on the idiosyncratic musical path he has carved out for himself – a flowing jazz idiom that seamlessly combines multiple forms of expression –, while delving deeper into the meditative and highly concentrated realm of improvisation. In the process, the saxophonist presents some of his fiercest playing yet.
The quartet’s synergy is…
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…
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…