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Frank Wright Trio
Reissue, originally released on ESP Disk' in 1966. Frank "The Reverend" Wright was one of the most powerful saxophonists to pick up on Albert Ayler's freedom and ferocious playing. Born in Mississippi and raised in Memphis, TN and then Cleveland, OH, he started in music as a bassist in blues bands but switched to tenor sax under the influence of his Cleveland friend Albert Ayler. Wright's "energy music" approach to tenor saxophone was influenced by Ayler but at the time in the '60s Wright's inte…
Your Prayer
Super Tip! Reissue, originally released in 1967. Frank Wright returned to the studio in May 1967 to make his second album using a quintet of players little-known at the time but now legends to free-jazz cognoscenti. Trumpeter Jacques Coursil, who almost made an album for ESP-Disk' himself, went on to the greatest fame of the players besides Wright; alto saxophonist Arthur Jones was not recorded nearly as often as his talents deserved; Steve Tintweis's stint playing with Albert Ayler raised the y…
Pharaoh Sanders Quintet
2024 Repress. ESP-Disk present a reissue of Pharoah Sanders Quintet, originally released in 1965. Recorded on September 10, 1964, prior to his well-known association with John Coltrane, this eponymous album (later renamed Pharoah's First) is the debut release of the iconic tenor saxophonist, Pharoah Sanders. (Yes, there are some spelling oddities here: the artist -- birth name Ferrell -- only later changed the spelling from the standard Pharaoh to the more personalized Pharoah). With one foot in…
College Tour
50th Anniversary Edition on "Esperanto-Green" colored vinyl. In the Spring of 1966, ESP was given a grant by the New York State Council on the Arts, to tour the five colleges in the state with music departments. Artists for this tour included the Sun Ra Arkestra, Burton Greene, Patty Waters, Giuseppi Logan and Ran Blake. Accompanied by an all star backup group from among the participants, Patty's performances resulted in the album, College Tour, her second recording for ESP-Disk'. The album expa…
Prophecy
ESP-Disk present a reissue of Albert Ayler's Prophecy, originally released in 1975. Recorded in concert at the Cellar Cafe, NYC, June 14, 1964. Three weeks before this trio recorded ESP-Disk's first jazz album, the epochal Spiritual Unity (ESPDISK 1002CD/LP), it was captured "live" by Canadian poet Paul Haines, who also recorded the New York Eye and Ear Control soundtrack (ESPDISK 1016CD/LP). This is one of the most influential groups in jazz history, a coming together of like-minded innovators …
Spiritual Unity
2023 repress. LP version. 180 gram virgin vinyl, with original artwork restored. Spiritual Unity, recorded on July 10, 1964, is the album that made Albert Ayler and ESP-Disk' famous (or, in some people's eyes/ears, infamous). Mr. Ayler had already recorded in Europe and, in February '64, in New York, but this was the first album on which neither he nor his collaborators held back. It was also ESP's first jazz recording. Spiritual Unity presented a new improvisation paradigm: looser structure, le…
The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra Vol.2
2023 repress. 180-gram black vinyl. Volume two of Sun Ra's classic Heliocentric recordings from the 1960s. The astonishing sessions that went light years beyond "free jazz" improvisation to create a music of deeply-felt, explosive and gentle gesture made from sound itself without reference to previous notions of melody or harmony are now reissued on 180 gram vinyl with Sun Ra's original, self-created cover art. Recorded by Richard Alderson on April 20, 1965, this set of tunes finds Sun Ra breaki…
Free Music One And Two
One of the most uncompromising free jazz records ever made, this one-off improvisation by a group of Dutch players, led by percussionist Pierre Courbois, is an archetype of the style
Cave Rock
2013 reissue; originally released in 1969. Also known as Orgasm, this 1969 album has long been hailed as an underground classic. Included in Spin's 2013 list "The Top 100 Alternative Albums of the 1960s." Finally available again on vinyl in an ESP-Disk' 50th Anniversary Remaster version. "Two frustrated pop songwriters and the mysterious seven-person 'Connecticut Tribe' hole up in an Upper West Side studio and yell and moan and convulse until they discover a place more primordial than hardcore. …
I Had The Craziest Dream: Modern Jazz And Hard-Bop In Post War London, Vol. 3
The third volume in a survey of the modern jazz & hard-bop scenes that emerged in the new cultural melting pot of post war London, with recordings from the end of the 1940s through to the early 1960s. Featuring representations from players whose roots lay in the East-End's jewish community alongside a wealth of talent of Caribbean and African descent playing and recording in post war London during this period. Made in partnership with the Barbican to coincide with the exhibition Postwar Modern: …
Alone Inside the Walls of Night
Based in rural New Mexico, William Fowler Collins (b.1974) is a composer, recording artist and performer. His music extends across and beyond many genres including drone, minimalism, and free improvisation. He records and performs in both solo and group contexts. Collins has released music on the SIGE, Type, Blackest Rainbow, Handmade Birds, Sicksicksick and Root Strata record labels. In addition to his work as a solo artist, Collins has several collaborations including Thalassa with Aaron Turne…
For The Vagus Nerve
*In process of stocking.* “In the face of whatever it is that is breaking our names apart” – Sean Bonney Score for as many players as you like – the recording is for nine. Play any frequency between 264.94 Hz and 277.18 Hz, held, bent or gliding, between B3 and C#4 – hold this note for as long as your breath and/or heart permits. If you feel you are in the same heart or breath rhythm of another player, cluster with them, or squirm out from under or over them. Imagine a pink nerve inside your gut…
Psychic Architecture
Marsha Fisher is a Minneapolis based composer and sound artist. Originally from Nebraska, they participated heavily in the Lincoln DIY scene. They bring the DIY ethos into their experimental music practice by using consumer tape players and cassettes to replicate musique concrète techniques in a context more similar to harsh noise. Fisher also runs the tape labels Gay Hippie Vampire and Activated Skeleton and has recent releases on Orb Tapes, Falt, and Full Spectrum Records.
My Greatest Revenge: Flamenco Recordings, 1904-1938
Death Is Not The End presents a collection of haunted, brooding flamenco recordings taken from the early 1900s through to the late 1930s.
If You Want to Make a Lover: Palm Wine, Akan Blues & Early Guitar Highlife, Pt. I
The first part in a collection encompassing Akan blues, palm wine and early guitar-based highlife music, with recordings dating from the late 1920s through to the end of the 1950s.
Erratum #4 / Sound Review / Art + Noise + Poetry
Sound poetry and poetry of sound. Edited and assembled by Joachim Montessuis. Joël Hubaut, Erik Samakh, Atau Tanaka, AGF, José Iges, Lee Ranaldo, R.H.Y. Yau, Rainier Lericolais, Francisco López, Gary Hill, Charles Pennequin, Ira Cohen, Phill Niblock, Joachim Montessuis, Le Dépeupleur, Julien Ottavi, Robin Minard, Guillermo Goméz Peña, Guillermo Galindo, Brandon LaBelle, Pierre André Arcand, Christina Kubisch, Fréderic Dumond, Christophe Charles, Henning Christiansen, EHB, laboiteblanche, Tommi G…
Erratum #3, Revue Sonore / Sound Review
This lengthy compilation offers up a mixed bag of the fascinating and the wearisome. Peak bits of said fascination here would have to be Gregory Whitehead, Gilles Richard and the duo of Patrick Muller and Jean-Francois Bory, who all offer up wonderfully sick vocal based surrealist audio malformations. Elsewhere, Zbigniew Kakowski dishes up nerve janging sinewaves and distorted field recordings while Dinsinformation and Charlemagne Palestine both maddeningly revel in stasis, with unwavering low-e…
La danse des tonneaux roulants et brisés
Le pionnier légendaire de La poésie sonore Henri Chopin (1922 - 2008) livre ici sa dernière composition datant de novembre 2003, réalisée chez lui à Dereham en Angleterre avec son micro et son Revox stéréo. Cette pièce de 51 minutes en trois volets témoigne de La vitalité et de La créativité dont faisait preuve Henri Chopin qui travailLait encore à plus de 82 ans !, avec acharnement et passion.
Kveldsragg
Heaven and earth are in motion with the debut album from composer and saxophonist Gisle Røen Johansen (b. 1968) an active voice on the Norwegian jazz scene since the mid-nineties. Known for his expressive tone in groups like Element and Jazzmob, Kveldsragg is the first release under his own name. The album features top players from the nordic jazz currents including members from Bushman’s Revenge and Element; Even Hermansen on guitars, Rune Nergaard on Electric Bass and Ingebrigt Håker Flaten on…
Gioseffo Zarlino - 2015/2019
* Edition of 500 * Marc Sabat's Gioseffo Zarlino is "the third in a series of pieces inspired by ideas in the history of music theory, which I seek to experience and unfold in a sounding world" (taken from the liner notes by the composer). In the piece, unfolding cyclically over 70 minutes, voices, strings, harp, and flute, weave through each other exploring a novel tonal space developed by the Renaissance Italian Composer-Theorist, Gioseffo Zarlino in 1558 and reinterpreted in the 21st Century …